An Arthurian Miscellany, part 3 of 3

HENRY NEWBOLT

   "The fate of...is tragic in the essential sense, and not merely that superficial sense of the word according to which every misfortune is called 'tragic.'...In truth innocent suffering of that sort is merely pathetic, not tragic, inasmuch as it is not within the sphere of reason. Now suffering--misfortune--comes within the sphere of reason only if it is brought about by the free will of the subject, who must be entirely moral and justifiable; as must be also the power against which that subject proceeds. This power must be no merely natural one, nor the mere will of a tyrant: because it is only in such case that the man is himself, so to speak, guilty of his misfortune.
   "In genuine tragedy, then, they must be powers both alike moral and justifiable, which from this side and from that come into collision. Two opposed Rights come forth: the one breaks itself to pieces against the other: in this way both alike loss: while both alike are justified, the one towards the other: not as if this were right, that other wrong."
HEGEL. ( Translated by W. Pater)

Persons Represented

ARTHUR, King of Britain.
SIR KAY, The Seneschal.
SIR LANCELOT DU LAKE.
SIR LAMORAK DE GALIS.
SIR TRISTRAM DE LIONES.
SIR BEDIVERE.
SIR LUCAN.
SIR GERAINT.
SIR PELLEAS OF THE ISLES.

Princes of Orkney, Sons of King Lot and Queen Morgance.
   SIR GARETH
   SIR GAWAINE
   SIR GAHERIS
   SIR AGRAVAINE

SIR MORDRED, Prince of Orkney, son of Arthur and Morgance.
GUINEVERE, Queen of Britain.

Ladies in attendance on Guinevere.
   ENID
   LIONORS
   LINET
   LAUREL

A HERALD.
A TRUMPETER.
KNIGHTS, SQUIRES, YEOMEN, GUARDS, LADIES, NUNS, &c.
The buildings, armour, and dresses are in the style of the early part of the XVth century.

ACT I .

SCENE I.
The Lists at Caerleon-on-Usk. Upon a daïs GUINEVERE with her four ladies, and ARTHUR, with KAY and a herald at his right hand. A little below them LANCELOT, TRISTRAM, LAMORAK, GAWAINE, and many other knights in armour; PELLEAS, MORDRED, squires, yeomen,and a crowd of folk beyond.
Arthur. Lancelot, the Queen with all men's loud acclaim
Hath named thee victor, and doth summon thee
To kneel before her Grace.
[LANCELOT kneels.
Guinevere (laying a wreath upon his head). Sir Lancelot, here
I give thee but a wisp of worthless leaves
For honour's sake: the prize thou hast already,
Knowing thyself unmatched.
Lancelot. A prize, my Queen,
Or this or that, was never in my thought;
But one word's praise, if any toil might win it,
From the most gracious lips in Christendom.
Arthur. A knightly answer, fitly rounding off
A noble contest: for in all the years
Since Britain crowned me with Pendragon's crown
Here at Caerleon, never have I beheld
So great a press of splendid chivalry
Gathered within one lists, nor ever known
Challenge so keen, defence so strenuous,
Valour and courtesy so justly blent.
Thou, Lancelot, claim'st of right the victor's wreath,
Having surpassed even thine own renown;
Yet let me say, did'st thou not wear it better
There are a hundred here would wear it well.
( To KAY.) But come, 'tis ended: bid the trumpet sound,
And let the herald cry before we part
Our wonted proclamation.
Kay. Sir, he is ready
Ho! the king's herald!
[ Trumpet. ]
Herald. Oyez! oyez! oyez!
And first if there be any in presence here
Knight of the Table Round, that hath received
Commission of the king for quest or war,
And therein laboured and therefrom returned
Now let him render up his due account
And bide the judgment of our lord the king
Oyez! Who comes?
Lamorak. I, Lamorak de Galis.
Arthur. Lamorak? Our Order knows no greater name:
Did I not match it with a charge as great?
Lamorak. My Lord, the charge was great: no less indeed
Than kingship: for the full space of a year
To rule the outland by the Northern Sea,
Deal peace or war to the king's enemies
And justice to his people; to command
With Arthur's voice of thunder, and to strike
With the swift lightning flash of Arthur's sword.
Arthur. I do remember well, yet all this year
I have not so much as dreamed of my wild North,
Knowing it guarded by a hand of iron
And golden counsels: yet for custom's sake
Recount thy service, Lamorak.
Lamorak. Sir, briefly summed,
'Tis war-built peace, that will not quickly crumble.
Arthur. Thou hast our thanks: we'll question thee anon
Of all in order; meanwhile, peace or war,
Thou'rt welcome, Lamorak: and since thy wars
Have wrought our peace, twice welcome! So there come not
Some need more pressing that the times portend,
We'll keep thee near us.
Lamorak. Good my lord, you heap
Reward on praise and honour on reward.
Arthur. Herald, again thy trumpet.
[ Trumpet. ]
Herald. Oyez! oyez! oyez!
And next if there be any in presence here,
Gentle or simple, woman, child, or man,
That wishing well to live at peace with all
Natheless hath suffered or doth suffer wrong,
Now let the weak and poor forget their fears
And crave the justice of our lord the king.
Oyez! who comes?
[ A pause. ]
Arthur. ( To KAY.) None? let him sound again.
Kay. My lord, 'tis needless; up and down the realm
The Table Round have quested year by year,
Till there is none perverse or bold enough
To dare the instant forfeit.
Arthur. How say'st thou, none?
Are there no ladies held against their will,
No poor down-trodden, no man done to death
By craft unknightly, no blaspheming heard
Against our holy faith? The Golden Age
Is come again then! Yet, why marvel I,
Knowing my strength, whose arm is truly braced
With triple steel, Lancelot and Lamorak
And Tristram, betwixt whom, as all men say,
The knighthood of the world is parted fair.
But now to make an end, there's yet, meseems,
One proclamation, herald.
[ Trumpet. ]
Herald. Oyez! oyez! oyez!
And last, if there be any in presence here
Who being but squire, yet true withal and strong,
Doth covet knighthood, and would bind himself
By the strait vows of Arthur's Table Round,
Now let him come, with warrant of his worth,
And make request unto our lord the king.
Oyez! who comes?
Lancelot. I, Lancelot, make request
For my squire, Pelleas: I have proved him brave,
Enduring, emulous, sudden and sure at need,
And in the courtesy of service, perfect.
Thereto his birth is princely; yet I look
To see his life out-lustre it.
Arthur. Enough!
Thy suit is granted, Lancelot: and for thee
Pelleas, that hearest of thyself such words
From such a mouth, remember all thy days
That Lancelot praised the promise of thy youth,
And thou shalt surely come to more than fame.
Gawaine. My lord, I, Gawaine, also beg thy favour
For a young kinsman.
Arthur. Nay, Gawaine, thou art late.
It doth repent me, but the Table Round
Hath but one siege unfilled, and that thou hear'st
Is pledged to Pelleas. Thou shalt ask again
At some more happy season.
( To GUINEVERE) Come, my queen,
Shall we go homeward?
Mordred.     Ah! my lord! my lord!
Hear me one moment's space!
[ He kneels and grasps the king's mantle.
Arthur (his robe falling as he turns). And who art thou,
So wilful-urgent that thou darest thus
From a king's shoulder pluck his kingly robe?
Mordred (looking fixedly at him). Mordred, the son of Morgance.
Arthur. Ha! thou sayest?
Mordred. Mordred, the son of Morgance.
Arthur. Nay, I hear thee,
And for the name's sake pardon. What's thy plaint?
What wilt thou?
Mordred. Knighthood of the Table Round.
Arthur. Thou too? Hast thou not heard even now--
Mordred. Ay, my lord,
It was for me that Gawaine made request.
Arthur. And thereto had his answer. What? is there more?
Mordred. Ay, this my lord:
Morgance, the queen, my mother, sending me
Her youngest hither, bade me boldly ask
This boon of knighthood, saying, "And if he doubt,
Thou shalt entreat him by the memory
Of his own youth, when I from Orkney came
On a far embassage, and made with him
That lasting treaty."
[ARTHUR looks hard on MORDRED and is silent.
Guinevere (aside to LANCELOT). Mark how the king is moved!
Anger and policy divide his mind
With more than common tumult.
Lancelot. 'Tis no wonder:
The habit of command so long ingrained
Brooks not a suit urged by any mouth
Save one, my queen.
Guinevere (smiling). Listen!
Arthur (half to himself). That lasting treaty!
(aloud) Ay, Mordred, partly for that treaty's sake,
And partly too, that something in thy face
Stirs me with presage of a name for thee
Beyond thy fellows, thou shalt have thy will,
Though how, I know not yet.
[ He turns to go.
Kay. Sir--
Arthur. Stay me not;
I know thy scruples, Kay; but I have sworn
He shall be knight, knight of our Table Round,
Though I myself must yield my place to him.
[GUINEVERE and ARTHUR go out followed by
ladies, knights, squires, and men-at-arms.

ACT I .

SCENE II.
Caerleon: the Queen's Bower.
Enter GUINEVERE, with Ladies attending her.
Guinevere. Thanks, ye may leave me now; for some short space
I shall not need you. Enid, go not thou.
[ The others go out.
Enid. Madam, you are tired.
Guinevere. Ay, 'twas a weary day.
Enid. Weary? Oh! madam, now you jest with me!
Think you I saw not,--up on the daïs there--
How your eyes kindled when the trumpets rang,
And every time those two great glittering waves
Thundered along to the shock, you clenched your hands
And leaned a little forward, and your breath
Caught, while the mellay clashed and clung and broke
And clashed again; and when the warder fell
And you, the Queen of Tourney, rose to crown
Our noblest knight--think you I marked not then
The happy pride that gave your quivering voice
That deep-strung note of challenge? Dearest madam,
Was it not so?
Guinevere. Nay, Enid, yea and nay,
Proud was I--yea, and who would not be proud?
But happy! Yea, and I was happy too,
While he was there before me, and my thought
A moment slumbered--but to wake--to think--
To see the one thing I have lacked in life,
The one thing worth possession--ah! thou knowest
That I was wed while I was half a child,
And found not this till I had signed away
My right to grasp it--and the slow years bring
Nought but endurance--bitterer still, there come
Days like to-day, poignant with needless proof
Of loss immeasurable, and rack my heart
With a vain longing to unravel life
And weave the pattern fresh--and then thou sayest
It was not weary, Enid!
Enid. Oh! dear lady,
Forgive me, I was blind, I should have seen--
And I remember I have sometimes thought--
Why did you never tell me?
Guinevere. Only I think
Because I never yet have felt so weak
As to-day left me--
Hark! a foot without!
Let no one enter--give me a moment yet--
Now open--Well? Who is it?
Enid. Madam, his page--
He craves an audience of the queen.
Guinevere. Why gladly
Tell him--is it done?--and, Enid, when he comes,
Wait thou without, dear child, and see that none
Break in upon our conference.
Enid. Oh! madam,
Not--not alone! not now! you are not yourself,
Let me stay with you--I am true and secret.
Guinevere. Nay, Enid, trust me, 'tis the queen he seeks,
And he shall find her!
There's his step without,
I am ready.
Enid (kissing her hand). Dearest lady!
Guinevere. Bring him in.
Enter LANCELOT hurriedly: ENID goes out.
Lancelot. My Queen, I am come-- (He stops abruptly.)
Guinevere. Surely Sir Lancelot knows
Come for what cause he may, he is welcome here.
Lancelot. Oh! say not that, not that; for I am come
To take farewell.
Guinevere. Farewell?--I cannot--stay--
What wert thou saying? My head is tired to-night,
And thou wert strange and sudden.
Lancelot. Yea, I am strange
Even to myself, most strange; and suddenness
Befits my purpose, that must do the deed
Before repentance wakes.
Guinevere. Why, thou art distressed:
We'll sit awhile, and talk of this more calmly.
Come, let me guess; the king, it may be, needs
That his right hand should strike some distant wrong.
Is it so far distant?
Lancelot. I must part to-night
For Joyous Gard.
Guinevere. Ah, 'tis trouble calls thee home,
Not the king's service? Then some rebel knight,
Grudging thine overlordship, thinks it easy
To brave an absent prince; but thou'lt be gone
How long at most?
Lancelot. I shall be gone the rest
Of all my life-days.
Guinevere. Now may God defend thee!
But 'tis not like thy high victorious heart
To brood on danger.
Lancelot. Alas! you know me not!
I have brooded long, too long, and now must fly
Lest worse befall than danger.
Guinevere. Thou must fly?
When has thou fled? But stay--'tis hence thou goest;
The peril's here, then?
Lancelot. Ay, most truly here,
Imminent--here and now!--farewell, my Queen,
Farewell, I dare not linger.
Guinevere (in a low voice). Peril here?
I know not--what--thou sayest--
Lancelot. You shall not know:
Only what's weakest in me could desire
That you should know: farewell!
Guinevere. Stay, art thou not
Perchance too sudden, Lancelot, too resigned
To thine own weakness, when with patient craft
Or help of strong alliance, even yet
Thou might'st endure, and by enduring break
The onset of thy foes?
Lancelot. Oh, stay me not!
God knows I have endured! What is there left,
What patience, what alliance?
Guinevere. Mine! the queen's!
Lancelot. Oh, mockery! most unguarded stroke of all!
Thy words against their merciful intent
Drive the steel deeper.
Guinevere. Nay, Lancelot, hear me yet,
What if this secret enemy of thine
Threatened me too? What if my life with thine
Lay strangling in the toils, the self-same toils,
Wild with one hope and dumb with one despair?
Lancelot. Guinevere! Guinevere! What hast thou said ?
I dare not understand thee!
Guinevere. Must my tongue
Cry it more loudly than my beating heart?
Can'st thou not read a woman's eyes?
Lancelot. O Death!
Remember not my blind and faithless prayers,
Let not the end be yet!
Guinevere. Ah, reckless heart!
How long before thou wilt repent again,
And crave Death's mercy-stroke? Forget thou not
Because a sudden gleam hath touched the world,
That 'tis but lightning, born of the storm itself,
And for a moment only cleaves the gloom
That deepens round us. Canst thou still endure
To grope in darkness, doubtful of the end,
With but a voice to guide thy faltering feet?
Lancelot. My Queen--let storm-clouds gather as they will
Why should we stay to brave them? Far away
Lies Joyous Gard: there sleeps the windless sky,
There dreams the sunlit summer of our life.
Come, let us seek it: art thou silent still?
Why are thine eyes so rapt and so forlorn,
My Guinevere?
Guinevere. Oh! Lancelot, call me not
By a false name: since I am Guinevere
I am not thine: if I were thine indeed
I were myself no more: which would'st thou have me,
Thine, or the woman thou hast known and loved?
Lancelot. Nay, being mine thou shalt be most thyself.
How could'st thou truly live, when all these years
Thy will hath been another's? Not a rose
In all the forest comes to bud and bloom
--Her veriest life and being--till she 'scapes
The cold embrace of earth, and stretches forth
Free arms to the free air. I offer thee
--Nay, on my knees I humbly pray thee take--
The life thou owest to thy truer self,
The life thy soul desireth.
Guinevere. Lancelot! Lancelot!
I am the king's--nay, hear me to the end,
I know thy thought--'tis true I was a child,
'Tis true that with a child's consent I gave
I knew not what, for that I did not need:
Yet did I pledge my troth; and therewithal
Took in return a true man's single faith,
And in my keeping ever since have held
His welfare and his peace.
Lancelot. The bargain's nought!
'Twas blindfold: no man's bound by such a pact.
He, when he made it, thereby made it void
And took thee at his peril.
Guinevere. Yet am I bound,
Not by my promise, if thou wilt, but still
By that which followed: how can I escape
The memory of his bounty?
Lancelot. Oh, bethink thee,
Hast thou not said even now, he gave thee nought
But that thou did'st not need?
Guinevere. Ah! but he gave!
And I accepted gladly: day by day,
Year after year, I have taken countless gifts--
His throne, the splendour of his name, a life
All-honoured, all-befriended and secure,
The constant service of his silent care,
And, greater still, to share his kingly thought
For the land's weal: thou canst not say that these,
These that I took, and learned at last to need,
Deserve no payment.
Lancelot. They were more than paid
By grace of mere acceptance: thou hast given
Day after day, thou say'st, and year by year,
Gold for his silver--
Guinevere. Lancelot, if 'twere so,
Yet is there more between the king and me
Than such exchange can ransom: when we wedded,
Ay, from the day when first he saw my face
And shrined it in his thought, he has kept for me
In sacred dedication, the one gift
That none can offer twice, the crown of love,
The undivided faith of body and soul.
Thou'rt silent--nay, I love thee but the more;
Some challenges no man may answer to
And not be tarnished. Oh! my peerless knight
Enforce my will with thine, and we'll contest
This praise with Arthur: Love's a noble name,
But Faith's a nobler: how can thou and I
Endure to lack it? What! Shall he be pure
And Guinevere break troth? Shall he be strong
And Lancelot falter? Nay, while Arthur's king,
King of himself, no less will I be queen,
And thou, his prince of comrades.
Lancelot. Ha! by my life
There's more of knighthood in a woman's heart
Than the Round Table musters! Thou hast wrought
Passion itself to such a generous heat
That Love for Love's sake hath surrendered him
Exulting into thrall.
Guinevere. There Lancelot spoke!
There rang the flawless shield! O lover mine,
Since we must part, I bless thee for the word
That makes the parting easier! Fare thee well:
I have crowned thee twice to-day: let me not live
To see thee less victorious.
Lancelot. Fear it not!
My thought is as thy thought, and all my mind
Set to the measure of thy will. Farewell!
[ He goes out and ENID returns.
Enid. Oh, do not weep! What is it? rest you here.
Was it so hard then?
Guinevere. Hard? Oh Enid! Enid!

ACT II .

SCENE I.
Camelot: a terrace below the Great Hall. MORDRED alone. AGRAVAINE enters presently through a gateway, but is at first unseen.

Mordred. It shall be! it shall be! but this waiting
Will fret my heart-strings through!
Agravaine (aside). Ha! my brother Mordred,
Making confession to himself--and me.
[ He withdraws under the gateway.
Pity the sinner's young, and bears a shield
So unbesmirched: I might have gathered else
Something of import.
[ A silence. ]
Well, if that's the sum,
'Tis time for absolution.
[ He steps forward.
(Aloud) How now, Mordred?
Alone, man? Yet I thought a moment since
I heard the sound of voices.
Mordred. Ay, very likely.
Voices there were, but all of them were mine.
I am a very tumult, Agravaine,
Of clamorous voices: Youth and Youth's desires,
Hope and ambition and indignant strength
Cry from within me, "How shall life be life
Thus thwarted and fore-ordered?"
Agravaine. "Thus?" If I take thee
There's treason there.
Mordred. What then? to tyrants' ears
Truth may be treason.
Agravaine. Well, 'tis truth; we are
Somewhat--o'er-harnessed--with these vows of ours;
He's wise who takes discretion when there's need,
Softly to slip or break them.
Mordred. Break? Never!
I would destroy them!
Agravaine. Well, destroy or break,
There's but the difference of a word between us.
Mordred. Not so! not so! for what thou counsellest
I deem dishonour--misconceive me not
As censuring thee--I know thy words were born
Of tenderness towards my suspected fault,
Not of self-sparing baseness--but these vows
These laws of the Table Round--themselves indeed
Enjoining nought of act or abstinence
That is not noble and most justly dear
To the soul of knighthood--in despite of that
Are by their mere existence tyrannous,
Unnatural, hateful!
Agravaine. I long have held them hateful,
But have not bent so keen a glance as thine
To spy the wherefore.
Mordred. Wherefore? Is it not plain?
Life's not a mummer's dance, that we should walk it
Stiffly composed and following one by one
The same set figure: 'tis most orderly
When ordered least, and only then secure
From waywardness when each man's acts are flowers
Of his own rooted will.
Agravaine. Certes, my brother,
If thou wert gardener here, the Court would yield
A pretty posy--of somewhat diverse hues!
Mordred. There, Agravaine, thou speak'st the common word
Of priests and princes: but I will not hear it:--
Look wide into the world, and mark how nature
Guides every living thing, and never one
But keeps the age-long customs of his kind
By inborn virtue: is it to be believed
That men alone come of a lawless stock
And know not their own good? No! cease to warp
Their free intent by covenant or command
And thou shalt see them spring like forest trees,
Straight, tall, and comely.
Agravaine. Woodman and gardener too!
But come, thou'rt in the right, I'll not dispute:
Men are alike--all human, at the best.
Mordred. Nay, at the worst.
Agravaine. So be it, at the worst.
We are agreed: what then?
Mordred. Why then, would to God
All Camelot, all Britain, all the world
Were of one mind with us!
Agravaine. Ay, but they are not:
And casting nets too wide is like to mean
Drawing them empty: Britain and the world
Are nought to thee: bethink thee, man, 'tis here
Thou standest, here amidst of Arthur's Court,
Standest alone against the general voice
And the king's ordinance.
Mordred. Ha! the general voice!
I have ever noted that what all men say
Few think, and fewer still have thought upon.
Mine is a reasoned faith, and soon or late
They'll hear and hold it.
Agravaine. Some might come to hold it
If they would hear: but I have warned thee, Mordred,
Thy faith is treason.
Mordred. It shall not be for long.
I will be wary, and begin to speak
With none but such as owe me some regard:
My brothers first: our kindred: here and there
A trusted comrade; so by one and one
I'll build myself a secret fellowship
That may defy impeachment: what is treason
Muttered by one mouth, earns another name
When many shout it.
Agravaine. True: then 'tis called rebellion.
Mordred. I care not if it were: since time began
Freedom hath been rebellion.
Agravaine. Since our time began
The end of treason hath been banishment,
And of rebellion, death.
Mordred. For me, neither!
Some may betray my counsel, some turn back
When battle's joined, but tide what will betide,
No man may judge me, save the king himself.
Agravaine. Judgment enough,God wot!
Mordred. Yea, for all men else:
But I and mine stand not within his doom.
Agravaine. Prithee how's that?
Mordred. I will not tell thee now.
Agravaine. No! nor this year, nor this hundred years!
So 'tis with youth--some slight indulgence given,
He struts on air, and thinks to stand henceforth
Above the law: 'tis a vain confidence,
And will undo thee.
Mordred. Now on my knightly honour
I swear it is not vain!
Agravaine. I'll trust my life
To no man's knightly honour: mark thou!--if I
If we, thy kindred, band ourselves with thee
To challenge odds, and ride a desperate tilt
Against unblunted spears, we must be told,
In the last peril, what's this vaunted ransom
Of price beyond refusal, to buy back
Our forfeit lives.
Mordred. Thou know'st our House of Orkney
Shares the blood of Pendragon--
Agravaine. Out! child, out!
Back to thy toys! meddle no more with men.
Mordred. I will not so be scorned--
Agravaine. Our House of Orkney!
Blood of Pendragon! Why, wert thou Arthur's son--
Mordred. I am Arthur's son!
[ A silence. ]
Agravaine. Thou! who hath told thee so?
Mordred. My mother.
Agravaine. What mother?
Mordred. Nay, I would not would thee--
She is mine too, remember.
Agravaine. Tush! she's woman,
And woman's frail, and frailty courts reproach.
Who spoke of blame? But hear me tell thee, Mordred,
Thou hast devised this infamous report,
Coveting lordship--thou the last and least--
Over thine elder brethren.
Mordred. Get thee to Orkney,
And ask of Morgance, if thou dar'st, the name
Of Mordred's father!
Agravaine. Nay, my dearest brother,
I did but try thee, for thy news was sudden
And full of wonder; trust me I doubt thee not;
There's Arthur in thy face. We'll speak of this
With Gaheris and Gawaine: Gareth too:
We are all thy brethren still; we'll bear aloft
The banner of thy right, and stand hereafter
Four-square about thy throne, to lift from thee
The weight of kingship.
Mordred. For thy good will I thank thee.
Yet I could almost wish--but thou'lt be close--
We'll have more conference: for an hour or twain
I am promised now: meanwhile speak not with any
Till after counsel taken.
[MORDRED goes out.
Agravaine. Nothing of import!
Fool! to forget that even sinless youth
May be a sin incarnate, damned from birth
With him that fathered it.

ACT II .

SCENE II.
The Great Hall at Camelot. ARTHUR, GUINEVERE, and the Round Table assembled, except GAWAINE and PELLEAS.

Arthur. Is it not hard on noon? I thought to-day
Should bring us messengers from Constantine.
Kay. Sir, they are come, and will be present here
In briefest space.
Bedivere. My lord, you did command me
To stir your memory touching certain plaints
From the South Marches.
Arthur. Say on, Bedivere,
What time is left we grant thee.
PELLEAS enters hastily.
Pelleas. Where is the king?
Justice! the king's justice on a traitor!
Vengeance sudden and sharp! or give my sword
Into my hand again!
Lancelot. Pelleas?
Kay. What noise is this,
And whence these manners, sirrah? The king but now
Hath opened conference with Sir Bedivere:
Wait thou thy turn.
Pelleas. (To ARTHUR.) Oh! bid me not wait, my lord,
I cannot, I have been waiting all these years--
Since daybreak--yea! since daybreak!
Lancelot. Alas! he is mad.
I pray you, sir, forbear him.
[ He speaks with PELLEAS aside.
Guinevere. Oh! call not madness
This anguish of the heart that forces grief
From lips unwitting! I beseech you, sir,
Let not the poison longer work in him,
Lest he be mad in truth. Sir Bedivere,
As thou art courteous, stand not on thy rights--
Yield him thy place.
Bedivere. Madam, with all my heart,
So that the king forbid not.
Arthur. To-morrow then
We'll hear thee, Bedivere, nor shall thy cause
Lose by delay.
Come, Pelleas, stand thou forth.
What is the justice thou hast claimed of us?
Who is it hath wronged thee?
Nay, I hear thee not:
Thy lips move without sound: fear not to name
Thy foe: if there be justice under heaven
So that thy quarrel's righteous, thou shalt find it.
Pelleas. Gawaine! Gawaine! My lord, I slew him not,
He's of the Table Round--oh, traitorous heart!
All vows together broken!
Mordred. Gawaine? Thou darest--
My lord, hear not this madman.
Arthur. Silence, Mordred.
This must be heard.
Sir Pelleas of the Isles,
Remember where thou standest; with what vows
Bound to our order, and to this thy foe:
Weigh well thy words, and even as thou hopest
To answer thine accuser at the Doom,
Now without malice or addition bring
Thy charge against thy fellow.
Pelleas. Nay, my lord,
Indeed this passion that hath marred my speech
Knows nought of malice: nor could very malice
Devise addition here.
I think 'tis known
Of all men present, how that many a day
I loved and wooed a lady passing fair,
With unrequited service.
Guinevere. Yea, Sir Pelleas,
And there's no gentle heart in Camelot
But wished thee speed, and held her all too proud
To scorn such honour.
Pelleas. Ah! madam, of gentle hearts
Yours is the queen, and well may speak for such.
But hers was hard: she took my one poor gift,
--My prize of tourney--tossed it to her squires,
Mocked my despair, and parted from the Court.
I following to her castle found the gates
Thrice barred against me, that I might not gain
Even her disdainful presence. Then there came
This Gawaine: heard my tale, and lightly laughed,
"I know this kind," he said, "Lend me thine arms,
I'll say I conquered thee, and once within
I'll draw her on to pity, thence to love thee,
And with the second morning, come again
To bring thee to thy triumph."
Oh! I was fooled!
I clutched the shadow of hope, gave him my arms
--Save my sword only--hid me, and watched him forth.
He passed; I heard him parley at the gates,
And the bridge ring beneath him: since that hour
I have heard no more his footfall or his voice.
Mordred. Why this is nought!
Arthur. Let be!--Sir Pelleas,
Thus far thou hast but justified thy pain,
Not thy impeachment: nothing there is shown
Against Sir Gawaine's honour.
Pelleas. Sir, hear to the end.
Day passed, and night: the second day came round,
The day of promise: I waited hour by hour:
He came not: yet I waited: evening fell:
I waited still: at midnight, being on fire,
I wandered to those gates, and found them wide,
The courtyard empty, all the castle dark,
Its chambers void: a garden lay beyond
Wherein were three pavilions--Ah! my lord
I cannot tell the end!
Lancelot. Sir, give me leave,
He hath told it in mine ear: he found them there
In sleep together, pride by treachery:
So turned and left them, turned and came again
And found them sleeping, and in his heart he longed
To slay them both: yet would not so destroy
The High Order of Knighthood as to strike
A sleeping man,--no! though he came on him
At the very midnight of his thievish lust.
This is the end--he laid his naked sword
Athwart their throats, and left them there to sleep
Unto a dawn of shame.
[ A silence. ]
Guinevere. Sir, will you not
Give him such instant comfort as you may?
Arthur. I will do justice.
Mordred. My lord, my brother Gawaine
Being absent, cannot dash this slander down
As yet he will: but even now the tale
Shows like a rotten garment backed and pieced
With unmatched colours: marked you Gawaine here
Proffering a service no man ever owed
To his most cherished friend, here rendering less
Than his mere duty to a comrade:--now
He founds deliberate schemes of deepest craft
On chance, and wayward impulse; now, supine
At the very moment of foreseen pusuit,
He bares in guilty sleep his forfeit life
To the stroke of vengeance!
Who can justly weigh
What an eavesdropper sees through eyes inflamed
With starved and jealous passion? 'Tis well said,
Suspicion, like the prowling beasts of prey,
Sees most in darkness.
Arthur. Mordred, envenom not
With angry countercharge this sore debate.
Start not: I know thee full of knightly pride
And high-strung courage, and I praise in hee
The love thou bear'st thy brother: yet by hot words
Thou wrong'st a cause that only truth can save,
And not defiance.
Pelleas. What should he make with truth?
Where is my sword? Never before came truth
So near his traitor's throat!
Lancelot. Peace, friend! hear the king.
Arthur. For thee too, Pelleas, it were wiselier done
To leave with us thy quarrel: the third day hence
Thou shalt be heard again, and face to face
Challenge Sir Gawaine to the proof, nor lack
Thine utmost right. 'Tis true thou dost accuse
One who is kin, and hath been friend, to us,
And for our Order's sake his spotless fame
Is dear past utterance--yet stablish half
Of this thy charge, and by my kingly faith
And honour of knighthood, I will cast him forth
To herd among his kind, and feed on husks
In the outer desert of brute heathendom.

ACT II .

SCENE III.
       Camelot. The King's Chamber. ARTHUR, KAY.

Arthur. What would'st thou, Kay, with me?
Kay. Your pardon, sir,
I would not vex your study, but yourself
Gave me command to bring young Mordred hither;
He hath been pleased to come, and for the time
Awaits your summons.
Arthur. 'Tis well: bid him within.
And leave us, Kay; I know thou lov'st him not.
Kay. Nay, sir, indeed, my quarrel's not with him,
But with his youth: as though the world were made
For boys to whip their toys in!
Arthur. Well, no matter now.
[KAY goes out: ARTHUR leans his head on his hand.
Enter MORDRED.
Mordred. Sir, I am here.
Arthur (looking up). Mordred, that which I must speak
I have pondered long: remember if with pain
Thou hearest it, I too have borne this grief,
And bear it twice in wounding thine and thee.
Gawaine hath been with me.
Mordred. Sir, I perceive
He has not prospered: let me then be bold
To plead for him; to urge his old repute,
His tried obedience and untarnished faith,
Such as when Justice holds the balance, must
Bear weight, and fling the oaths of unproved men
High to the beam.
Arthur. Nay, Mordred, I would not have it
That Gawaine's word should fail of due account
By a straw's reckoning: more, I have cast therewith
The makeweight of my trust: but voice on voice
Of unbought witness heaps the opposing scale
So that no arm of friendship or of faith
Can lift it longer.
Mordred. What witness and what voices?
Arthur. The holy prior, whose woodland cloister gave
Sir Pelleas lodging, unto whom he bared
His nest of hopes yet warm with fluttering life:
The folk of yonder castle, dames and squires
Who saw that shameful wooing: my own knights
Who summoned Gawaine forth and bore him hither
Still dight in Pelleas' armour, blazoned still
With Pelleas' colours--all in fatal sequence
Tell forth one tale.
Mordred. A truncheon for their tale!
Why, fifty such would splinter in the shock
Of Gawaine's full denial!
Arthur. I would to Heaven
He had denied: he gave me never once
A forthright "nay," but foiled me warily
With question parrying question. No! past hope
He is guilty--guilty--and to-morrow's noon
Must hear the word that bans him.
Mordred (with a violent gesture). Must?
Arthur. 'Twas for this
I called thee hither: tho' his sin be gross
And but to think on it my indignant heart
Hisses and glows fire-hardened--yet I cannot
Endure to watch with just relentless eyes
My sentence branding shame into his face
Upturned to mine.
Mordred. Well?
Arthur. Mordred, as thou art liege
To me the king, and lov'st thy brother still,
See that to-morrow find him fled, beyond
The sight and voice of justice: if he have sinned
Is it not enough to suffer lifelong death?
Mordred. If he have sinned! but that is yet to be prove.
There's nought in all their witness: nought in the lack
Of clear denial: not the act itself,
But the act mistimed, mismannered, or misaimed,
Makes up the crime: let all be granted true,
True that he promised, true that he set forth
To woo in Pelleas' colours, true that he won
The lady for himself; is that to say
He promised not in faith, or set not forth
With honour?--laboured not till hope was past
In Pelleas' cause, before he urged his own?
Was not this prize a prize for all the world,
Not Pelleas only? Nay, for all the world
Save Pelleas only! And shall he claim to keep
From all men else that which himself must lack,
Or failing, cry for vengeance?
Arthur. I too have leaned
Upon that reed, and found it all too frail.
What though it were not, what though Pelleas' wrongs
Vanish in merest envy, there remains
A blacker treason: he hath sold himself,
Betrayed a woman's trust, and broke the chier
Of the high vows wherewith we sought to bind
This kingdom's weakness into sheaves of strength:--
The vow of a chaste life.
Mordred. Never word of mine
Glance lightly on that sin! Yet so the more
Do I esteem it far beyond the force
Of vows to conquer. If I could believe
--What I'll deny till seeing strike me dumb--
That Gawaine so hath fallen, then, even then,
I would entreat you leave him to the voice
Of his own soul, that shall require of him
Her murdered peace.
Arthur. Alas! I must believe;
God knows how sadly!--and for all my will
To pardon Gawaine for our kinship's sake
And the old-time love between us, I am the king,
And dare not in my kingly office fail
The common welfare.
Mordred. I am not driven to plead
Against the common welfare: Gawaine's cause
Is but of private note, entangling none
Beside himself and Pelleas.
Arthur. I would it were so,
But such a challenge cried in open hall
Rings ever loud and louder, till the realm
Through every fibre of its corporate life
Aches with the scandal.
No! my mind is fixed.
I have heard thee, Mordred, with an ear that longed
To bear persuasion's message: none hath reached
The inner chamber where my conscience waits
Enthroned in steadfast anguish. Leave me now:
Let this vain striving end.
Mordred. By the light of heaven!
And I will end it! There's a shaft unsped
Within my quiver yet, that shall not miss
To cleave this coil; though, save for life and death,
I had not drawn it. Scandal? Wit you well
The doom that falls on Gawaine shall not spare
With the same stroke to hurl a greater name
In more tremendous ruin!
Arthur. Hold! thy words
Are wild, without respect: for thy grief's sake
They shall not be remembered.
Mordred. Forgive my speech
If it have slipped beneath so great a load.
I rave not: hear me: Gawaine's called unchaste,
But what far fouler name shall hiss the deed
Of him that, honouring not his chosen bride,
Held it not shame to rob his kinsman's crown
Of its most treasured splendour?
Arthur. Now in good truth
But thou dost rave.
Mordred. Then I am not the first
Hath raved so--in good truth--nor yet the last
That--in good truth--shall reckon Gawaine's fault
White to the blackness of the hand that smites him.
[ He points to Arthur's hand.
Arthur. Blackness? I know not how thou darest--
[ A pause. ]
Nay!
Enough! I will no longer fence with thee
In this false twilight: thou hast struck thy point
Upon my lifes one flaw: I do confess it.
What then? What then? Shall I not have my will?
Not dare do justice? Why, in all my days
No man, no thing, no thought hath yet prevailed
To turn me from my path, and dost thou hope
To bear me backward with thy stripling hand?
Mordred. Nay, I have done with hoping: by your leave
I'll quit you now.
[ He turns as if to go.
Arthur. Stay, Mordred: wherefore this haste?
I fear we are not yet so wholly at one,
As my endeavour purposed.
Mordred. Indeed, I think,
We are agreed: I pray you let me go.
Arthur. Whither?
Mordred. To Gawaine, first.
Arthur. Well, as thou wilt.
But in thy counsels be deliberate still:
Let him not part to-night.
Mordred. No, not to-night.
[ He goes out.

ACT II .

SCENE IV.
Camelot: a guard-room at night. AGRAVAINE in the outer chamber alone: guard within.

Enter Lancelot with Bedivere.
Lancelot. What said the king to Mordred?
Bedivere. I heard not that.
Here's Agravaine; if it be known to any
He'll surely tell us.
Lancelot. Nay, do not trouble him:
Gawaine's his brother still; I could not bear
To gain the tidings of our rich content
From him that's beggared by it. Yonder's the guard,
We'll gather something.
[ They pass in and speak with the guard.
Agravaine (looking after them). Lancelot! I heard enough,
I know his errand! Unbred cock of the yard!
He would be sure his foes are maimed and spurless
Before he crows his spite. Ha! for this once
We'll pluck some of his plumage!
LANCELOT and BEDIVERE return.
Lancelot. Still with the king?
I marvel wherefore. Let us walk without
And shortly come again.
Bedivere. That would I gladly,
But the time fails me; I am called elsewhere.
[ They go out.
Enter MORDRED from within.
Agravaine. Mordred! at last!
( Coming quickly to meet him. ) The issue, man, the issue?
Mordred. Nought hath been promised: I have told the king
That Gawaine's innocent.
Agravaine. What! no more?
Mordred. Be patient.
He would not be convinced.
Agravaine. Ha! ha!
Mordred. ' I granted him
Some part of the accusation, and besought
That Gawaine's sin might only be avenged
By Gawaine's conscience.
Agravaine. Oh! prate no more of Gawaine,
What of thy secret, man? How sped thy threat?
Is it true? Was Arthur shaken? Have we found
A gag to stifle judgment in his throat?
Mordred. Be not so violent, Agravaine; thy spirit,
For all it runs the self-same way with mine,
Jostles and jars me still. I'll answer all,
So thou'lt but listen. Arthur's not the man
To stoop his pride beneath an outright threat;
Nor did the occasion call me to declare
The secret of my birth.
Agravaine. What! thou hast not threatened?
Thou hast not told him?
Mordred. Patience! that's for a time
When all our lives hang clutching at the brink
Of the last sheer abyss; it was not needed
To stay one foot from exile. Never doubt
I told enough; beneath my visor'd helm
The king hath seen the face of buried sin
Glaring with dreadful eyes.
Agravaine. If thou hast told so much
Thou hast told him all: 'tis but a step from this
To stumble on thy birth.
Mordred. Nay, but he's barred
From that one step: my mother sent him word
Long since, his child was lost on stormy seas.
Agravaine. Well, we shall see.
Mordred. Ay, to-morrow thou shalt see
I have won the game with half my stake in hand,
And threefold profit added--Gawaine saved,
The king half mastered, and my kindred all
Bound to my cause.
Only--I grieve to war
With Lancelot: out of all to cross the one
Most knightly and most noble.
Agravaine. Most sure, thou meanest,
To prop the tottering king against our thrust.
Mordred. For that, too, I am sorry.
Agravaine. What say'st thou then,
Can we not cleave between their sundered feet
Some gulf of mortal hatred? There's a name
We know--that both--
Mordred. Silence! I know it not!
But this I know, that carrion-baited snares
Trap not the sunward eagle.
Agravaine. Hist! who comes here?
Lancelot again? This time we've news for him.
Whither now, Mordred?
Mordred. I cannot stay to seem
Insolent, heartless: prithee come thou too.
Agravaine. But one word and I'll follow.
MORDRED goes out: LANCELOT re-enters alone.
Agravaine (greeting LANCELOT). I perceive
Sir Lancelot comes to glean what's cast abroad
Of the king's purpose.
Lancelot. I know, Sir Agravaine,
Where thine affection's pledged, and so the more
Esteem thy greeting courteous: be sure
Were not this matter sharp with two-edged pain
I would not part so soon. Good-night.
Agravaine. Stay, Sir Lancelot!
The worst I fain would spare thee; that's to hear
Ill news from lips indifferent or unkind.
Grief loves a sudden onset; be forewarned
Against his ambush, front thy heart with steel,
And--thank the friend that warned thee.
Lancelot. What! Is there more
Than Pelleas told me?
Agravaine. Ay, there is more indeed,
And harsher for thy hearing. Gawaine's guilty;
So much is old: to-morrow thou shalt learn
That Gawaine's free: but as thou lovest peace
Ask me not wherefore.
Lancelot. Guilty, thou say'st, and free?
Then Pelleas hath forgiven? Oh! that's to gain
More than revenge!
Agravaine. Nay! that Pelleas may forgive
We all must hope: but that's no matter here.
The king will pardon Gawaine.
Lancelot. Now God forbid!
I am not hard, but oft 'tis giant Injustice
That, crouched in Mercy's cloak, robs all the world
To spare one lawful debt.
Agravaine. I am Gawaine's brother:
What saves him must content me: yet in truth
Even I could wish the well-spring of this grace
Were something purer.
Lancelot. I cannot grasp thy clue;
Prithee, be plainer yet.
Agravaine. Then I must utter
What a less generous hearer might impeach
For sland'rous treason.
Lancelot. Hold! I have no right to hear
What's perilous in the speaking.
Agravaine. Nay, tis thy right
If but for Pelleas' sake: but thou'lt withhold it
From all the Table Round?
Lancelot. Ay.
Agravaine. How to begin
So black a tale! Thou knowest we are not wont
To hate whom we resemble, nor to chide
The act whose common use ourselves pursue?
So 'tis with Arthur.
Lancelot. I hope thou dost not dare
To jest with me! What's thy excuse to link
the king with Gawaine?
Agravaine. Merely that their deeds
Are much alike: as like as brothers are.
But Arthur's is the elder, and, to choose,
The far more hideous.
Lancelot (suddenly). Aha! "While Arthur's king--
King of himself--so long--oh! we'll contest
This praise with Arthur."--Out, it is not true!
Where is the proof?
Agravaine. Thou hast seen within the hour,
And even where thou stand'st, the living proof.
Lancelot. Mordred?
Agravaine. The son of Arthur, and the son
Of Morgance, Queen of Orkney.
Lancelot. Oh! I am rent!
God help us all! Can it be true?
Agravaine. Thou doubtest?
To-morrow shall persuade thee: if thou hear'st
True judgment portioned out in yonder hall
To Gawaine's treason, then cry out upon me
There, before all: but if the king shall find
Some dark and twisted bye-way to avoid
The path of Justice, thou shalt own me right,
And, doubtless, grieve as I do.
So, good-night.
[ He goes out.
Lancelot. To-morrow?
God in Heaven!
Ah! Guinevere!

ACT II .

SCENE V.
    Camelot: the Great Hall. Enter GUINEVERE and ENID.

Guinevere. At last! at last!
But, Enid, what should this mean?
The hall is empty: have we missed the hour
Or is there some fresh order?
Enid. Nay, madam, I think
We are not here in fault; 'tis Time himself
Hath broken tryst: when did his laggard flight
Keep pace with beating hearts?
Guinevere. Why should my heart beat
More than another's? What have I to do
With Gawaine and his sentence?
Enid. Why,surely--surely--
Sir Pelleas--
Guinevere. Well, Sir Pelleas--?
Enid. He hath been wronged;
He is loved of all: besides, his cause is seen
To be Sir Lancelot's own.
Guinevere. Is it so? In faith
Whose should it be? Lancelot's? I would it were
And fear it is not--or I fear it should be
And would it were not.
Have I not had good game
At thy bewilderment!
Oh! what am I saying,
Why come they not?
Enid. Hush! they are here!
Enter Lancelot.
Guinevere. Not now!
Lancelot, not now! I pray thee, not one word,
Or I shall hate thee as I hate the rest.
Where is the king?
Lancelot. I know not, 'tis scarcely yet
The hour appointed.
Guinevere. Lancelot, I am distraught,
I know not dream from daylight. Was it in sleep
I heard the king's voice, sharp with agony
Outcrying, "I have slain her," and thy voice
That echoed, "I have slain her; yea, and I
Have sunk her, earth in earth?"
Lancelot. Dearest lady mine,
Forget these midnight fears: here are no voices
But one high fluttering song that greets the dawn.
Is not the past well buried?
Guinevere. I thought it so
A short hour since: that, too, was while I dreamed:
Now I am waking.
Lancelot. Ay, waking to find
Thy best dreams true.
Guinevere. No, lull me not with hope,
Let me have truth and rue it. What's their tale
Of Arthur's guilt? The yelp of Gawaine's pack
That see the lash descending! What's thy promise
Of love and freedom? Gold from fairyland,
Scattered at sunrise with the whirling leaves!
Lancelot. How canst thou say so? Let me tell thee again
Even as I heard it--
Guinevere. No! no! tell me nought
But how to win back peace, and the old dull pain
That I had learned to live with. Let me go
Before my strength break!
Lancelot. Guinevere! dear heart,
'Tis but an hour, one hour. Ha! they are coming!
PELLEAS and other Knights enter.
Madam, your siege is here; if it please your Grace,
I'll bring you to it.
Pelleas. Lancelot! Lancelot! Stay!
A word in haste!
Lancelot. Forgive me, seest thou not
Another service claims me?
Guinevere(aside to LANCELOT). Ah! thou'rt cruel.
Go back to him.
Lancelot. I cannot: though my tongue
Bade him good-speed, mine eyes would rede him death.
I am base enough, God knows I am base enough!
But I am not yet practised.
Enter Gawaine with Mordred and Agravaine;
then Gareth, Lamorak, Geraint, and others. A great bell
strikes twelve. Silence follows.
Gawaine (loudly). Where is the king?
Geraint (aside). Mark that!
Lamorak. Ay, the snake dies hissing; but he dies.
Geraint. I am not sure: there's something in that voice
Chimes not with mere defiance.
Lamorak. Why, where hast thou been
These two good days? 'Tis proved upon him, proved
Past doubt or dispensation.
Herald. Silence! The King!
Enter ARTHUR with KAY, BEDIVERE, and men-at-arms.
He takes his seat and looks moodily before him.
Arthur. It seems, Sir Pelleas--
Kay. Sir, were it not best
To follow ancient usage? Let the herald
Summon the accuser and accused.
Arthur. Kay! Kay!
What's ancient usage to a heart on fire?
Well, have it so then!
Kay. Herald!
Herald. In the king's name,
Stand forth Sir Pelleas of the Isles! Stand forth
Sir Gawaine, Prince of Orkney!
Dost thou still,
Sir Pelleas, charge against thy fellow-knight
The crimes of treachery and unchastity?
Pelleas. Still? When a score of voices echo mine!
Still? Ay, then! Ay!
Herald. Sir Gawaine, thou hast heard.
What is thine answer?
Arthur. Hold! no more of this!
We have had Sir Gawaine's answer: he denies.
Kay. Yet for the form's sake--
Arthur. Is it for the form's sake
Thou'rt bent to thwart me, Kay? Gawaine denies.
Pelleas. That too was in his part. So be it, my lord;
But I have tendered witness.
Arthur. What, Sir Pelleas!
Art thou forgetful, or so newly come
Thou hast not yet been taught, that in this hall
The word of one man, one, so that he be
Knight of our Order, drowns the federate noise
Of all the crowd intruding?
Pelleas. But these were brought
By the king's own command--
Lamorak (aside). Pelleas, art thou mad?
Anger him not!
Pelleas. Nay, then; I'll urge but this:
Let the rest go; let his word bear it off
Against a hundred; yet, my lord, forget not
I too am knight, the fellow and the peer
Of all men now in presence.
Arthur. Well, sir, well!
What follows?
Guinevere. Sir, your pardon if I stay you
At an unfitting moment, but meseems
That's something tangled here, that a friend's hand,
Being cooler, might unravel.
Arthur. Madam, what friend?
Guinevere. I thought I saw--Sir Lancelot--
Lancelot. I thank your Grace,
If the king will--I know not--at a word
This is Sir Pelleas' drift--oath against oath
One knight is worth another.
Pelleas. God forbid!
I never said so.
Arthur. Wherefore, "God forbid"?
Dar'st thou dispute it?
Pelleas. Then, my lord, my wird
Should weigh no less than his.
Arthur. And Gawaine's word
No less than thine--Silence!--no less than thine,
And neither outweigh the other.
Geraint (aside). Mark, again!
Did I not tell thee so ? There's Pelleas lost
In a mere ambush. Were it not the king--
Lamorak. What, man, thou doubtest Arthur?
Arthur. Sirs, we have heard
Accuser and accused, our fellows both,
And both esteemed most noble. Against the honour
Of such as these, with us who know--
--who know their truth,
No witness from without may gain belief.
Nor here, where all are equal, may we dare
Set comrade above comrade. Lastly, our vows
Forbid that any knight should challenge other
With word or weapon. And the sum of all
Is this: that for the fame of chivalry
And the realm's peace, I do require you both,
Sir Pelleas and Sir Gawaine, from this hour,
In field and hall, in council and in quest,
To live in strait accordance: to which end
The cause of this your quarrel, being found
Too dark for judgment, shall be henceforth banned
From your lips and from all men's, under pain
Of life-long exile.
Pelleas. Shall--
Arthur (rising). Silence! I have said!
Kay, Bedivere, attend me!
[ARTHUR and his train go out: the KNIGHTS drawing
apart in silence. Then PELLEAS looks wildly round
and rushes from the hall.
Geraint (following). Come! Lamorak, Lancelot!
Lancelot. Nay, I am commanded.
Lamorak (bitterly). To hold thy peace! What more? Why so far forth
We are all commanded.
[GERAINT and LAMORAK go out. GARETH turns and
looks hard upon GAWAINE.
Gareth. Well, command or none,
I follow truth! [ He goes out.
Agravaine (mocking). As brothers most are wont!
Mordred. Peace! Agravaine.
Agravaine. Oh! my lord Mordred's here!
I had forgotten. Will it please your Grace
To grant us private audience? Gawaine, come,
Let us all away: we too will follow truth
--Since that's the phrase--but at convenient distance!
[ They go out, leaving GUINEVERE, ENID and LANCELOT.
GUINEVERE'S face is buried in her hands. ENID
looks at her, and moves towards the door. LANCELOT
comes nearer to GUINEVERE.
Lancelot. Wilt thou come, Guinevere?
Guinevere (rising suddenly). Yea! to the world's end.

ACT III .

SCENE I.

    Camelot: the Queen's Bower. LAUREL and LINET.
Linet. What, still unready, Laurel, not yet cloaked?
The horses will be waiting.
Laurel. Waiting for whom?
Not for us, Linet.
Linet. Truly, not for me!
Thou know'st me better; when the hunt is up
He must be early who's to wait for me.
But what's thy meaning?
Laurel. Hast thou not been told?
I heard an hour ago: 'tis brief enough--
Our service is not needed.
Linet. Ha! that's to say
We are supplanted: what's a promise worth
When favourites plead?
Laurel. Well, for this time thou'rt wrong:
If we must stay, so too must all the rest.
Linet. And Enid?
Laurel. Even Enid!
Linet. Then I'm content,
--Or half content--but prithee, what's her whim
To go two days abroad--two days and nights--
Without attendance? Or is he perchance
To take our places too?
Laurel. Truly none dare vouch
That lies not in the future! But to-day
There's no such pleasant news--merely her Grace
Is pleased to change her Grace's mind, and leave
The king to his own sport.
Linet. So that the king
May leave the queen hers: which is not his;
No, nor hath been this merry year and more!
Well, one man's loss, they say, is other's gain,
So none need lack for comfort.
Laurel. Thou'rt in wit,
Fair fall the day! I would some greater folk
Had half thy spirit, and something less than half
Their own chill humour.
Linet. Is she sighing still?
Where, Laurel?
Laurel. Within there, closeted with Enid
And that dull thing, thy sister.
Linet. Poor Lionors!
She was not always dull: I can remember
Before she wedded Gareth, how her blood
Danced to a quicker tune than well beseemed
A maiden's pulses; but the times are changed.
Laurel. Why so they are, for I remember too
It was thy hand, thy chaste considerate hand,
That locked the same young pair of crooning doves
So long in separate cages.
Linet. Alas! 'tis true,
In the old days I was cruel, but I trust
I have made atonement.
Laurel. If thou hast not yet,
Thou shalt; there's matter for thy charity
New come to hearing; worth the hearing too.
Iseult--Iseult of Cornwall--
Linet. Oh! I know it!
But tell me!
Laurel. I hear them coming.
Linet. Quick then, quick!
Oh! tell me, Laurel!
Laurel. Wait, and fare the better.
Help me in this: we'll hold a mirror up,
And startle eyes that only look to see
Another's picture. Ware! and mark her well!
Enter GUINEVERE.
Guinevere. Linet, hath Laurel told thee, we have thought
This late October-tide, for all its brightness,
Too cold to lie abroad in? It repents me
That you should lose what little pleasure comes
In the way of service; prompt me that I stay not
Long in your debt for this.
Linet. I thank you, madam.
[GUINEVERE sits musing, LAUREL signs to Linet.
Well, Laurel, thou hast made a grave beginning,
I scarce dare ask the end.
Laurel. No, no, not now.
We should be heard, and such heart-searching news
Is not for weary moments.
Linet. Shall we go out then?
Guinevere. No, do not: audience so gently asked
Should yet be granted, were I weary indeed;
As now I am not; this my mood is nought
But a faint pang of autumn at the heart:
Maybe thy tale will stir me.
Laurel. I think it will,
For this poor lady too was once a queen--
Iseult of Cornwall.
Guinevere. Once? Tell me not she is dead?
Laurel, not dead?
Laurel. Nay, nor is Tristram dead,
Save to his faith and greatness.
Guinevere. What hast thou heard?
Laurel. Is it not black? The king hath been betrayed
These many months, by his most valiant knight
And by his queen and wife.
Guinevere. No! no!
Laurel. The sequel proves
What hath been long suspected: all such tales
Have the same ending. He was taken at last,
[GUINEVERE makes a gesture of entreaty.
But broke his prison, and now they are fled by sea:
'Tis said, to Joyous Gard.
Guinevere. Oh! thou hast been told
A wild and cruel slander! Joyous Gard?
What shelter thinkest thou hath Joyous Gard
For such as they are?
Linet. Oh! Madam, wit you well
The castle's fair, and garnished for the need
Of the most noble, fit for Lancelot's self,--
Yea, even for a queen royal.
Guinevere. Ah! thou art young,
And thy light thought is bouyed above the deep
Where mine sinks anguished.
Enid! where is Enid?
Pray you, go call her.
[LAUREL goes out and returns immediately.
Laurel. Madam, the king desires to see your Grace.
Guinevere. The king? Where?
(aside) Let him not hear this news to-day.
Enter ARTHUR, BEDIVERE, and LANCELOT. LAUREL holds
aside the curtain of the door.
Arthur. Our thanks, fair lady.
Guinevere, I am come
To learn thy last resolve: if 'tis for staying,
To take my leave, but if thou'lt ride with us,
Then to entreat thee hasten, while the air
Still bears the softness of the noonday sun.
Shall it be so?
Guinevere. Indeed I would be excused:
The year grows late: I fear to lie afield.
But if 'tis urgent--
Arthur. Nay, I plead not that,
It was but for our pleasure. Well, I am sorry.
Since then we part, the merrier cheer be yours
Whilst we are roving.
Guinevere. The wish is kind, farewell.
[ARTHUR and BEDIVERE take leave, and go out, talking
with LAUREL and LINET. LANCELOT follows as far
as the door and then returns to GUINEVERE.
Lancelot. Oh! could'st thou think it? to-day of all fair
days?
Guinevere. Art thou not bounden to them?
Lancelot. Ay, for the going,
Not the returning: time's my own for that.
They mean no further journey for to-day
Than to the king's pavilion: four long hours
Should bring us thither, less than two will serve
For spurring home: I'll find some clear excuse
And be with thee by midnight.
Guinevere. Canst thou do it?
Is it not perilous, with the king so near?
Lancelot. Wherefore, dear heart? These fears of thine are new:
Ere now, he has been nearer.
Guinevere. I never told thee,
But oft before--'tis shame to be so weak--
When I have been most happy, and known myself
Twice safe with thee, I yet have felt the darkness
Pulsing around me with the hard-held breath
Of stealthy vengeance.
Lancelot. Dearest, thou'rt not thyself,
Thy present dread throws back upon the past
These vain and monstrous shadows. Could'st thou have trembled,
And I not know it?
Guinevere. Can I love thee, Lancelot,
And not forbode the end--yea! at all times,
And most when most I love thee?
Lancelot. Fear not the end,
At worst 'tis Joyous Gard.
Guinevere. Never! ah! never!
She lied to say it must!
Lancelot. Nay, be not distressed;
As my Queen will.
But I must part in haste.
Sweet, bear me in thy heart these tedious hours.
Guinevere. Farewell, beloved--and if it be not safe--
Lancelot--thou wilt not--
Lancelot. Dear Prudence, but I will!
I must be rash for both.
Come, let me go.
Why! thou'rt all cold and shivering!
Guinevere. Wherefore not?
'Tis long past summer.
Well, if it be time
I will not stay thee.
Lancelot. Farewell.
Guinevere. Bid Enid come.
Bid them all come.
[LANCELOT goes out.
I will not think of it.

ACT III .

SCENE II.
The King's Pavilion: on a moor: bright moonlight. ARTHUR, KAY, BEDIVERE, GERAINT, MORDRED, and others.

Arthur (standing apart and speaking half to himself).
'Tis wondrous light: I did not think the moon
Had waxed so near her greatest: how serene,
With what unquestioned sovranty she walks
Her wide aërial palace! The bright host
Of stars, her courtiers, blink their myriad eyes
Before her full calm gaze, and not a cloud
Dares with rebellious darkness to usurp
A hand's-breadth of her vast and tranquil realm.
Bedivere. The king is sad to-night; marked you his voice
At supper-time?
Geraint. Ay, and yet 'twas not one voice:
Sometimes it rose in scorn, sometimes it sank
Weighed low with hidden meaning: now and then
'Twas strangely gentle, as in times of grief
A grown man speaks with children, his own pain
Subdued to a great tenderness.
Bedivere. Finely noted!
That was the sound of it; and all unlike
Our old imperious Arthur.
Kay. Sirs, heed it not,
All men must have their humours; his will pass
With the first mot of the horn.
Geraint. Well, Heaven send it so,
And bless us from ill tidings!
Arthur (rousing himself). Come, my friends!
We should be elsewhere, dreaming of the game.
Once more, all's ready? Are the tufters come?
Geraint. Sir, two good hours ago, and kennelled yonder
Within a stone's throw.
Arthur. What says the harbourer?
Bedivere. I spoke with him even now: a hopeful rogue!
To hear him talk, the forest's all alive
With warrantable deer: bay, tray, and ten,
The meanest head among them!
Arthur. Good!
Mordred. 'Tis a fair wind,
Light, with a tingle of the frosty North.
Arthur. Yet 'twas a lowering sunset.
Mordred. Ay, but the clouds
Followed the sun and sank close after him.
Trust me, to-morrow we shall wake to a sky
As clear as this above us.
Arthur. So we'll hope.
Till then, God keep us!
All. Good-night, my lord.
Arthur. Good-night.
[ They go out, leaving the KING alone.
Arthur. I could not tell them: these two days at least
Are something saved from the relentless fangs
That gape to grip us. Two days! why, 'twill seem
An age of peace hereafter. There's nought I have,
But I would barter it to ride to-morrow
Free-hearted one more chase. Oh! Laurel, Laurel!
Why must she run to pour into mine ear
Such news red-hot? Did she not love him then,
--Tristram, whom all men loved?
Nay, she was right!
I'll hate him too. Thank God! he falls alone.
Enter KAY.
Kay. Sir, if I set aside your strict command
And come at this late hour to trouble you,
Be sure the cause is grave.
Arthur. Why, so am I:
The matter fits the time then.
Kay. Nay, sir, the matter
Is such as fits no moment in the life
Of an all-puissant king: so full it is
Of bold disorder.
Arthur. a! she has told thee, too?
What ails the woman, that with reckless hand
She spreads contagion broadcast?
Kay. Sir, 'twas no woman
But one of the rangers told me this even now,
And most discreetly, so that I am to seek
Whence your own knowledge comes.
Arthur. Thou'rt right: I perceive
Our thoughts have crossed: there's something more then: come!
I'll hear it.
Kay. Your pardon, sir, if I begin
To leave my resolution; at first indeed
I thought this could not wait: but now I am fearful
Seeing you wounded, lest another thrust
May hurt you past endurance.
Arthur. Delay does more!
Fear not, be short! always my strength rebounds
To front a second blow.
Kay. My judgment bows.
This is the dolorous tale then: yester-eve
Sir Lamorak, riding home towards Camelot,
Was in the forest yonder held to bay,
Half-armed and helpless, by three caitiff knights
Who pulled him from his horse, and bound him there
To bear their heaped reproaches. At the last
Each miscreant stabbed him with a several wound
And fled: the ranger found him, life and sense
Faint, but not wholly ebbed: stanched the last flow,
And for his ghostly comfort brought the priest
To shrive and housel him.
Arthur. Kay, hold me not strained
Upon the gradual rack of thy slow speech:
In one word, all!
Kay. Sir, at the hour of tierce
Sir Lamorak, after full confession made
And absolution taken, yielded up
His sinful spirit.
Arthur. Thou might'st have kept that word
For who deserve it. When they dared reproach him
--Lamorak--they dared no lesser villainy
Than when they stabbed his body. By what vile names
Shall they be infamous--so much he told
Before he parted?
Kay. No, he named them not,
But owned their quarrel righteous--he confessed
They were the kindred of a lady--one
Whose life he had corrupted.
Arthur (grasping KAY'S hand and turning away his face).
Kay, Kay, my father!
Go, pray for me. The living and the dead!
Go, stay not!
Kay. I feared that I was wrong to speak,
Yet the time presses: there is need of counsel,
And order to be taken.
Arthur. Order that none
Come near me! For thyself get thee to sleep.
[KAY goes out.
I cannot think; the freightage of my mind
Is tossed and broken on a shoreless flood
Of weltering passions. I have been betrayed
By those whom most I cherished. Came there not
Upon their hearts, even in that dark hour
Of faith's eclipse, some grace of memory,
Some tenderness up-smouldering at the last
On the old altars that we built long since
In life's most sacred places?
Oh! 'tis false!
They never loved me: I have been their scorn,
Humoured and duped. Lamorak, thou art a coward,
Thou durst not face my vengeance; thou hast forsaken
Thy fellow traitor!--ha! but Tristram--Tristram
Is mine! I'll fell him with a toppling stroke
Shall make this kingdom echo!
God pardon me!
I had forgot: the realm's in peril here,
While I sit brooding on the angry smart
Of my own wrongs. What must I do to stay
The creeping of this sin, that like a worm
Eats out the heart of every tallest shaft
Whereon my kingdom's pillared? One more snapped,
And Britain, like a palace undermined,
Crumbles to Chaos. Death! that I should crouch
Dully foreboding which of my high hopes
Shall fail me next--I that a year ago
Laughed in my heart "My days indeed must pass,
But I have built this Order, that shall keep
My purpose after me, and stand unshaken
Through all the changeful ages of the world."
Shall it not stand? Was it not well devised?
Will God not lend me counsel how to save
A thing so noble? If I knew but whence
This evil had its birth: the first to fall
Was Gawaine--I was weak--but no man guessed,
Or more than guessed, the fulness of his guilt:
None knew that Mordred forced me, none could know
With what fell weapon. No, beyond all doubt
The mischief sprang not thence: and long ago
I have forgiven Mordred.
Who dare say
It is not so? How should I not forgive
Whom I have found so passionately pure,
So swift to ring the armoured heel of scorn
On every creeping thought and the whole brood
Of venomed sayings?
Yet I have not plumbed
The secret of this Mordred. True he is,
High-minded, clean of heart: yet ever seems
To choose my way because it is his own
And not from sworn obedience.
'Tis strange,
But 'tis a thought that like an April cloud
Hath often chilled the sunshine of my mind
--Gone with a shiver--that till Mordred came--
No, no, I will not think it! How could he,
Whose only fault is too impetuous youth
And unripe counsel--folly! I must be
More weary than I knew. I'll pray awhile,
And sleep perchance thereafter: being but man
I dare not hope with blind and selfish cry
To turn aside the ordering of the world
From God's eternal purpose, yet I know
Something divine stirs in us while we pray,
Transforming thought to will.
[ He kneels.
Enter KAY and MORDRED hurriedly.
Kay. Back, sirrah, back!
Mordred. I will not.
Kay. There can be nothing
So grave to warrant--
Mordred. Warrant? there's that should bend
once for all.
( To ARTHUR, who has risen. ) Sir, a messenger
Is come from Camelot: spur never yet
Dripped red with direr haste: let me not tell it
If you can save me with a leap at truth.
Arthur. Whose messenger?
Mordred. My brother Agravaine's.
He came not with us; for some private cause
He had exchanged his turn, and keeps to-night
The inner guard of the palace.
[ He pauses.
Arthur. Make an end:
I am ready, Mordred.
Mordred. He hath sent me word
By his most trusted squire, who bears for token
This signet ring, that when the moon was high
Sir Lancelot came alone to Camelot,
And passed within the palace.
[ The King starts: MORDRED looks hard at him for
a space, and goes on.
Agravaine
Setting the watch at midnight, saw him there--
There--he returned not--even now perchance
He is there.
[ A silence. ]
Arthur (in a low voice). Where, Mordred?
Mordred. With the Queen.
[ A silence. ]
Arthur (quietly). Ay, let us go.
Farewell, Kay; if I have been harsh with thee,
I crave thy pardon: we will speak again
Of Lamorak's burying.
Kay. Sir, if you will
--God send you peace--to-morrow.
Arthur (half to himself). Ay, to-morrow.
That's in another life.
Kay. Pray you, forgive me,
I am an old man: I have served you long:
Put not such force upon your grief.
Arthur. My friend,
Thou hast misread me: I have striven to-night
With the dread angel of my destiny:
Henceforth I am halt for ever: but I know
That I shall save my people.
Mordred, come!

ACT IV .

SCENE I.
Open country near Almesbury. MORDRED alone; behind, squires and yeomen resting. Enter GAWAINE.

Mordred. Gawaine! already? But so far from folk
I knew thine errand hopeless.
Gawaine. A hundred times
It might have been so, but to-day by fortune
Here at the hand I chanced on all I sought
And something more.
Mordred. They have been seen then?
Gawaine. Where is the king?
Mordred. He was beside me but a moment since,
Pacing and pacing like a sentinel,
To keep his thoughts imprisoned.
Gawaine. Ay, when I parted
I saw how 'twas: the speed of this pursuit
Holds sorrow breathless: when the chase is stayed
He cannot choose but hear the instant voice
Of that which rides behind him.
Mordred. There thou'rt wide:
I do not think him so much grieved as eager,
At grip with strong resolves that will not wait
The time for utterance.
But let that pass,
Tell me thy news.
Gawaine. I scarce had gone a mile
Beyond the cross-roads, when I met a dwarf
Mounted upon a pack-mule.
Mordred. Oh! keep thy mule,
Pack, dwarf and all! be brief, man!
Gawaine. Well, well! to-day
At the hour of tierce a lady and two knights
Came to the nunnery at Almesbury
Not seven miles hence: Lancelot and Pelleas
(He all but told their names) tarried an hour
To break their fast and ease their lagging steeds,
Then took the forest southward: they're for France,
I'll warrant it: and when we see them next
Their faces will be turned this way, and backed
With a rare dust of onset.
Mordred. Then the queen--
Where is the queen?
Gawaine. Why there--in sanctuary--
Fordone with flight and terror, left to hang
Day in day out upon the altar steps,
Sighing for rescue.
Mordred. Rescue? Mercy of God!
And she shall have it! Are we not all her men,
Sworn to her service with the self-same oath
That made us Arthur's too?
Gawaine. Only so long
As to be hers was still to serve the king.
I am sorry for her, but the time has come
To choose our ways; no man can ride at once
Two roads cross-parted.
Mordred. Gawaine, they are not parted,
They must not be! Ay, wag thy tolerant head,
I say they shall not be! What's Camelot,
When the enchantment of that voice hath ceased
To haunt her chambers? Whom wilt thou call king,
When the four seas of heathendom break in
To beat our tottering bulwark into mounds
Of nameless ruin?
Gawaine. Arthur will rule his own
Without thy help or mine.
Mordred. Not without mine!
I am his son: I look to follow him,
And with my will no man--not Arthur's self--
Shall waste my heritage. There's Tristram gone,
And Lamorak, and the twelve that died last night
With Agravaine,--how think'st thou, is it a time
To whet revenge, and lop the last great branch
With all his leafage?
Gawaine. Ha! Pelleas and the like!
Mordred. Such like we scarce could match them, man for man;
Half the Round Table, and their vanward chief
No delicate ambler, but the sternest knight
Unto his mortal foe that ever yet
Put spear in rest.
Gawaine. Well, Heaven defend the weak!
Since we are the weak: for certes, mortal foes
To all that hold with Lancelot and the queen,
We are and must be
Mordred. Never!
Gawaine. Oh! Thou'rt dull to-day:
Loved I not Lancelot? When have I been heard
To blame the queen for choosing where she would?
Oft-times I warned these meddlers; they are the cause
Of their own death: I follow not revenge,
But kings are hard to oust; and last night's work
Forbids accordance.
Mordred. Then what last night hath done
To-night shall undo:--Gawaine, hear my plan,
A plan to end all well: she is there, thou sayest,
And Arthur knows not; let him not know yet;
So, the time's mine: and the place too is mine--
The abbey yonder--Kay and Bedivere
Have word to meet us there; till darkness fall
Their readiest speed cannot make good the tryst.
He must await them: there's the nick of fortune
Where the adventure dovetails with the wish.
I'll plot their meeting--Arthur and the queen--
For soft and pensive twilight: strange it were--
Now that the fever's passed and left her blood
To its noble rhythm--if she longed not
For silence and forgiveness; passing strange
If Arthur could deny her aught so asked
As she will ask it.
Gawaine. And Lancelot?
Mordred. Time enough:
First let me fly this pitch.
Gawaine. When thou hast stooped
And missed--
Mordred. Nay! miss I shall not: Gawaine, mark!
If--ah! if he should find it in his heart
To judge her where he hath not judged himself,
And to deny her fault that tenderness
His own more loudly cries for, I'll not stand
To see injustice done, and the fell grip
Of this old tyranny we swore to loose
Clenched tight and tighter on the aching throats
That ask but leave to breathe: I saved thee once
With half the truth; this time I'll venture all,
Ay! and win all!
Gawaine. Well, Mordred, go thy way.
Thou'rt a bold spirit: if the rest of us
Could match the sanguine colour of thy thoughts,
Perchance we too might come to govern kings,
And do the thing we would.
Mordred. Hist! yonder he comes.
Let us go meet him!
Remember, nought of the queen.

ACT IV .

SCENE II.
Almesbury: a chapel in the Nunnery. Within the screen the Nuns at evensong: among them GUINEVERE in white clothes and black: without, ARTHUR and MORDRED.

Nuns (chanting).
In covertendo Dominus captivitatem Sion;
Facti sumus sicut somniantes.
Tunc repletum est risu os nostrum;
Et lingua nostra exultatione.
Tunc dicebant inter gentes;
Magnificavit Dominus facere cum istis.
Magnificavit Dominus facere nobiscum:
Facti sumus læltantes.
Converte Domine captivitatem nostram;
Sicut rivos in Austro.
Qui seminant in lacrimis;
In exultatione metent.
Qui ambulans ibat et flebat,
Portans ad seminandum sementem:
Veniens veniet in exultatione,
Portans suos manipulos.
[The nuns go out: GUINEVERE is left kneeling before the
altar: ARTHUR and MORDRED in the ante-chapel.
Arthur (to himself). I heard a voice which sang
So sweetly that it seemed none earthly thing.
"He that now goeth weeping on his way
Shall come again: shall doubtless come with joy,
And bring"--Ah! fair sweet Father Jesu Christ!
If it might be!
Never, never again.
[MORDRED goes softly out unperceived: GUINEVERE rises
and comes through the screen towards ARTHUR.
Arthur. Thou, Guinevere?
Guinevere. Is it not to take me then
That you art come?
Arthur. I know not: I followed thee--
I thought--I cannot tell thee--
Guinevere. Be not at pains
To spare me truth: I know that I am judged;
Yea! but for shelter of this holy place
Doomed to the death by fire.
Arthur. That were the work
Of mere revenge: thou knowest me, thou knowest
That where love is, such anger and such dread
Find but a moment's foothold: seest thou not
My wrath is fallen? Let thy fears go with it
Into the dark abyss from which they sprang.
[ He pauses: she is silent.
Doubt not; thou'rt free.
Guinevere. Free! for the hope of that one word
I have given all, honour and peace and name?
And now--'tis but a word; a breath, a sound,
That with a barren echo mocks my cry.
Yea, and the very wish was a fool's wish,
I know it now; what passionate revolt,
What tears, what prayers, what fierce desire of life
Can wholly blot the past, or sear away
The memory of the soul? Not God Himself
Can make undone that which hath once been done.
Take back thy gift of freedom: were it all--
Nay, were it half of that for which I longed,
'Tis not for me: my just reward is death;
I have sinned the twofold sin of them that strive
To better wrong by wrong.
Arthur. Have I not said
True love desires not justice or revenge
But only this, to love and to forgive--
And to be loved again.
Ah! Guinevere!
Hast thou then never loved me? Have my years
Been but a dream, and thine a long-drawn lie?
Wilt thou not speak, wilt thou not give me back
The past, my happy past? Take not that too,
Or truth has lost its meaning.
Guinevere. I am not hard--
Oh! do not think it!--but sometimes "yea" and "nay"
Bear equal falsehood. I would tell thee all
If I could find but words.
The name of love
Is light upon the lips of many a maid
That never knew him truly: such was I
Then, when my father bade me give myself
Unto a man scarce seen, and all unknown
Beyond the common speech of courtesy.
"Love comes," they said, and I was well content
With that which came, as children are content
To cling about their nurses; till they hear--
Yea, though it be far off--the voice of her
Whose life was one with theirs, and lo! they are fled,
Fled with a reckless rapture past command,
Past reason, past entreaty! Such was I,
When at the last love came and called his own.
Arthur. His own? Did I not love thee, too, then? Ay!
First, longest, best? His own? Oh! stay me not,
I heard--of speech so bitter and so bold
I could not miss the purpose--thou hast said
My soul through all those wedded nights and days
Called not to thine with the true kindred voice
That quickens passion--ah! God knows!--but thou,
Loveless or loving, thou hadst sworn to hear
One voice, the voice of honour. If I know thee,
Even then the lingering echoes of that oath
In some far chamber of thine inmost heart
Were ringing still; I marvel passion's self
Could so have drowned them.
Guinevere. Marvel no more! 'tis false!
Thou art the cause: my faith was stayed on thine
And fell when thine had fall'n: thou did'st not know--
When all thy mind was fierce with flaming thoughts
That leaped to torture me--thou didst not dream
How, long ago, the knowledge of thy sin
Had burned my heart to ashes.
Arthur. Thou too? thou?
Have I not paid that debt, yea! paid it thrice
To the uttermost? Bethink thee, is it just
Because a boy, wilful and passionate,
Drunk with the incense of his fame, and flushed
With the new wine of power,--How canst thou say
That I am he? 'Tis half a lifetime since:
He sinned, and went his way; he is become
A thing of dream, a shadow in the glass,
No part of me; is it not enough that I
Still bear his punishment, but thou must add
The burden of thy scorn.
Guinevere. I scorned thee not
For any fault of boyhood, but I heard
A man, midway upon the road of life,
A king, for justice throned, deliberate,
Upholding lust and treason for the sake
Of the old-time fellowship they claimed with him.
I heard thee: love and hate that moment broke
The dungeon-keep of duty.
Arthur. Guinevere,
I am the man: but hear me--my soul too
No less than thine, revolted--I believed--
Yea! by God's light, which may we yet behold,
I thought to save our Order and the realm
From wider ruin.
Guinevere. How should wider be?
Lamorak, Tristram, Lancelot, Guinevere--
These and a hundred more, in yonder hall
Cast off their vows for ever.
Arthur. Mordred! Mordred!
What art thou then? God's vengeance upon earth?
Guinevere. Not yet! Did'st thou not know then--
Arthur. I know thee now!
Mordred! my son! my very son! the child
Of Youth and Doom, sent to me from the past
With life's young glory in thy wilful eyes
And in thine hand stark death!
Nay, Guinevere,
'Tis I am judged. Think not my spirit unchanged
Because I humble not myself with words
And vain lamenting; but I reap alone
That which my hand hath sowed, and all my strength
Must stoop to bear it homeward.
Now farewell:
It sets toward dusk; the hour is come to part,
Thou to what earthly rest thy soul may find,
I to the long night's work.
Guinevere. Oh! blinder still!
I knew not Arthur! Thou art king through all!
And I that might have served thee!
Arthur. Guinevere,
Vex not thine heart in vain: the past is mine,
Thy life is yet to come.
Guinevere. Ah! never dream
That I will live it! Here I render up
Into thine hand the remnant of my days
To spare or spend. Thou canst not ask of me
That which I will not school myself to give.
Arthur. If it might be! Nay, this one hour my heart
Endure, endure! this too will pass!
Oh! woman!
God hold from thee the cup thy hand hath mixed!
Guinevere. What have I said? Did I not offer all
To stead thy purpose?
Arthur. Ay, but thou and I
Have drifted far asunder on a tide
That knows no hour of turning. Never sound
Of thy voice and of mine shall meet again
Across that homeless ocean, though we steer
Beneath the same true stars, and win at last
To the same haven of achieved desire.
Guinevere. What haven? What achievement?
Arthur. If by toil,
By battle, by the pangs of dying hope,
By death, by death in life, I yet may save
This Britain from the curse that sprang from me,
Wilt thou not--even thou--for Britain's sake
Forgive--forgive me?
Guinevere. Oh! thou royal heart!
Is not this shame forgiveness? Wilt thou more?
Thine enemies--I reck not what they be!--
All! all! God smite them headlong from thy path!
Farewell: forth to thy battle! Even here,
Through these dim aisles of peace, there yet shall come
Some wandering voice to whisper tidings dear
Of Camelot, of Arthur's Table Round,
Of the king, reigning as a noble knight,
And Guinevere forgotten.
[ She passes within the screen and falls on her knees
again before the altar. ARTHUR moves towards her
for a moment: then turns suddenly away.

ACT V .

SCENE I.
A down between Camelford and Tintagel ARTHUR and KAY. A camp is seen behind them.

Kay. 'Tis not that I esteem my counsel surer;
Nor, so esteeming it, would I be bold
To thrust it on you.
Arthur. And yonder, as thou sayest,
Lies Mordred with his force?
Kay. Ay, my lord, yonder:
But what I venture--
Arthur. ell me, how is this known;
I see no sign.
Kay. Sir Bedivere, my lord,
Had sent fore-riders out to skim the country,
Who brought the news even now.
But with your leave--
Merely for safe assurance,--
Arthur. And Constantine?
Kay. On that side, too, there is a scout-watch set,
But nothing yet reported. Good my lord,
Will you not hear me?
Arthur. Why truly, if I must.
But wit thou well, meseems to hear advice
Being resolved already, suits no more
With wisdom, than the way that children use,
Who dig their gardens up to make them sure
The seeds are sprouting.
Kay. Nay, nay, sir, Heaven forbid
That any word of mine should work upheaval
In the king's mind!
Arthur. Ay, Heaven forbid! and yet
Let us not be too fearful; for thy peace
I'll even risk my own. Say on.
Kay. Sir, I have said
'Tis merely for assurance--none can doubt
You have considered all that could be urged
On this side and on that, yet, my good lord--
May I be pardoned--you have held aloof
From all of us who serve you, taken counsel
With no man all these days, from the first news
Of Lancelot's flight, to this, but three nights old,
That Mordred sets his teeth to meet rebuke
With unashamed rebellion. 'Tis to-day
He comes for the last time to urge his claim--
Pardon for Lancelot, and I know not what
Of licence for himself and those he leads--
If that the answer--
Arthur. "If" is out of time;
The answer's ready.
Kay. Let it not be thought
I would presume to ply the king with questions,
[ He pauses.
Or force the privacy of his intent--
[ He pauses again: ARTHUR remains silent.
But how can we be certain that his glance--
That any one man's glance--hath made survey
Of the whole field, remarked each several gap
Where dangers peep, and reckoned with them all,
If silence--
If silence must be kept.
BEDIVERE enters.
Arthur. Nay, content thee, Kay,
For one hour yet. Well, Bedivere?
Bedivere. Sir, time presses:
Mordred's at hand: his terms are known to all,
And there are some who love you ill at ease
That choice so sudden should be forced upon you.
Arthur. It cannot be too sudden.
Bedivere. I know 'tis said
You are resolved: 'tis true you have good right--
If right were all in question--to repulse
Lancelot and Mordred both: yet there is more
If I dare speak it.
Arthur. Ay, speak it, Bedivere.
Bedivere. Let me be blunt then, too; there's no way left
To deal with Lancelot, save by pardoning him.
We've none to match him: let his force be joined--
As 'tis in part even now--with Mordred's yonder,
And, save what hope may hang on Constantine,
We are merely lost.
Arthur. But Constantine will come.
He too is close at hand; 'tis three weeks since
I sent him urgent summons.
Bedivere. Ay, so urgent
And so long since, that but for some mishap
He had been here ere now.
Arthur. No, no!
Bedivere. Let us not strain
Our eyes so blind with staring at the distance,
They cannot measure the abyss that yawns
One step before us. Mark you--king or churl--
Down from life to death in a moment's fall--
'Tis a sheer plunge, and dark!
Kay. Sir Bedivere! My lord--
This is no language for a king to hear--
I go not with him there; I but approve
His meaning, not his plainness.
Arthur. Nay, both are honest,
Both have my thanks: in truth, these latter days
Death has been much remembered in my thoughts,
And no less dreaded.
Bedivere. He may well be dreaded
By those who leave their country tossed between
The wind and tide of parties. Sir, forgive me,
This Mordred is your son.
Arthur. That, too, Bedivere,
I have remembered.
Bedivere. Your only son, your heir:
And once this gust of wilfulness were laid--
As well it may be-- there's no voice in Britain
So like a king's. Bend to him now, hereafter
You'll turn him to your will; but if this cloud
Break into storm between you, either way
There's ruin; he who wins, wins but remorse;
Who loses, loses all.
[ARTHUR turns away.
Kay (aside to BEDIVERE). There I think we touched him.
Hold to it: press him! not to hard, but still
As hard as may be with a due respect.
Bedivere (aside). Nay, the hour's struck: God send I was in time!
My lord, Sir Mordred's coming. Mark you now,
There's something courteous and humble mixed
With his high bearing; rebels look not so.
Kay. Humble? Good sooth! But well, 'twas timely said.
MORDRED enters with GAWAINE.
Arthur. Good morrow, Mordred.
Mordred. Sir, God give you peace!
Arthur. Gawaine, thou too art welcome.
Gawaine. My lord, I thank you.
Arthur. If ye have other friends at hand, we pray you
Let us not lack their presence.
Mordred. Sir, if it please you,
They are content to wait, whilst I entreat
The boon of private audience.
Arthur. Why, surely,
If such a place may serve us. Prithee, Kay,
Go summon all the camp, and while we walk
Apart with Mordred, bid them share thy charge.
That Gawaine and his comrades fall not weary
For lack of entertainment. Bedivere,
Thou shalt attend us yonder within call.
[KAY and BEDIVERE go out with Gawaine.
( To MORDERD.) Thou hast thy wish; we are alone:
What is it
Thou seekest further?
Mordred. Sir, I had thought to speak
Of Lancelot first.
Arthur. Ah! Mordred, think again!
Thou wilt not suffer any man to stand
Between the clasping of thy hand and mine?
Mordred. But this is Lancelot, but for whom long since
The best of all of us had been full cold
At the heart's root.
Arthur. Ay, long since.
Mordred. Oh! he hath sinned,
But say not, past forgiveness: drive him not
To justify his deed: set him again
To climb with stronger and more patient feet
The path he fell from; and to us his pardon
Shall be an earnest of the gentler rule
For which we humbly pray.
Arthur. There thou'rt asking more--
Far more--than Lancelot's pardon.
Mordred. We do but crave
For freedom; every current of the time
Sets toward a kindly faith and tend'rer laws;
Only these vows oppress us, crying still
"Thou shalt not," in the ear of lusty youth,
To whom no voice should call but Nature's own,
"Desire and dread not; life is all too short,
Too fair, too great, to mar with meaner hopes,
This, this thou shalt, and this!"
Arthur. Ay, but those to whom
Despite of Nature these same meaner hopes
Are still the more endeared?
Mordred. There would be none!
Nay then if such there might be, I would cast them
Into the prison-house of loneliness,
The pit of disfellowed: there to shiver
Till penitence should give them tears enough
To pay their ransom.
Arthur. Thy trust were vain, ay! vain
And perilous: there's evil in our blood
Twin-born with good, and claiming soon or late
His destined share of life's inheritance:
Whom tenderness but fosters.
Mordred. Nay, but 'tis not so:
Put it to proof: the event shall bind us all.
Arthur. 'Tis proved already.
Mordred. How so?
Arthur. In all the years
Before thou, Mordred, cam'st,--
Mordred. Ha! before I came
None dared--
Arthur. Thou sayest well, before thou cam'st
None dared what, since thy coming, all men dare,
What none shall dare again!
Mordred. Then God save Britain,
When freedom may not speak her dearest hope
Above a crouching whisper!
Arthur. Ay! God save Britain!
But that's my prayer, not thine; for what sake else,
When Gawaine fell, should I have thrust my hand
Into the torment of that blackening shame?
For what have I forsworn all peace--the peace
That comes of pardoning, the peace that haunts
Old trodden ways, the peace that at the last,
When wife and son bend down to fading eyes,
Lightens the dusk of death? Oh! Mordred, Mordred!
Thou should'st have been in very deed my son!
Mordred. I am thy son, I will be! I will wait;
Reproach me not; thou shalt not be alone;
Thou shalt not lose an hour of peace for me
Henceforward all thy days!
Arthur. And after, Mordred?
Mordred. Nay, all thy days.
Arthur. Ay, and when my days are done?
Mordred. Then I thy son will take this realm in trust
For thy son's son.
Arthur. Ah! Mordred, if I but knew
How thou would'st read that trust when I am dead,
And by what oath be bounden!
Mordred. Oath? Oath again?
More oaths? More dust upon a parching tongue?
Is't not enough for thee whilst thou art here
To gag and fetter me, but thou must seek
To bind my life upon thy tyrant's wheel
With the dead hand? Oath? Yea then, hear my oath!
I swear to rule this kingdom after thee
As thou hast ruled it:--that's by my own will
And my own reason, and my own right arm!
Arthur. Said I not? Bedivere!
Mordred. Stay! I have not done,
We have not spoken of the queen.
Arthur. Ho! there! Bedivere!
BEDIVERE enters.
Bring the knights hither!
Bedivere. All, my lord?
Arthur. All, all!
[BEDIVERE goes out.
Mordred. Thou shalt not so escape; alone or thronged
There's that within my grasp shall reach thee yet.
For Lancelot, as thou wilt: with his own hand
He well may keep his head; and for myself
I might have thought on patience: but the queen
No man shall judge, and thou, the fount of wrong,
Thou, least of all men: doom, and thou art doomed;
Be just and live: why wilt thou ride apace
To thy last battle? Seest thou not how Sin
Follows to drag thee down, and at thy side
Death shakes the sand-glass of thy falling hours?
Thou'rt mastered: who can hope to be more strong
Than Fate, that on the instant springs all-armed
From our own deeds?
BEDIVERE and Knights enter.
Arthur (to MORDRED). Silence! thy bolt is shot:
Stand thou aside!
( To the others. )Sirs, we have drawn you hither
That ye may share our counsel. Time hath been
When ye have known this kingdom's life to flow
Tranquil and pure, with no more sound of storm
Than a broad river on a windless noon:
But now 'tis changed; its swollen course is fed
By dark and roaring torrents; build we not
Our dykes the stronger, night may hear us yet
Swept down to ruin on a world in flood.
I am resolved: I bid you toil with me:
If we achieve, 'tis noble: though we fail,
'Tis work for kings! How say ye?
Bedivere and Arthur's Knights. Yea!
Mordred's Party. What must we do?
Arthur. Ye must be bound anew to keep the vows
Of our High Order: ye must stand apart
From whoso hath not kept them, leaving such
To justice unappealed; and ye must swear
Upon your hilted swords true faith and service
To him that after me shall work my will--
Sir Constantine.
Mordred. What? disinherit me?
Rob me and slay me? Nay, thou canst not do it!
Thou canst not slay thy past! For thy life, back!
Thou goest to the deathward!
Arthur. Wilt thou dare me?
Wilt thou be taught that so his heart be strong
A fallen man may rise, and trample down
The offspring of his rash and evil past?
Stand from before me!
[MORDRED'S party draw back: one of them treads upon
an adder, and draws his sword to kill it.
Arthur's Herald. Treason, lords! at arms!
Arthur's Knights. At arms! at arms!
[ Both sides draw their swords. MORDRED throws
himself between them.
Mordred. Hold!
Gawaine (to MORDRED). Draw man! all's afire!
Cry "Freedom!" and set on!
[ All go out fighting in great confusion: a noise of
trumpets and shouting is heard behind.

ACT V .

SCENE II.
    Another part of the down. Enter ARTHUR attended by a trumpeter.

Arthur. I'll breathe myself a moment; trumpeter,
Sound me a rally: 'twixt pursuit and flight
The long day through, our bands are too much parted,
Yet, as I think, not broken past recall.
[ The trumpet sounds: a pause follows. ]
They come not: God defend us! Sound again.
How the mist hangs! I cannot see the field
Save here and there in gaps and shifting gleams
There's one! 'Tis Lucan: wounded, by his gait.
Another, and another!
BEDIVERE enters.
Bedivere!
Well met! 'Tis time we drew our battle in.
What of the southward fighting?
Bedivere. Nay, God knows!
Mine eyes were elsewhere: yet at times I caught,
Between the shocks we brunted, how their fortune
Moment by moment on the razor's edge
Swung in a doubtful scale: forward and back,
Forward and back: a scant hour since, their noise
Still rang between the water and the wood,
Then clattered inland, scattering up the cliff.
Arthur. Inland? They pushed us then? Yet against odds
'Twas long and stoutly held: to-night at least
Nought threatens thence: there's silence on the right;
And here, where first the main encounter joined,
Men prowl like fog-blind wolves among the dead
And fight by tens and twenties. Whence art thou?
Hath Kay been seen? We lost him: is he strayed
Beyond the trumpet call?
Bedivere. Ay, beyond call,
God rest him!
Arthur. Kay? Ah! Bedivere, unsay it!
They told thee false!
Bedivere. I bore him in these arms
Back from the vanward mellay; bound his wounds,
And thought to leave him: even while I turned
His voice came strong, "These braggart boys!" he cried,
"Lock on my armour!" but with that he drooped,
And straightway fell on sleep.
Arthur. Such death be mine!
So sudden, so undoubting!
Farewell, Kay!
Thou leav'st a lonely world.
Come, Bedivere,
Tell out thy tale: this was mine oldest friend,
All else is lighter.
Bedivere. Yet I had liefer take
As many blows unshielded, than recall
The hundred partings that to-day hath knelled.
Who is not fallen? Pertilope died first,
Cut off from rescue: like a lonely rock,
Now bare, now hidden by the swinging seas
We marked his crest awhile; then with a roar
The full tide seethed above him. Aglovale,
Gillimer, Driant, Griflet, Priamus,
Fell in one charge: the dead upon their track
Lay thick as wind-laid wheat. Then with the mist
Confusion came: I saw young Tor and Dinas
Hurtle together like two boars in spring,
Till they were blotted from me: when the wind
Brought twilight back, their arms were locked in death.
Segwarides is gone, and Lambegus,
Damas, and Herminde: Brandiles is shriven
And ebbing fast: yonder's my brother Lucan
That scarce can drag him hither.
Arthur. Trumpeter,
Go help Sir Lucan.
Oh, my noble knights,
I am your death!
Hereafter, Bedivere,
There shall be grief beyond all tears for these,
Who now must be forgotten: counsel me,
Which way to fling ourselves upon the flight?
Where stand the traitors?
Bedivere. Nowhere; Death is just,
This side and that he reaps with equal stroke:
They too are few and faint.
Arthur. Then 'tis well with us--
If aught can yet be well--thy fears are like
To find their answer; let this fortune hold
An hour or less, and Mordred's game is lost.
For him stalemate's defeat, and all or nought
His only hazard.
Bedivere. I would it were so.
Arthur. What else?
What is there left?
Bedivere. I know not, yet meseems
His very life's a challenge.
Arthur. Was it not thou
This morning would'st have urged me yield his claim
And make accord with him?
Bedivere. There was yet time:
Now he hath tasted blood, and will not stint
Till he be gorged--Arthur or Constantine,
So long as Britain lies within his spring,
He'll reck not.
Arthur. Bedivere, I have sworn an oath--
God's mercy keep me from redeeming it!--
But Mordred shall not reign.
Enter LUCAN, wounded.
Thou'rt welcome, Lucan.
Where is thy hurt?
What knight was that who climbed
So doubtfully behind thee? Knows he not
Our rallying signal?
Lucan. Nay, he's none of ours.
His visor hides his face, but 'tis the frame
Of a strong knight, and traitor though he be,
He deals a grievous buffet.
Bedivere (looking off). Ay, he's bold,
He means to try us.
Arthur. No, he seeks a parley.
Look ye, he doffs his helm!
MORDRED enters.
Ah! Jesu mercy!
Bedivere. Mordred! thou villain! lace that helm again
And keep thee as thou may'st!
Arthur. Hold! Bedivere,
This is my deed: I could not bear to stand
And see thee slay him.
Mordred, draw thy sword,
And give thy soul into the hands of God,
For thy time hieth fast!
[ARTHUR and MORDRED fight, but neither is wounded:
they draw apart for a breathing space. ARTHUR
moves forward again.
Lucan. Sir, let him go:
Bethink you, he's your son: let him but swear
By the five wounds of our sweet Saviour Christ,
To quit this land for ever.
Ah, Sir Mordred.
What's he that strikes against his father's life?
Be sworn, and 'scape the curse!
Mordred (to ARTHUR). I have more right
To take thy life than thou could'st ever claim
To give me mine!
Arthur. I sinned: I will atone.
[ They fight again: MORDRED falls: ARTHUR stands
looking down upon him.
Arthur. 'Tis done!
Might I die too!
Mordred. Thou shalt!
[ He raises himself with a last effort and
stabs ARTHUR.
O Britain!
Life! life! One year of life--untyrannised!
[ He falls back dead: ARTHUR kneels beside him.
Bedivere. My lord,--you are sore hurt: come hence!
( A pause. ) My lord!
Will you not hence?
[ARTHUR turns and looks at him.
Arthur. Yea, Bedivere, 'tis time.
[ He turns away and covers his face again.

ACT V .

SCENE III.
Sea coast near Tintagel. Under the rocks a barge: ARTHUR therein with ladies tending him. BEDIVERE upon the shore at hand.
Arthur. Bedivere
For this last office and for all that's gone
Thou hast my loving thanks: little enough
For such true service: but it yet may be
When thou hast crept from off the windy hills
Into the ingle-nook of dreaming eld,
Among the ember-faces my face too
Thou shalt behold, and muse before thou sleepest
With heart contented "Arthur leaned on me,
And his last thanks were mine."
Bedivere. Nay, my dear lord,
Far be the last! You are not yet for death;
Men say you cannot die.
Arthur. 'Tis true, long since
I do remember it was told of me
I should be hurt to death and yet not slain,
But by the will of our Lord Jesu brought
Into another place, and come again
To win the Holy Cross. I cannot tell;
'Tis a dark saying: rather, as I deem,
To-night, after the fashion of this world
My life must change.
Bedivere. To-night? So Britain sinks!
Ah! my Lord Arthur, what shall save us now--
A torn and kingless people?
Arthur. Nay, Bedivere,
Not kingless; tide me death betide me life,
The realm rides high through all, with Constantine
To hold the course I pricked. Look forward, forward,
And let the past, with Arthur and his sins,
Fade on the dim horizon far behind!
Yet, even so, meseems I shall not die;
My purpose lives, my will, that which hath been
The life-blood of my spirit, my soul's breath:--
What shall a man not suffer and not dare
That this may be? Yea! shall he not for this
Tread out the fire upon his own hearth-stone,
For this draw steel against the child that sprang
Of his own body? Though my name be lost
For ever, and my race with me to-night
Fall into dust, that which I willed remains,
And while that lives I shall not wholly die.
Now make me ere I pass:--Sir Constantine
Is King of Britain: see him crowned with speed,
And summon all true men to render him
Such service and such faith as they would own
Towards Arthur come again. Then shalt thou go
Where thou may'st meet with Lancelot: let him wit
I died full fain of him, leaning my trust
Upon his old remembered nobleness
That he will yet repent him. They are fallen
Who brought the realm in peril for his sake;
His penance waits him still: let him pray out
His life in some lone hermitage, or pass
Into the Holy Land where Jesu Christ
Was quick and dead. There may his soul find peace!
Bedivere. All this shall have fulfilment. Ah! would God
I too had fallen first!
Arthur. Nay, for lack of thee
My words were lost: be thankful, work thy work,
And wait God's end for all. My last command
Is this, thou shalt not fail to bring the queen
True tale how all befell: what lies beneath
Let Silence whisper.
Farewell Bedivere.
God dwell with thee. This ring to Constantine,
Bid him be strong, and rule.
[ He falls back dying: the barge puts out to sea.

Finis.

ORCHARDLEIGH, April 2, 1893.
KENSINGTON, July 23, 1894.

---

---

TOM THUMB THE GREAT:

A BURLESQUE TRAGEDY,

IN TWO ACTS

ALTERED, FROM FIELDING,

by

KANE O'HARA, ESQ.

________________

REMARKS.

   Though small in its subject, this "tragedy of tragedies" has engaged the attention of two dramatic writers: its original parent, HenryFielding, our celebrated novelist, brought it on the Haymarket stage, in the year 1730, when it met with great success. This burlesque may be considered almost the best that ever appeared. It is, also, a proper sequel to the Duke of Buckingham's Rehearsal; as it embraces and satirises the absurdities of almost all the writers of tragedy from the period when that piece stops. The love-scenes, rage, marriage, battle, and catastrophe, are such forcible imitations of the rules observed by the tragic writers of that time, that the satire conveyed in them cannot escape the observation of any one conversant with the writers of the last century,* and to those who do not comprehend every turn its humour, it will always appear agreeable.
   In Mr. O'Hara's alteration of this piece of true burlesque, he has certainly, allowing for its compression, preserved the points of the original, and presented an entertainment that maintains its credit undiminished on the stage.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Characters in Fielding's Original Piece entitled, "The Tragedy of Tragedies; or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great," as performed at the Haymarket, 1730.

KING ARTHUR , a passionate sort of King, husband to Queen Dollallolla, of whom he stands a little in fear; father to Huncamunca, whom he is very fond of; and in love with Glumdalca.................................................... Mr. Mullart .
TOM THUMB THE GREAT , a little hero with a great soul, something violent in his temper, which is a little abated by his love for Huncamunca....................................................................................................................................... Young Verhuyck .
GHOST OF GAFFER THUMB , a whimsical sort of Ghost.............................................................. Mr. Lacy .
LORD GRIZZLE , extremely zealous for the liberty of the subject, very choleric in his temper, and in love with Huncamunca...................................................................................................................................... Mr. Jones .
MERLIN , a Conjurer, and in some sort father to Thumb..................................................................... Mr. Hallam .
NOODLE , { Courtiers in place, and consequently of that part that is uppermost................................} Mr. Reynolds .
DOODLE , {....................................................................................................................................} Mr. Wathan .
FOODLE , a Courtier that is out of place, and consequently of that party that is undermost................... Mr. Ayres .
BAILIFF ,        { Of the party of the plaintiff,.....................................................................................} Mr. Peterson
FOLLOWER , {...............................................................................................................................} Mr. Hicks .
PARSON , of the side of the church,.................................................................................................... Mr. Watson .

QUEEN DOLLALLOLLA , wife to King Arthur, and mother to Huncamunca; a woman entirely faultless, saving that she is a little given to drink; a little too much a virago towards her husband, and in love with Tom Thumb................................... Mrs. Mullart .
The PRINCESS HUNCAMUNCA , daughter to their Majesties King Arthur and Queen Dollallolla, of a very sweet, gentle, and amorous disposition, equally in love with Lord Grizzle and Tom Thumb, and desirous to be married to them both..... Mrs. Jones .
GLUMDALCA , of the Giants, a captive Queen, beloved by the King, but in love with Tom Thumb,........................ Mrs. Dove .
CLEORA ,       { Maids of Honour, in love with................................................................................ }Noodle.
MUSTACHA , {...............................................................................................................................} Doodle.

Courtiers, Guards, Rebels, Drums, Trumpets, Thunder and Lightning.

SCENE.--The Court of King Arthur, and a Plain thereabouts.

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*Fielding's original, with his notes by Scriblerus Secundus, the Preface, &c. form a fund of sterling satire on the criticisms of his contemporaries, and on the works of former writers of tragedies.

TOM THUMB

A Burlesque Opera, Altered From Fielding, By Kane O'Hara

Haymarket, 1810

Dramatis Personæ

KING ARTHUR,................. Mr. Dowton .
TOM THUMB,................... Master West .
MERLIN,.......................... Mr. Denman .
LORD GRIZZLE,................ Mr. Liston .
NOODLE,......................... Mr. Taylor .
DOODLE,......................... Mr. Grove .
GHOST,............................ Mr. Denman .
WOMEN

QUEEN DOLLALLOLLA,............ Mrs. Liston .
PRINCESS HUNCAMUNCA,......... Mrs. Taylor .
GLUMDALCA,......................... Miss Leserve .
FRIZALETTA,............................ Miss Vining .
PLUMANTE,.............................. Mrs. Kendal .

           ACT I.

SCENE I.-- A Palace Yard .

Enter DOODLE on one side of the stage, and NOODLE on the other; after a long obeisance, they embrace .

DUET.

Dood    Sure such a day,
So renown'd, so victorious--
Such a day as this was never seen;
Courtiers so gay
And the mob so uproarious--
Nature seems to wear a universal grin.
Nood.    Arthur to Doll
Is grown bobbish and uxorious;
While both she and Huncamunca tipple, talking tawdry;
Even Mr. Sol,
So tifted out, so glorious,
Glitters like a beau in a new birth-day embroidery.
Dood.     Oh, 'tis a day
Of jublilee, cajollery;
A day we never saw before;
A day of fun and drollery.
Nood.     That you may say,
Their majesties may boast of it;
And since it never can come more
'Tis fit they make the most of it.
Dood.     Oh, 'tis a day, &c.
Nood.     That you may say, &c.
Dood.     Sure such a day, &c.
Nood.     Courtiers so gay, &c.
Dood.     Yes, Noodle, yes;--to-day the mighty Thumb
Returns triumphant.--Captive giants swarm
Like bees behind his ear. [ Flourish of trumpets .
Nood.     These trumpets speak the king at levee--I go.
Dood.     And I also--to offer my petition.
Nood.     Doodle, do. [ Exit.

SCENE II.-- Inside of the Palace.

The KING and QUEEN SEATED on a throne. --
LORD GRIZZLE, Courtiers, and Attendants. --
DOODLE and NOODLE apart .

King.     Let no face but a face of joy be seen!
The man, who this day frowns, shall lose his head,
That he may have no face to frown withal--
Smile, Dollallolla! [ Kisses her.
Dood.     [Kneeling.] Dread liege,
This petition--
King.     [Dashes it away.] Petition me no petitions, Sir, to-day;
To-day, it is our pleasure--to be drunk,
And this our queen shall be as drunk as we.
Queen.     Is't so? why then perdition catch the failers!
Let's have a row, and get as drunk as sailors.

               AIR.--QUEEN.

   What though I now am half seas o'er,
      I scorn to balk this bout,
   Of stiff rack-punch fetch bowls a score,
      'Fore George, I'll see them out.
                                       What though, &c.

   But, Sir, your queen 'twould ill become,
       T'indulge in vulgar sips;
   No drop of brandy, gin, or rum,
       Should pass these royal lips,
                                       But, Sir, &c.

    Chorus. --Rum ti iddity, row, row, row.
       If we'd a good sup, we'd take it now.

King.    Though rack, in punch, ten shillings were a quart,
And rum and brandy be but half-a-crown,
Rather than quarrel, thou shalt have thy fill.
                        [Flourish of drums and trumpets.
Nood.     These martial sounds, my liege, announce the general.
King.     Haste we to meet, and meetly to receive
him.
                        [Rises from the throne; martial music.

Enter TOM THUMB, Attendants, and GLUMDALCA, in chains.

Welcome, thrice welcome, mighty Thomas Thumb!
Thou tiny hero--pigmy giant queller!
What gratitude can thank away the debt
Thy valour puts upon us.
[Takes him up and embraces him.
Queen.     Oh! ye gods!                 [Aside.
Tom.     When I'm not thank'd at all I'm thank'd enough--
I've done my duty, and I've done no more        [Bows.
Queen.     Was ever such a godlike creature seen?
King.     Thy modesty's a flambeau to thy merit;
It shines itself, and shows thy merit too.
O Tommy, Tommy Thumb! what to thy prowess do we owe!
Ask some reward--great as we can bestow.
Tom.     I ask not kingdoms, I can conquer those;
I ask not money, money I've enough:
If this be called a debt, take my receipt in full:
I ask but this, to sun myself in Huncamunca's eyes,
King.     [Aside.] Prodigious bold request!
Queen.     Be still, my soul!--
King.     [After a pause.] It is resolv'd
The princess is thy own! [To THUMB.
Tom.     O happy Tommy! super-happy Thumb.
Whisper, ye winds, that Huncamunca's mine!
The bloody bus'ness of grim war is o'er,
And beauty, heavenly beauty, crowns my toils.

                       AIR.--TOM.

   As when the chimney-sweeper
       Has, all the live-long day,
   Through darksome paths a creeper,
       Pursued his sooty way:

   At night, to wash in water
       His hands and face he flies;
   And, in his t'other tatter,
       With his Brickdusta lies.
                            [Exit;--flourish of Trumpets.

King.     [ Looking fondly at GLUMDALCA.] I feel
a sudden pain across my breast; [Aside.
Nor know I whether it proceeds from love
Or the wind--cholic--but time will show.--Huge--our queen of hearts!
Sure thou wert form'd by all the gods in council;
Who, having made a lucky hit beyond their journey-work,
Cry'd out--"This is a woman!"
Glum.     Then were the gods confoundedly mistaken.
We are a giantess--I tell thee, Arthur,
We yesterday were both a queen and wife;
One hundred thousand giants own'd our sway;
Twenty whereof were wedded to ourself.
Queen.     Oh, bless'd perogative of giantism!
                            [Aside.
King.     Oh! vast queen!--Think our court thine own;
Call for whate'er thou lik'st--there's nought to pay,
Nor art thou captive, but thy captive we.
                            [Takes off her chains.
Queen.     [Aside.] Ha! Arthur faithless!
This gag my rival, too, in dear Tom Thumb!
Revenge!--but I'll dissemble--
Madam, believe that with a woman's eye
I view your loss--take comfort--for, to-morrow
Our grenadiers shall be called out, then choose
As many husbands as you think you'll want.
Glum.     Madam, I rest your much obliged and very humble servant.                         [Exit.
Queen.     Though greater yet Tom's boasted merit was,
He shall not have my daughter, that is pos.
                            [ Advancing to the KING.
King.     Ha! say'st thou?
Queen.     Yes, I say he sha'n't.
King.     How, sha'n't!
Now by our royal self, we swear--I'll be damn'd, but he shall.

                        AIR.--QUEEN.

   Then tremble all, who weddings ever made,
   And tremble more who did this match persuade;
   For, like a worried cat, I'll spit, I'll squall,
     I'll scratch, I'll tear the eyes out of ye all.
                                 [ The KING throws his hat at the QUEEN.
                                            [Exeunt QUEEN and LADIES.

Dood.     Her majesty, the queen, is in a passion.
King.     She may be damn'd. Who cares? We were indeed
A pretty king of clouts, were we to truckle
To all her maudlin humours.

                       AIR.--KING.

   We kings, who are in our senses,
   Mock our consorts violences;
   Pishing at their moods and tenses,
       Our own will we follow
   If the husband, once gives way
   To his wife's capricious sway,
   For his breeches he next day
       May go whoop and hollow.             [ Exeunt.

SCENE III.-- The outside of the Palace.

Enter LORD GRIZZLE.

Griz.     Arthur wrongs me!
Cheats me of my Huncamunca!
Rouse thee, Grizzle! 'Sblood, I'll be a rebel.
Alas! What art thou, honour?
A Monmouth--street laced coat, gracing to-day
My back; to-morrow glittering on another's--
To arms! to arms!

Enter QUEEN, in a rage.

Queen.     Teach me to scold, O Grizzle!
Griz.     Scold, would my queen?--Say, ah! wherefore!
Queen.     Wherefore!
Faggots and fire--my daughter to Tom Thumb!
Griz.     I'll mince the atom into countless pieces.
Queen.     Oh! no; prevent the match, but hurt not him--
Him!--thou!--thou kill the man
Who kill'd the giants?
Griz.     Giants?--why, Madam, 'tis all flummery:
He made the giants first, and then he kill'd them.
Queen.     How! hast thou seen no giants? Are there not
Now in our yard ten thousand proper giants?
Griz.     Madam, shall I tell you what I am going to say? I do not positively know, but as near as
I can guess, I cannot tell; though I firmly do believe there is not one.
Queen.     Out from my sight, base Pickthank, hie, begone!
By all my stars, thou enviest Tom Thumb.
Griz.     Yes, yes, I go; but, Madam, know
(Since your majesty's so pert)
That a flood of Tommy's blood,
To allay this storm shall spurt.
                                    [ Exeunt.

SCENE IV.-- An Antechamber.

The KING, on a Couch.

King.     Methought
I heard a voice say, "Sleep no more!"
Glumdalca exiles sleep--and therefore, Arthur
Can sleep no more.

The Ghost of GAFFER THUMB rises, with a blue
lantern on a long staff.

Ghost.     Oh! Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!
Soon shalt thou sleep enough.
King.     Ah! what art thou?
Ghost.     The ghost of Gaffer Thumb.
King.     A ghost!--Stand off!
I'll have thee laid in the Red Sea.
Ghost.     Oh, Arthur! take heed.
My thread is spun--list, list, oh, list!

                       AIR.--GHOST.

   Pale death is prowling,
   Dire omens, scowling,.
   Doom thee to slaughter,
   Thee, thy wife, and daughter.
   Furies are growling,
           With horrid groans;
   Grizzle's rebellion,
   What need I tell you on?
           Or by a red cow,
   Tom Thumb devoured?
   Hark! the cock crowing.         [ Cock crows.
           I must be going,
               I can no more.             [ Vanishes.

King.     No more! and why no more, or why so much?
Better quite ignorant, than half instructed.
By Jove, this bo-peep ghost makes game of us;
Therefore, Fate, keep your secret to yourself.

                       AIR.--KING.

   Such a fine king as I don't fear your threats of a rush,
   Do show your sweet phiz again, and I'll quickly call up a blush,
       For I am up, up, up,
           But you are down, down, down,
       Do pop up your nob again,
           And 'egad I'll crack your crown.
   Who cares for you, Mr. Ghost? or all that you can do;
    I laugh at your stupid threats, and your cock-a-doodle do;         [ Cock crows.
       For I am up, up, up,
           But you are down, down, down;
       Draw your sword like a man,
           Or I'll box you for a crown.
               Rum ti iddity, &c.         [ Scene closes.

SCENE V.--HUNCAMUNCA'S Dressing Room .

HUNCAMUNCA at her toilette , FRIZALETTA waiting .

Hunc.     Give me some music,--see that it be sad.
                                                                [ Band plays a strain .
Oh, Tommy Thumb! why art thou Tommy Thumb?
Why had not might Bantam been thy father?
Why not the king of Brentford, old or new?
Friz.     Madam, Lord Grizzle.

Enter LORD GRIZZLE.

Griz.     [Kneeling.] Oh, Huncamunca! Huncamunca, oh!
Hunc.     This to my rank,--bold man!
Griz.     Ah, beauteous princess!
Love levels rank,--lords down to cellar bears,
And bids the brawny porter walk up stairs.--
Nought is for love too high, nor aught too low--
Oh, Huncamunca! Huncamunca, oh!
Hunc.     My lord, in vain, a-suitoring you come,
For I'm engaged this instant to Tom Thumb.
Griz.     Play not the fool! that less than baby shun,
Or you will ne'er be brought to bed of one.
Hunc.     Am I thus fobb'd?--then I my words recal.
Griz.     Shall I to Doctors' Commons?
Hunc.     Do so, pray--
I now am in the mood, and cannot stay.

                       AIR.--LORD GRIZZLE.

   In hurry post haste for a license,
       In hurry ding dong I come back;
   For that you sha'n't need bid me twice hence,
       I'll be there, and here, in a crack.
                Hey ting,
                My heart's on the wing,
       I now could leap over the moon,
                Let the chaplain
                Set us grap'ling.
       And we'll stock a baby-house soon.

Hunc.     Oh!
Griz.     Ah!                                 [ Exit.

Enter TOM THUMB.

Tom.     Where is my Huncamunca? where's my princess?
Where those bright eyes, the card-matches of Cupid,
That light up all with love my waxen soul?
Hunc.     Put out the light, nor waste thy little taper.
Tom.     Put out the light? impossible!
As well Sir Solomon might put out his rush-light.
Hunc.     I am to Lord Grizzle promis'd.
Tom.     Promis'd!
Hunc.     Too sure, 'tis enter'd in fate's journal.
Tom.     Enter'd.
Zounds! I'll tear out the leaf--I'll blot the page
--I'll burn the book.
I tell thee, princess, had I been thy help-mate,
We soon had peopled this whole realm with Thumbs.
Hunc.     O fie! I shudder at the gross idea!
Tom.     Then go we to the king--let him decide,
Whether you shall be Grizzle's or my bride.
[Going out hand-in-hand, are met by GLUMDALCA.
Glum.     Stop, brandy-nose! hopest thou the wight,
Who once hath worn my easy chains, will toil in thine?
Hunc.     Easy, no doubt, by twenty husbands worn.
Tom.     In the balcony which o'erhangs the stage,
I've seen one wench two 'prentices engage:
This half-a-crown doth in his fingers hold,
That just lets peep a little bit of gold.
Miss, the half-guinea wisely doth purloin,
And scorns the bigger, and the baser, coin.

                       TRIO.

Glum.     Oh! the vixen pigmy brat,
                   Of inches scarce half six;
               To slight me for a chit like that,
                   Ah! Mr. Tom, are these your tricks?

Hunc.     Oh! the coarse salacious trull,
                   Who giant paramours twice ten
                   To bed can pull,
                   With hugs can lull,
                   Yet still would gull
               Young gentlemen.

Tom.     Little though I be,
            I scorn the sturdy strum;
                       Nor ever she,
                       My dear from thee
            Shall debauch thy own Tom Thumb.
Glum.     Oh! the vixen, &c.
Hunc.     Oh! the coarse, &c.
Tom.     Little though I be, &c.                 [ Exeunt.

           ACT II.

SCENE I-- The Court of the Palace.

Enter NOODLE.

Nood.     Sure, Nature means to unhinge the solid globe!
Chaos is come again--all's topsy-turvy.

           AIR.--NOODLE.

   King Arthur in love ancle deep--speed the plough.
       Glumdalca will soon be his punk-a;
   The Queen Dollallolla's as drunk as a sow,
       In bed with Tom Thumb, Huncamunca.

Enter LORD GRIZZLE, hastily .
Griz.     If this be true, all women kind are damn'd.
Nood.     If it be not, may I be damn'd myself.
                                                                                    [ Exit .
Griz.     Then, get out, patience! oh, I'm whirlwind all;
Havoc, let loose the dogs of war, hallo!         [ Exit .

SCENE II.-- A Chamber in the Palace .

Enter QUEEN.

Queen.     Ah! wherefore from his Dollallolla's arms.
Doth Arthur steal? Why all alone,
And in the dark, leave her, whose feeble nerves
He knows are harrow'd up with fears of spirits?

Enter KING.

King.     We hop'd the fumes, sweet queen, of last night's punch,
Had glued they lovely eyes; but, ah! we find
There is no power in drams to quiet wives.

Enter NOODLE.

Nood.     Long life to both your majesties,--if life
Be worth a fig--Lord Grizzle, at the head
Of a rebellious rout, invests the palace;
He swears--unless the princess straight
Be yielded up, with Tom Thumb's pate,
About your ears he will beat down the gate.
King.     The devil he will!--but see the princess!

Enter HUNCAMUNCA.

Say, where's the mighty Thumb, our sword and buckler?
Though 'gainst us men and giants league with gods:
Yet Thumb alone is equal to more odds.
Hunc.     About an hour and a half ago
Tom sallied forth to meet the foe,
And soon, who's who, he'll make them know.
King.     Oh! oh!
Come Dollallolla: Huncamunca, come;
Within, we'll wait in whole skins for Tom Thumb.
                                                        [ Exeunt .

SCENE III.-- A Plain .

Enter LORD GRIZZLE, NOODLE, and Rebels.
                                                    [A March.]
Griz.     Thus far with victory our arms are crown'd;
For, though we have not fought, yet have we found
No enemy to fight withal.
                                                                        [ Drums and Trumpets .

Enter THUMB, DOODLE, and Soldiers .

Tom.     Art thou the man, whom men fam'd Grizzle call?
Griz.     Art thou the much more fam'd Tom Thumb the small?
Tom.     The same.
Griz.     The same.
Tom.     His prowess now each prove.
Griz.     For liberty I stand.
Tom.     And I for love
                        [A battle between the two armies ; they fight off.

Enter GLUMDALCA, and meets GRIZZLE, while fighting THUMB.
Glum.     Turn, coward, turn! nor from a woman fly!
Griz.     Thou art unworthy of my arm.
Glum.     Am I?
Have at thy heart then!
                                            [ Thrusts at, but misses him .
Griz.     Rampant queen of sluts!
Now have at thine.             [ Strikes .
Glum.     [ Falling .] You've run me through the guts.
Griz.     Then there's an end of one.         [ Going.
                    [ Is met by TOM THUMB, who runs him through .
Tom.     An end of two,
Thou hast it.                                             [ Exit .
Griz.     Oh, Tom Thumb!     [ Falls .] thy soul beshrew!
I die--Ambition! the fates have made their tour,
And the black cart is waiting at the door.

           AIR.--LORD GRIZZLE.

   My body is a bankrupt's shop,
       My cruel creditor, grim Death;
   Who puts to life's brisk trade a stop,
       And will be paid with my last breath.--
            Oh! Oh! Oh!                         [ Dies .

Enter TOM THUMB and Attendants .

Tom.     Bear off the carcasses; lop off his knob,
'Twill witness to the king Tom Thumb's good job;
Rebellion's dead, and now--I'll go to breakfast.
                                                                    [ Exit.
[Attendants lay hold of GRIZZLE.

Griz.     Why dost thou call me from the peaceful grave?
Attend.     Sir, we came to bear your body off.
Griz.     Then I'll bear it off myself.             [ Exeunt .

SCENE IV.-- The Presence-chamber.

Enter KING ARTHUR, QUEEN DOLLALLOLLA, PRINCESS
HUNCAMUNCA, DOODLE, PLUMANTE, FRIZALETTA,
and Attendants .

King.     Open the prisons, set the wretched free
And bid our treasurer disburse five guineas
To pay their debts.--Let our arch necromancer,
Sage Merlin, straight attend us:--we the while
Will view the triumph of our son-in-law.
Hunc.     Take note, Sir, that on this our wedding-day
Two victories hath my gallant husband won.

Enter NOODLE.

Nood.     Oh, monstrous, dreadful, terrible! oh! oh!
King.     What means the blockhead?
Nood.     But to grace my tale with decent horror:
Tom Thumb is no more!
A huge red cow, larger than the largest size, just now i'the open street,
Before my eyes, devour'd the great Tom Thumb!
                                                                    [ A general groan .
King.     Shut, shut again the prisons:
Let our tresurer
Not issue out three farthings. Hang all the culprits,
And bid the schoolmasters whip all their little boys.
Nood.     Her majesty the queen is in a swoon.
Queen.     Not so much in a swoon, but to have still
Strength to reward the messenger of ill.
                                                                    [QUEEN kills NOODLE.
Friz.     My lover kill'd--
His death I thus revenge.     [ Kills the QUEEN.
Hunc.     Kill my mamma!
O base assassin! there!     [ Kills FRIZALETTA.
Dood.     For that, take this!     [ Kills HUNCA.
Plum .    And thou, take that.    [ Kills DOODLE.
King.     Die, murderess vile!     [ Kills PLUM.
Ah, Death makes a feast to-day,
And but reserves ourselves for his bon bouche .
So when the boy, whom nurse from danger guards,
Sends Jack for mustard with a pack of cards;
Kings, queens, and knaves, tip one another down,
Till the whole pack lie scatter'd and o'erthrown.
Thus all our pack upon the floor is cast,
And my sole boast is, that I will die the last.
                [ Stabs himself;--they all lie on the stage, dead .

MERLIN rises.--Thunder and lightening .

Merlin. Blood, what a scene of slaughter's here!
But I'll soon shift it, never fear.
Gallants, behold! one touch of Merlin's magic,
Shall to gay comic change this dismal tragic.
                                                    [ Waves his wand.

Scene changes, and discovers the Cow .

First, at my word, thou horned cannibal,
Return again our England's Hannibal.
                                                                [ Thunder .

[THUMB is thrown out of the Cow's mouth, and starts fiercely .]

Next to you, king, queen, lords, and commons,
I issue my hell-bilking summons.

                         INCANTATION.

Arise, ye groupes of drunken sots!
Who deal out deaths, you know not why;
No more of porter pots, or plots
Your senseless jealousy lay by.
Your souls cannot as yet be far
Upon their way to dreary night:
My power remands them.
                            [ They all start up as MERLIN touches them.

Enter GLUMDALCA and GRIZZLE.

Here ends jar,
Live, love, and all this will be right.
King.     [ To the QUEEN.] One kind buss, my Dolly Queen;
When we two last parted,
We scarce hop'd to buss again;
My heart! lord, how it smarted!
Queen.     [ To the KING.] Dear King Atty, pitty, patty,
Mine too went a fleeting;
Now we in a nipperkin
May toast this merry meeting.
Tom.     [ To HUNC.] Come, my Hunky, come, my pet,
Love's in haste, don't stay him;
Deep we are in Hymen's debt,
And 'tis high time we pay him.
Hunc.     [ To TOM.] Have, dear Tommy,
Pity on me;
I am by shame restricted;
Yet I obey,
So take your way
I must not contradict it.
Griz.     [ To GLUM.] Grandest Glum, in my behoof,
To love's laws be pliant;
Me you'll find a man of proof,
Although not quite a giant.
Glum.     [ To GRIZ.] Indeed, Lord Griz,
Through for that phiz
Few amorous queens would choose you
Yet thus bereft,
Not one chum left,
I think I can't refuse you.
Merlin. Now love and live, and live and love.
All.     Sage Merlin's in the right on't;
Merlin. Each couple prove like hand in glove;
All.     Agreed.
Queen. 'Fore George, we'll make a night on't.
All.     Let discord cease,
Let all in peace
Go home and kiss their spouses;
Join hat and cap
In one loud clap,
And wish us crowded houses.
                                                    [ Exeunt .

---

---

KING ARTHUR IN AVALON

by

SARA HAMMOND PALFREY

               Part I.

"The hymn of the conquered, who fell in the battle of life,
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife,
The weary, the broken in heart,
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part;
Whose hopes burned in ashes away;
From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at; who stood at the dying of day,
With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, unheeded, alone,
With Death swooping down on their failure, and all but their faith overthrown."
                      "Io Victis," by William Story.

   The day was ending. Uther's mighty son
Had put forth all his strength, and all in vain.
Fate was his foes' ally; and Fate had won
The battle. All around him on the plain
Lay the stark bodies of his warriors slain,
With faces to the sky and wounds in front.
They echoed not his war-cry to their wont.

   Oh, day of anguish! Strange and awful day
Of pain more piercing than the pain of wounds,--
Wounds scarcely felt, numbed by the great dismay
Unspeakable that a great soul astounds,--
His soul that, never taught in any strife
Before to spell the ungly word defeat ,
Just in the very crisis of his life,
Hath done his best of bests but to be foiled,
He knows not why, and strives and strives amain
But to be beaten o'er and o'er again,
His onslaughts baffled and his standard moiled!

   And Launcelot was not there, nor Lionel,
Villyars, nor Melyas brave, nor Sir Lavayne;
They who erewhile around him fought so well,
With many another, now were worse than slain.
Treason had broken up the Table Round.
He who can patch burst bubbles on the mere,
Let him old broken fellowships make sound,
By discord sundered,--once how leal and dear!--
And he who hath the power, by witchcraft deft,
The crumbled eggs the cuckoo's beak hath cleft,
Filled with new life, without a scar to mend,
Bid him with magic skill to join once more
The ties undone, once knit through friend to friend,
Round heart and heart as closely as before.

   Still Arthur fought and struggled, e'en as one
Fights with a grisly dream and strives to wake.
He saw that he was more and more alone.
A spell was on him that he could not break.
He called on Galahad and Percivale,
And then remembered they had long been dead.
He rallying led his dwindling squadrons on,
That melted as the surf upon the rock,
And set his lonely breast to meet the shock
Of foemen still more swarming to make head
Against him; for 'tis something, not to quail,
When comes the time no longer to prevail.

   And Mordred marked,-- his kinsman traitor black,--
And bode his time; till Arthur 'gainst an oak
His heaving shoulder leaned a breathing-space.
He dared not look him in the royal face,
But ran behind and stabbed him in the back,
As the sly coward snake doth glide and sting,
Then fled content. Oh, kindred glaives cut deep!

   As the shot stag his antlers high doth fling,
So threw his hands aloft the stricken king,
And fell at last. He fell and rose no more,
Pierced to the soul,-- oh, kindred steel stabs sore!--
While unawares a cry from out him broke
Of more than any fleshly pang, and woke
Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere, who lay
Fast in a deathly swoon, and made them leap,
Two ghastly wights, as from two graves two ghosts
All pale and wavering, quick to seize on him
And steal him from the trampling of the hosts.
They reared the mighty frame; each drooping limb
They gathered up. O'erpowered beneath the weight,
Fell Lucan back, and breathed his last life out,
With patient looks, before his master's feet.

   And Arthur saw and moaned, with sobbing breath,
"Oh, loyal,--dear,-- oh, trusty one!-- thy death,--
I thank thee,-- makes death easier unto me.
Hark,-- nearer,-- hear the rebels how they shout!
Go, leave me, Bedivere; and save one life.
Mine canst thou not; nor would I that thou shouldst,
Having lost all that makes it life to live.
Win bays hereafter in some happier strife.
To-day and aye, thou hast done all thou couldst."

   He gasped away to dumbness; and again
Strove Bedivere to lift him from the plain,
But could not till he'd stripped him of his mail,
Helm, shield, and breast-plate,-- weakly then did heave
His master up. Excalybur 'gan trail
Down from his hand, and still a furrow ploughed
Unevenly along the dust, as slow
The knight set staggering footsteps one by one,
With head bent down and burdened shoulders bowed.
King Arthur could not lift, nor would let go,
The mystic sword,-- not yet,-- till, on a strand,
A ruined chapel, buried half in sand
And half in ivy, met and took them in.
They saw themselves unseen and all alone;
And their stunned ears were sheltered from the din
Of following battle. Panting Bedivere
Stooped lower still, and eased him of his load,
And laid his sovereign on a tomb, both broad
And long, above the nettles which there grew,
And loosed his sinews from their cramp and ache.

   And Arthur writhed his neck; the gathering dew
He sucked from the cold stone; and thus he spake:

   "So!-- Good it is for me that I am here.
My goodly knights are earth on the dead earth;
Myself henceforth am only a dead knight,--
Dead in their deaths more dear than life to me,--
And I shall never be myself again!
Oh, Bedivere, a kinsman's blade is keen!
My woful body's homesick for the mould.
Fast draws on me a never-waking sleep;
And soon my burning fever shall be cold.
Mourn not; for thus Death ever followed Birth
Since first the hapless race of Man began;
Thus shall it ever do till Time shall end.
Mine eyes grows dim; and, throbbing on my ear,
I hear the beating of a shoreless sea.
Pray for my soul.-- Thou art not gone?-- O friend,
One service more,-- one only,-- do thy lord.
Take, Bedivere, and drown, my vanquished sword
Where never man shall look upon it more;
Hurl't from some beetling cliff the waters o'er;
Then lightly bring me word if aught thou seest."

   Sir Bedivere went sadly forth to turn
His beaded forehead to the windy west.
The sun was setting, angry, wild, and red,
Going like a wounded warrior to his bed,
With threats of rising to a fiercer morn.
A double sunset weltered in the flood;
And swam beneath his feet a sea of blood,
As on the brink he stood. With stronger hold
He clutched Excalybur, and slowly wound
The baldrick rich the jewelled hilt around,
And took a parting look at all the gold,
Emeralds, pearls, rubies,-- looked again below
Among the waves, considering where to throw,
Then at the sword,-- till, gazing to and fro,
He said, "King Arthur's crazed with wounds and woe,
And knows not what he'd have. The leech's skill
Oft serves the sick man's weal against his will;
And so must I. He will be healed anon.
His troops will rally. If his sword be gone,
I shall be sorely blamed, with reason, when
He strides in steel once more before his men,
And Future cancels Past;-- for, sad or gay,
To-morrow never will be as To-day."

   He looked behind him; and a hollow tree
Stood lke a beckoning sentry on a height:
"Here shall Excalybur in safety be
Until my lord demands it back of me."
He thrust it up the trunk and, from the sight
Of hind or fisherman by Chance led by,
Smothered its sparkles close, with sea-weeds dry,
Then hurried to his master languishing.
And "Hast thou done my errand?" sighed the king.

   With looks askance, as one unused to lie,
And faltering tongue, Sir Bedivere said, "Ay."

   "What saw'st thou?"

   "Naught but waves that fawned, and licked,
Like hungry hounds, the wet feet of the rocks."

   Upstarting to his elbow, "Am I tricked,"
Cried Arthur, "on my death-bed, and by thee?
Know that a dying king is still a king!"
Straight find my sword, and in the waters fling;
Or I!"-- His wounds burst forth afresh; and he
Sank back in speechless rage, with eyes that glared.

   And Bedivere, "'Twas for thy sake, I dared
To disobey. I did but for the best";
And, more than his mild words, his loyal face,
Dyed with unwonted shame, did plead for him,
And with his master well-nigh made his peace.

   "Then go and do thy best,-- not ' for the best';
That often is the worst."

   "I go, thy hest,
My dearest liege, most throughly to fulfil;
Yet oh, bethink thee once! The matchless brand
Alone of all befits thy matchless hand;
And thou mayst sorely miss it yet one day,
When the vain mermen with it sport and play.
Take heart, and live. These hurts are not to death."

   Moaned Arthur: "Wouldst thou waste my parting breath,
Due all to prayers? Go thou, and do my will.
Mine arm is broken; and my veins are drained.
To everything on earth there comes an end.
O comrade, comrade, kinsmen's cuts are keen,
I shall never do my best again!
I tell thee it is time for me to die.
But if I lived to sit at slothful ease,
Mid women and their works, as Hercules
Of yore behind the wheel of Omphale,
Would the brave sword be a reproach to me,
And on the wall hang like mine effigy."

   Sir Bedivere unto the seashore hied.
The west was paling like a dying man.
He peered into the hollow trunk. A spark,--
A diamond,-- twinkled downward through the dark
And rubbish, that to hide it vainly tried.
Excalybur came forth; and he began
Anew its jewelled hilt and sheath to scan,
Till failed his heart once more; for every gem
Seemed to him like an angry tear to flash,
With wrathful lightnings through the gathering gloom,
As chafing hotly at the unworthy doom,
That gave it brine for blood. "I cannot do 't"
With answering tears he said; "Oh, 'twere too rash!
My king himself, too late, the deed would chide
And claim his weapon of the unyielding tide.
And, when thus recklessly away we cast
From us the sacred heirlooms of the past,
We throw away our past that cleaves to them.
He will be whole and cheered, and on his throne
Sit calmly, come again unto his own,
With wise gray heads around the council-board;
And they will lift slow eyes from scroll and seal
And chartered ordinance for the public weal,
To see the glory of the mighty sword
Fling from the wall its mystic splendours down
Confronted with the sceptre and the crown;
And they will smile and say, 'All things in turn.
He is scarce greater now than in his morn,--
In counsel than, in youth, he was in war.--
Behold the witness there, Excalybur.'
And he may leave it to a doughty son,
When all his earthly deeds in sooth are done."
He gave it back unto the hollow thorn,
And sought the ruin with a fearful foot.

   "Now hast thou done my biding?-- Sawst thou aught?"

   Sir Bedivere made answer, "Nay" and "Naught;
But hear me."

   Groaned the king, "I cannot hear.
Will none obey? Oh, is 't too late?-- too late!--
Methougtht it lay in me to conquer Fate.
Why heeds me no one? Where are all my train?"
He moaned aloud, scarce witting what he said.

   The knight knelt down and sobbed: "Oh, master dear,
Dost thou not know me? I am Bedivere."

   "I know thee not. The man who bore that name
Was true and trusty to me."

   "I, the same."

   "Prove it. If Arthur can command no more,
Then, in my utmost need will I implore:
Spare not Excalybur, but cast it in.
To mock a dying man, it is a sin.
My heart is broken; and my hope is dead."

   Then saw the knight, that it was all in vain.
With tottering speed unto the cliffs he ran.
Now all the glow was quenched within the sky;
But, o'er the sea, a light sepulchral gleamed
Like corpse-lights o'er the graves of buried men.
He dared not face the magic sword again,
But, groping, tore it forth and hurled it high
And far; when, lo, a wonder! For there seemed
A hand and arm,--no human hand and arm!--
To start to meet the hilt from out a wave;
And thrice they brandishèd the mystic glaive,
Then vanished with it, as if they a charm
Had wrought, of meaning never to be told.

   He flew unto his master. "It is done!"
He panted.

   Him King Arthur answered not.
The knight stooped quick unto him, as he lay;
Like the dim shimmer of a mist-quenched moon,
The phantom of a dying smile was caught,
And seen the questioning of a speechless look,
Most eager.

   "When I threw thy sword away,
This marvel did my watery eyes behold:
A hand and arm from out the billows broke,
And caught and brandished it with threefold sweep,
Then drew it down with them into the deep."

   And Arthur lifted up his trembling hands,
Like a sick infant, with the dumb commands
Of helplessness, when it would carried be,
And pointed where he heard the sounding sea;
And bearing him, with toil and travail sore,
His loyal liegeman reached again the shore.

   A cloud came forth out of the cloudy west;
And in its darkness darkling shapes took shape,
Till, ere they found the shuddering Bedivere,
He dimly might descry a sable barge
That held right on without an oar or sail;
And those within it sang a hollow dirge;
And, as it neared him, 'mid the shadowy crew,
The black-stoled Queen of North Galys he knew,
And her of the Waste Lands; and loud did weep,
Morgan le Fay, King Arthur's sister, wail,
And beat her breast between them.

   Straight her veil
Blew over the knight's eyes; and, lo, his charge
Was gone out of his arms, he wist not how!
He stood forsaken on the strand, and cried,
"My lord, my loved, come back! What should I do
Not serving thee? Come back! What should betide
Me lonely in the emptied world? If fled
From it forever, take me!-- Take my breath,
Dark spirits!"--

   Faint and far, from o'er the surge,
King Arthur answered with the voice of death,
"Look to thyself. Heaven help thee! I am sped.
I go unto the Isle of Avalon;
For there they say, at last I shall find rest
For all my stormy years of sovereignty."

               Part II.

   King Arthur sailed along a sea unknown.
Met him the misty Night, and drew him in
Unto the cherishing shelter of her breast.
He glided onward toward the land of rest.
In his parched throat, his burning thirst was drowned
By draughts of coolness, brought by hands unseen.
Upon his long-lost mother's lap, his head,
Worn out with toil and woe, was softly laid,--
Or so he deemed. Her tender palms were pressed
Unto his temples; and his brow was kissed
By her fond lips, that murmured love and peace
As in some shildish sickness long ago.
Far Uther called before, "Well done,-- well done!
Here grow thy laurels, son,-- my worthy son!"
The waves sang lullabies to him, and rocked
His weary frame all bruised and battle-shocked,
And soothed it slowly into slumberous ease;
And thus he slept, to wake in Avalon,--
If waking e'er was calm as any dream,--
Half wake, and sleep again.

   Around did seem,
Or were, his knights all laid, as oft of yore
In lusty bivouac; but frost or snow
Or wind or rattling hail came nigh no more.
Sunrise and sunset, these made all their day.
Around them, for the most part, moonbeams lay
Exchanging watch with starlight, to the sound
Of rippling brooks, that played a harmony
Unto the nightingales' weird melody,
Or to the distant surgings of the surf
Below them, where they pressed some steep's scant turf.
No uttered speech among them now was there,
Nor any need of speech amid the dear
Unuttered sympathy of love and cheer.
In sentient trance, without a look or word,
He saw the vanished and the voiceless heard.
Heart answered unto heart, and mind to mind,
In a most eloquent silence. Now a hymn
Swelled upward from the soul of Galahad,
And lulled King Arthur with its sweetness dim;
And now he laughed in slumber at some whim
That, tickling, crossed the freakish brain of Kay.

   Sometimes they round him camped, in many a tent,
Whereon soft rains their drowsy patterings spent,
With cosey whisperings bidding still their sleep,
In shelter snug, to grow more sound and deep,
(The dog that loved him once, and died in pain,
Slept at his feet or licked his hand again.)
Sometimes they rested in a curchyard calm,
A troop of spirits, on the graves' thick grass.
Sometimes amid a minister's painted glooms
They seemed to lie, (like Templars on their tombs),
And he among them carved, a marble knight,
To hear, within the sacred candles' light,
The holy choirs unseen chant laud or psalm.
No more was he forsaken anywhere.

   At first he heard the voices of his foes
That, on their hurried way, seemed nigh to pass
Ere, into silence swept away, they went
Before a judgment-seat, where Justice sat
And waited them. Sir Lancelot, following, wrung
Unmailèd hands and, with a noiseless tongue,
Forgiveness asked, with eyes that gazed through tears
And rained remorseful sorrow o'er his woes.
All Arthur's wrath was melted straight thereat;
And, through his sleep, he murmured his assent
With answering tears of pity; and anon
Foes and their bitteer memories were gone;
Not any lingering rancour left behind,
Nor any power to vex him more they had.

   No longer haunted him light Guinevere;
But watching o'er him often did appear
Instead, his boyhood's love, her sister fair,
Who loved him, only him, and loved him well,--
Sweet maid, too early crowned with asphodel.--

   The joy of youth came back to him. He thrilled
With growing powers that all his being filled.
Each innocent Yearning that was starved to death
Erst, by the hard conditions of this life,
Arose new-born, and smiled on him full-fed.
Despair in turn was killed and, deep beneath
The past's old ruins, buried by the years;
And anywhere was balm, and nowhere strife.

   So still he sleeps, and does not care to wake;
But Merlin saith, at length a day shall break
And ripen onward to another noon
When, master of his fate and blithe and whole,
And all renewed in body, mind, and soul,
King Arthur, with his knights, shall come again,
To weild Excalybur, and not in vain.

---

---

SIR FLORIS

by

JOHN PAYNE

THE ROMAUNT OF SIR FLORIS

In this sweet world and fair to see,
          There is full many a mystery,
       That toil and misery have wrought
       To banish from the sight and thought
    Of striving men in this our air
    Of pain and doubt, and many a fair
Sweet wonder that doth live and move
Within the channel of Christ's love.
    And of these, truly, aforetime
    Was made full many a tender rhyme
And lay of wonder and delight;
And by full many a noble knight
    And minstrel was the story told,
    With the sweet simple faith of old,
Of how the questing was fulfill'd
Of that Sangreal that was will'd
    By the dear God to Galahad,
    And how by many a one was had
Rare venture in the holy Quest,
Albeit very few were blest
    With comfort in the sight of it;
    And by that menestrel, to wit,
(Oh sweetest of all bards to me
And worthiest to Master be
   Of all that sing of Christ His knight
   And Questing of the Grail!) that hight
Of Eschenbach, that tale was writ
Of Percivale, that now doth sit
   Within the bosom of the Lord,
    And how he strove with spear and sword
Full many a year for Christ His grace.
And with delight of those old lays,
   There long has murmur'd in my brain
   A song that often and again
Has cried to me for utterance;
And now---before the sad years chance
   To bear all thought of holiness
   From men with mirk of pain and stress
Of toil---it wearies me to tell
Of all that unto Floris fell,
   And all his toil and all his bliss
   And grace in winning to Christ's kiss.
Wherefore, I pray you, hearkneth
The while with scant and feeble breath
   I tell to you a quaint old tale,
   Wherein is neither sin nor bale,
But some sweet peace and sanctity:
And there not only wonders be,
   But therewithal a breath of love
   Is woven round it and above,
That lovers in the Summer-prime
May clasp warm hands o'er this my rhyme,
   As finding there some golden sense
   Of Love's delicious recompense:
For what withouten love is life?
And if therein is any strife,
   Or therewithal offences be,
   I pray you pardon it to me:
Wherefore, Christ hearten you, I say,
Et Dieu vous doint felicité.

I. THE FIRST COMING OF THE DOVE.

Hard by the confluence of Rhone
A castle of old times alone
   Upon a high grey hill did stand,
   And look'd across the pleasant land:
And of the castle castellain
And lord of all the wide domain
   Of golden field and purple wood
   And vineyards where the vine-rows stood
In many a trellis, Floris was;
A good knight and a valorous,
   And in all courtesies approved,
   That unto valiantise behoved.
Full young he was and fair of face,
And among ladies had much grace,
   And favour of all men likewise:
   For in such stout and valiant guise
His years of manhood had he spent
In knightly quest and tournament,
   There was no knight in all the land
   Whose name in more renown did stand,
And the foe quaked to look upon
The white plume of his morion,
   When through the grinding shock of spears
   Sir Floris' war-cry pierced their ears
And over all the din was blown
The silver of his clarion.

   So was much ease prepared for him,
   And safety from the need and grim
Hard battle against gibe and sneer
That must full oft be foughten here--
   For evil fortune and the lack
   Of strength to thrust the envious back--
By many a noble soul and true;
And had he chosen to ensue
   The well-worn path that many tread
   For worship, all his life were spread
Before him, level with delight.
But if in shock of arms and fight
   Of squadrons he disdainèd not
   To win renown, the silken lot
Of those that pass their days in ease
And dalliance on the flower'd leas
   Of life was hateful to his soul;
   And so--when once the battle's roll
And thunder was from off the lands
Turn'd back and from the war-worn hands
   The weapons fell--he could not bring
   His heart to brook the wearying
Of peace and indolent disport
Of ease. Wherefore he left the court--
   So secretly that no one knew
   Awhile his absence--and withdrew
A season to his own demesne,
And there in solitude was fain
   To yearn for some fair chance to hap
   And win his living from the lap
Of drowsy idlesse with some quest,
That should from that unlovely rest
   Redeem him to the old delight
   Of plucking--in the bold despite
Of danger--from the brows of Fate
Some laurel. Nor had he to wait
   The cooling of his knightly fire;
   There was vouchsafed to his desire,
Ere long, a very parlous quest,
That should unto the utterest
Assay his knightly worth and test
   The temper of his soul full well
   And sore. And in this wise it fell.

It chanced one night,--most nigh the time
When through the mist-wreaths and the rime
   The hours begin to draw toward
   The enchanted birthnight of the Lord,--
That in the midnight, on his bed,
He heard in dreams, a voice that said
   "Arise, Sir Floris, get thee forth,
   An thou wouldst prove thee knight of worth!"
Gross slumbers of the middle night
So held and clipp'd the valiant knight,
   He might him not to speak address
   For slumber and for heaviness.

Again it rang out loud and clear,
So that might not choose but hear,
And in his heart he quaked for fear;
   But still he lay and answer'd not,
   Such hold had sleep upon him got.

A third time through the chamber past
The voice, as 'twere a trumpet's blast:
   "Arise, Sir Floris, harness thee,
   For love of Christ that died on tree!"

He started up from sleep for fear
And groped to find a sword or spear,
Thinking some enemy was near;
   But of no creature was he ware.
   He saw the moon hang in the air--
As 'twere a cup of lucent pearl--
And in the distance heard the swirl
   Of waters through the silence run;
   But other sight or sound was none.

The moon's light lay across the night
In one great stream of silver-white,
   And folded round the Christ that stood
   At bedhead, carven in black wood;
And Floris, looking on the way
Of light that through the chamber lay,
   Was ware of a strange blossoming--
   As of some birth of holy thing--
That in the bar of silver stirr'd;
And as he gazed, a snow-white bird
   Grew slowly into perfect shape,
   As if some virtue did escape
From that strange silver prisonhouse
Into the city perilous
   Of life, and for its safety's sake
   The likeness of a fowl did take.
The light seem'd loth to let it go
Into this world of sin and woe
   (So pure and holy) and put out
   Long arms of white the dove about,
As if to net it safely in:
But, as the holy bird did win
   It way and through the meshes rent,
   The rays of light together blent
And fell into a cross of white,
Whereon the silver dove did light
   Above the image benedight.

   Sir Floris wonder'd at the sight,
And looking on the cross, he deem'd
That from the Christ a glory gleam'd
   And lay in gold towards the door;
   And something bade him go before.

He rose and girt himself upon
With helm and with habergeon,
   And in his hand his sword full bright
   He bore, that Fleurdeluceaunt hight.

The dove flew out into the air,
And Floris follow'd through the bare
   Dumb ways and chambers to the gate,
   Whose open leaves for them did wait,
And as into the night they past,
Together were behind them cast.

   The night was dumb, the moon did glower
   Upon them, like a pale sick flower
That in the early chill of spring
Mocks at the summer's blossoming,
   And over every hill and stowe
   The ways were white and sad with snow.

So pass'd he, with the silver dove
That went before him and above,
   Within the sheeny moonés light--
   Wherewith her outspread plumes were dight
So that it seem'd each wing became
And grew into a silver flame--
   Until the hollow'd snow was track'd
   Into a woodway, where there lack'd
The moonlight, and the mountain-side
With drooping ash and linden vied
   To keep the hollow place from ray
   Or glimmer of the silver-play.

The dove flew in, and, following,
Sir Floris heard a muffled ring
   Of silver in the mountain's womb,
   As if dead music there had tomb.
Here the dove folded wings and smote
The part wherefrom the sound did float.

   The mountain open'd, and they went,
   By force of some strange wonderment,
   Into a place of flowers, all sprent
With jewels of the blossom-time;
And all the air was sweet with rhyme:
There reign'd an endless summer-prime.
   Tall green was there of leaféd trees,
   And in the blossom'd walks the breeze
Was music, such as winds and plays
About the May-sweet woodland ways,
   When spring is fresh and hope is clear;
   And in the place where leaves are sere
On earth, there lay great heaps of gold,
Yweft my wonderment untold
   To semblance of the Autumn's waste,
   Through which the sweet wind play'd and chased
Its frolic breaths with perfume laden.

In grass stood many a white maiden
   That lily in the outworld hight;
   And roses all the herbage dight.
Bright plaited beds of jewel-flowers
Were thick-set in the garden bowers,
   And many a row of sunflowers stood
   Along the marges of the wood,
And to the sapphire heaven turn'd,
As if towards the sun they burn'd.
   About the blossoms, round and over,
   Strange golden-crested birds did hover
That flash'd and sparkled like a flight
Of wingèd starlets in the night;
   And, as they went, their pinions beat
   The air of that serene retreat
To rush and sweep of magic song,
And through the trees was sweet and strong
   The trill of lark and nightingale.
   There was not any note of wail
In song of birds or sweep of wind,
Such as in woodlands calls to mind
   The last year's winter and the next,
   Wherewith the listener's soul is vext
And thinks how short the spring will be,
And how the flower-times change and flee
   Towards the dreary month of snows.
   The full glad passion of the rose
Was joyous in the garden air,
And every sight and sound was fair
   With unalloy'd contentedness.
   There could not enter any stress
Of labour or of worldly woe;
But ever through the place did flow
   A silver sound of singing winds,
   A breath of jasmine and woodbinds,
As if all joy were gather'd there
And prison'd in the golden air.

   And as Sir Floris wonderèd
   At those sweet flow'rets white and red,
And at the stream's sweet song that set
The garden-breezes all afret
   With breaking waves of melody,
   And at the bird's sweet minstrelsy,--
There came to him a damozel
(How fair she was no man can tell),
And said, "Fair knight, now wit thou well
   That thou hast gather'd great renown
   In that sad world where trees are brown
And ways are white in winter-time,
And hast in many a maker's rhyme
   Been celebrate for gentilesse
   And valiant doings in the press
Of armèd knights and battle-play,
In tournament and in mellay;
   And over all the land is known
   How, many a time, thy horn has blown
To succour maidens in distress,
And oftentimes have had redress
   The needy by thy stroke of sword.
   So that to him, that is the lord
Of this fair place, the fame has won
Of all that thou hast dared and done
   In perfectness of chivalry;
   And he, who uses well to see
Great deeds of arms and shock of spears,
Has seen no one in all these years
   That may be chosen for thy peer;
   And therefore has he brought thee here,
To try thee if thou canst endure
Battle and venture, forte et dure
   Beyond the wont of men on earth;
   Wherein if thou canst prove thy worth,
He will advance thee to his grace
And set thee surely in high place
   Among his knights."

                              "Fair damozel,"
   Said Floris, "liketh me full well
The quest, by what you say of it:
But now, I pray you, let me wit
   Who is this lord, whose hest you bear,
   That is so high and debonair?
And what adventure must I prove
Before that I can win his love?"
   And she, "His name I may not tell;
   Hereafter shalt thou know it well;
But thou shalt see his presently."

   Then did she join her bended palms,
And falling down upon her knee
   Among the knitted herbs and haulms,
Did softly sing a full sweet rhyme;
And in a little space of time
   Was visible among the treen--
   Against a trellised work of green
That at the garden's farthest end
Among the leaves did twine and blend--
   A man, that walk'd among the flowers
   As softly as the evening hours
Walk in the summer-haunted treen.
Full tall and stately was his mien,
   And down his back the long hair lay,
   Red-gold as is the early day,
Whereon a crown of light was set.
Whoever saw might ne'er forget.
   The sweetness of his majesty.
   But in no wise could Floris see
Or win to look upon his face;
For, as he went, he turn'd aside
   His visage, as it were to hide
The light of its unearthly grace
   From mortal eyes.

                              Then Floris said,
"I pray thee of thy kindlihead,
   Fair maid, that I may come to look
   On this lord's visage." But she shook
Her head, and "Patience!" did she say.
"Thou must in fear and much affray
   For this fair place, and for the fame
   Of him that master of the same
And sovereign is, be purged and tried,
And through much venture must abide,
   Ere thou mayst look upon his face
   And win the guerdon of his grace,
And now the time is come to prove
Battle and hardship for his love.
   Adieu, sir knight: be bold and true!"

   Whereat she sped beyond his view,
And eke that figure vanishèd;
But Floris, lifting up his head,
   Was ware of a strange hand that bare
   A cross and stood in middle air,
And on the white plume of his crest
Did for a moment lie and rest.
   Therewith great ease was given him,
   And healing freedom from all dim
Sad doubts of fortune and of fate
In that great strife, that did await
   His proving; and the strength of men
   In him was as the strength of ten
Redoubled. Then he saw, beside
His feet, a flower-bed fair and wide
   Of roses mingled red and white,
   Full sweet of smell and fair of sight,
That in a trellised red-gold grate
Did hold a sweet and lovely state
   And spread around such wealth of balm,
   Their scent seem'd one great golden psalm
Of perfume to the praise of God.

Then Floris knelt upon the sod
   Of that fair place, and praying thrice
   Most heartily, did take advice
That up the silver-spangled grail--
That through the green did twine and trail
   Of that bright garden's goodliness--
   Some gruesome thing towards him did press.
As 'twere the roses to despoil.
So sprang he lightly from the soil,
   And from its scabbard iron-blue
   His falchion Fleurdeluceaunt drew,
And kiss'd its fair hilt cruciform;
Wherewith his heart wax'd bold and warm
   With courage past the use of men.

   Now was a loathly thing, I ween,
Made visible to him--that might
Well strike the boldest with affright.
   For up the sward to him did run
   A beast yet never saw the sun;
As 'twere a dog with double head,
Whose hinder parts were fashionèd
   Into the likeness of a worm.
   Full black and grisly was his form,
And blazing red his eyes and tongue
With raging choler, such as stung
   His lusting heart to rob and tear
   The flowers that in the garden were.
But as he came anigh the place
Wherein those roses all did grace
   The greensward, to his troubled sight
   Was visible that valiant knight,
That in whole armour of blue steel
Before the flowery shrine did kneel,
   To save the emblems of Love's joy
   From his most foul and rude annoy.
Wherefore at him with open mouth
The monster ran, as 'twere its drouth
   And ravening lust to wreak and slake
   Upon the knight. Then did he take
His sword, and with so stout a blow
Upon the beast's twin neck did throw
   The edge, that with the dolorous stroke
   The thread of its foul life he broke
In twain, and from the sunder'd veins
The black blood strew'd with loathly stains
   The tender grass and herbs therein;
   And as among the flower-stalks thin
The hideous purple gore was sprent,
From out the stain (O wonderment
   And grace of Mary merciful!)
   There open'd out the petals full
And lovesome of that snowy bloom
That is in all earth's sin and gloom
   The fairest of all flowers to see,
   The lily of white chastity.

Right glad was Floris of the sight,
And of the scent that from the white
   Gold-hearted bells to him was lent;
   And as he o'er the calyx bent
To breathe its fragrance, suddenly
There came a sound across the lea,
   That was as if a lion roar'd;
   And truly o'er the blossom'd sward
There ran to him a tawny beast,
Red-maned, that never stay'd nor ceased
   To roar, until the knight could feel
   His hot breath through the grated steel
That barr'd his vizor, and his claws
Sought grimly for some joint or pause
   In the hard mail, where he might set
   His tusks and through the rent veins let
The knight's life-blook upon the sward.
But Floris, lifting up his sword,
   Him with such doughty strokes oppress'd
   Upon his red and haughty crest,
That soon he made him loose his hold;
And in a while, no longer bold
   And arrogant, he would have fled,
   But that Sir Floris on his head
With the sharp edge smote such a blow,
The red blood from the rift did flow,
   And with the blood the life did pass:
   Wherefore from out the bloodied grass
There was uplift the rose of love,
With scent and blossom fair enough,
   I trow, to guerdon many a toil
   And many a battle in the coil
Of earthly woes.

                              But there was yet
No time for Floris to forget
   His trouble in the red flower's sight:
   He must again in deathly fight
Be join'd for the security
Of that fair garden's purity.
   For swiftly in the lion's place
   A raging leopard came, the grace
Of those sweet roses to despoil;
And as he came, the very soil
   Quaked underneath him, such a might
   To wreak his cholerick despite
'Gainst him that was the sovereign
Of that fair place, and such disdain
   Did rage in him, that he could see
   No thing for anger. So was he
Against the roses well nigh come,
Nay, was in act to spoil their bloom,
   When through his heart the deadly blade
   Slid cold; and turning round, he made
At Floris with a vengeful roar,
And with his claws his thigh he tore
   A hand's-breadth in his agony.
   Then down upon the grass fell he
And died; and in the tender sward,
Whereon his felon blood was pour'd,
   The sign of humbleness was set,
   The flower that men call violet.

Full faint was Floris with the loss
Of blood, that from the wound across
   His thigh did run in many a rill,
   And would have fain awhile been still
Without reproof. But no repose
Must he expect (nor one of those
   That in God's battle fight on earth)
   Nor pleasance of delight and mirth,
But many a dint and many a blow
Unceasing, till God will his woe
   Be ended and the goal be won.

   And so, as there he sat, anon,
Whilst wearily he look'd along
The fair wide path, he saw the long
   Slow travel of a hideous snake,
   That with much toil its way did make
   Towards the roses where he stood.
   So faint he was with failing blood,
He might not summon any strength
To smite its black and gruesome length
   At vantage, crawling, but must wait
   Until, with slow and tortuous gait,
It won to him. So weak he was,
He could not choose but let it pass
   Towards the trellis; and eftsoon,
   By him that lay in some half swoon,
Across the grass it slid and twined
Around the grating that confined
   The flowers, its black and hideous length,
   And breathed on them with all the strength
Of hate its envying soul could know
To gather in a breath, and so
   To spoil their fresh and goodly bloom:
   Whereat the blossoms with the gloom
Of its black coils, that shut the light
From over them, and with affright
   And sickness of its loathsome breath,
   Came very nigh to take their death.
For with such potent spells the air
Its venom darken'd of despair
   And malice, that the lovely red
   And white of their bright goodlihead
Was to a sickly pallor turn'd,
As if some loathly fever burn'd
   Within their hearts: and in a while
   No kiss of breeze or golden smile
Of sun had won them back to life,
So spent were they with the fell strife
   Of that curs'd beast,--had not a sweep
   Of wings awaken'd from the sleep
Of pain Sir Floris, and the scream
Of a great bird, whose plumes did seem
   To brush his forehead, roused his sense
   From the constraint of indolence.

Then sprang he up in strength renew'd;
And when he saw the serpent lewd
   And hideous, that in his embrace
   Did strangle all the life and grace
From out the flowers, he made at him
And with a grip so fierce and grim
   Oppres'd his scaly swollen neck,
   That with the dolour and the check
Of blood within his venom'd veins,
The snake must needs relax the chains
   In which he held the rosery;
   And in the act so mightily
Had leapt at Floris, that he wound
His arms and body closely round
   With scaly rings, and so uneath
   Did grip the knight, that little breath
Seem'd in his body to be left;
But, summoning all strength, he reft
   The horrid fetters from his breast,
   And flung the worm with utterest
His might full length against the ground.

There whiles it lay in seeming swound;
   And Floris, thinking it was dead,
   Would have lain down his weary head
Upon the grass, to take some ease
Awhile. Then from among the trees
   There came that fowl, that had awoke
   Him with its passing pinions' stroke,
And with so hard a buffet drove
Him down to earth, he could nor move
   Nor speak awhile, but lay as dead:
   And that foul bird, with eyes of red
And vulture claws, did strive the while
At every joint and crack of mail
   To wound him with its noisome beak.
   At last a place it found where weak
The armour was, and with such spite
Into Sir Floris' flesh did bite,
   That for the fierceness of the pain
   He started up from sleep again
And with so fierce and stout a blow
The vulture strake, the steel did go
   Athwart the pinions and the crest,
   And riving down the armour'd breast,
Did hew the gruesome snake in twain,
In whom the life began again
   To flutter. So the loathly two
   With that stroke died; and with the dew
Of their foul blood, the lovely green
Of the fair sward did such a spleen
   And hate of its despiteous hue
   Conceive, that quickly sprang to view
A twine of slow-white clematis,
The sign of sweet content that is;
   And where the bird in death was cold,
   There grew the glad bright marigold,
That in its gay and golden dress
Was ever symbol of largesse,
   Since all along the meads there run
   Its mimic mirrors of the sun,
Withouten any speck or flaw.

But none of this Sir Floris saw,
   Nor how the roses lightly wore
   The freshness of their bloom once more;
So weary was he and so worn
With strife, and therewithal so torn
   With claws and beak of that fierce bird,
   He lay aswoon and saw nor heard
Or sight or sound.

                              Now must I tell
A wondrous thing that here befell,
   Through grace of God and Christ, His Son:
   For, while he lay aswoon, came one
In white and shining robes array'd,
And touch'd him on the lips and said,
   "Arise, Sir Floris, whole of wound,
And fill thy quest!" And so was gone.
   And Floris started up from ground,
And was all whole in flesh and bone
   And full of heart the end to dare
   Of that hard venture.

                              Then the air
Was of a sudden darken'd o'er
With some foul thing, that semblance wore
   Of a half bird, and a half worm,
   Join'd in one foul and loathly form;
And with the rattle of the scales
Upon its wings--that (as huge flails
   Upon the golden garnered wheat
   With ceaseless rhythmic pulse do beat)
Did lash and wound the golden air--
The songs of breezes deadn'd were,
   And all was dumb for much dismay:
   And with its sight the lift grew gray.
And as it wheel'd on open wings,
With many blows and buffetings
   It strove to daunt that valiant knight
   And enforce him for sheer affright
To yield to it and let it fill
Its hungry maw at its foul will
   With those fair flowers. But Floris stood
   Undaunted, and with many a good
Stout stroke of point did wound the beast,
Werewith it bled and much increased
   Its ravenous rage. Then, suddenly,
   He felt sharp claws about his knee,
And, looking down, no little wroth,
He saw a huge and monstrous sloth,
   That with such force did hug his thighs
   And gript his arms in such hard wise,
That he could scarce with bended shield
Resist him, nor with power could wield
   His trusty sword; and as he strove
   That monster from his grip to move,
The dragon with so fell a swoop
Against him from on high did stoop,
   That down upon the ground he fell,
   And in the falling did repel
The sloth from off him. Then the twain
With such foul rage at him again
   Did press and buffet, that the life
   Out of his breast with that fierce strife
Was well nigh chased: but, by good hap,
It chanced he fell into the lap
   Of those fair blooms of various kind
   That did his victory call to mind
Against the cruel beaten foes;
And, falling heavily from blows
   Of beak and tallons, he with such
   A grinding weight did press and crush
The blossoms in the harsh and rude
Encounter, they must needs exude
   From out their chalices the sweet
   And precious essences that meet
To make the perfume of a flower,
And on his face and hands did shower
   Their gracious balms. So sweet they were
   And of a potency so rare
For salving every earthly pain,
The life began in every vein
   With their pure touch to run and glow;
   And soon the weary weight and woe
That lay on Floris was dispell'd.
Then, with new strength, from him he fell'd
   That hideous sloth; and being free
   An instant from his tyranny
And harsh oppression, to his feet
He sprang once more, and to defeat
   The wingèd worm himself address'd.
   That tore and ravish'd at his crest
With ceaseless fury; but it drew
Beyond his reaching, when it knew
   Its comrade worsted, and was fain
   To wait till it revived again.
But Floris, with a doubled hand,
Smote at the bear with his good brand
   So fell a stroke, the sharp death slid
   Through bone and sinew and forbid
Returning life to enter in
That loathly dwelling, foul with sin
   And sloth;--and so the thing was dead.
   And from the blood its slit veins bled
There came to life the blossoms sweet
And gold-eyed of the Marguerite,
   Incoronate with petals white.

   But that foul serpent with the sight
Of that good blow so sorely grieved
And fill'd with rage to be bereaved
   Of its grim comrade was, it threw
   All fear aside and fiercely flew
At Floris, with the armèd sting
Of its writhed tail all quivering
   In act to strike, and with so strong
   A swoop the dart did thrust and throng
Through dent and ring of riven mail,
The deadly point it did prevail
   To bury deep in Floris' breast.
   Whereat such rage the knight possess'd
That all the dolour he forgot
(Though very fierce it was, God wot,
   And sad) and throwing down his blade,
   With such a mighty force he laid
To drag that scorpion from his side,
The serpent's tail in twain he wried
   And in such hideous wounds it rent,
   That from the body coil'd and bent
With anguish it must needs divide.
Wherewith the cleft did open wide,
   And such a flood therefrom did flow
   Of blood upon the herbs below
That needs it seem'd the flowers must die;
And with the pain so fierce a cry
   Of agony the dragon gave,
   There is no heart of man so brave
And firm but he must quake at it.

And now the doom of death was writ
   In heaven for that unholy beast;
   And in a little while it ceased
To cry, and down upon the ground
It fell and died; and all around
   The firm earth quaked. And as it died,
   The blood--that wither'd far and wide
The herbs and 'mid the stalks did boil
For rage--was dried into the soil;
   Wherefore there sprang from out the stain
   The holy purple of vervain,
The plant that purgeth earth's desire.

Now may Sir Floris well aspire
   To have that peace he needeth so,
   And easance after toil and woe:
For there is none to fight with him
Of all those beasts so fell and grim;
   Nor any sign of further foe
   Within the garden is, I trow,
To let him from his victory;
And all around the place was free
   From fear; the breezes were atune
   Again with birdsongs, and the boon
Of scent within the flowers once more
Was golden, nor the heavens wore
   The hue of horror and dismay:
   And so me may be blithe and gay
And have sweet pleasance.

                              But alas!
No thought of this for Floris was.
   Within his veins the venom 'gan
   To curdle, and the red blood ran
With frozen slowness, as the sting
Of pain went ever gathering
   Fresh fierceness through him. Very nigh
   It seem'd to him he was to die.
He felt the chill of the last hour
Creep through him and the deathsweats pour
   Adown his brow: such agony
   Along his every vein did flee,
He could no longer up endure,
Nor hope for any aid or cure;
   But down upon the earth he sank
   Aswoon, with faded lips that drank
The dews of death, and, with a prayer
Half mutter'd in his last despair,
   The sense forsook him. So he lay
   Aswoon, poor knight, and (well-a-way!)
Most like to die.

                              But there was thought
In heaven for him that thus had fought
   For that fair garden's sake. The love
   Of the dear God that dwells above
Was mindful of him, though he knew
It not. And so to him there drew
   A tender dream,--as there he lay
   Smitten to death with that fierce fray,--
And fill'd his thought; and it did seem
To him, by virtue of the dream,
   That over him an angel stood,
   And with a sweet compassion view'd
His piteous state, and whiles did strew
Soft balms upon him, strange and new
   Unto his sense,--so comforting
   And sweet of scent, they seem'd to bring
To him the airs of Paradise;
And with their touch the cruel ice
   Of death, that bound his every sense,
   Was melted wholly; and the dense
And cruel anguish, that untied
The threads of living, did subside;
   And gradually peace came back
   Into his spirit, and the rack
Of pain and agony from him
Was lifted. So upon the rim
   Of the sad soul a little life
   Began to hover, as at strife
With Death, reluctant to forego
His late assurèd prey; and so
   The breath came back by slow degrees
   To the spent soul, and in great ease
Awhile he lay: and whiles he dream'd
He was in heaven, and it seem'd
   He heard the golden harpings stir
   The air to glory, and the choir
Of seraphim that stand around
The throne, with one sweet pulse of sound
   Coörder'd, lift descant of praise
   To Him that is the Lord of Days
And Ancient.

                              Then he seem'd to hear
A voice that murmur'd in his ear--
   As 'twere a ring of broken chords
   Angelic, mingled with sweet words
(So silver-clear it was)--and bade
Him open eyes: and then one laid
   Soft hand upon his lids, and drew
   The darkness from them. So the blue
Of heaven again was visible
To him, as 'twere some great sweet bell
   Of magic flowerage in some prime
   Of summer in old fairy-time:
And drinking slowly use of light
And sense of life and its delight
   Back into eyes and brain, he turn'd
   His gaze from where the heaven burn'd
With full sweet summer, and was ware
Of a fair champion standing there,
   Past mortal beauty. All in white
   And spotless mail was he bedight,
So clear that there is nothing fair
And goodly but was mirror'd there,
   And yet no evil thing nor sad
   Was there. Upon his helm he had
   A fair gold cross. Upon his crest
A fair gold cross, and on his shield
The semblance of a lamb did wield
   A fair gold cross. Upon his crest    The snows of a fair plume did rest
And waved; and eke his pennoncel
Was white as is the new-blown bell
   Of that fair flower that loves the wind,
   And round his dexter arm was twined
A snow of silk. Full glorious
The splendour of his harness was,
   And wonder-lovely to behold:
   But as white silver and red gold
Are pale beside the diamond,
So was his visage far beyond
   His arms in glory and delight
   Of beauty. There was such a might
Of stainless virtue and of all
Perfection pictured, and withal
   So woundrous tender in aspèct
   He was, it seem'd as if the Elect
Of Christ on earth in him did live;
That, with glad eyes, men might arrive,
   Beholding him, to know that love
   And gentilesse of God and prove
In him the sweetness of that grace
That shinèd ever in Christ's face
   On earth.

                              And so in very deed
   It seem'd to Floris that the need
Of earth was over, and his soul
Was won thereto where life is whole--
Withouten any stress or dole--
   At last in joyance, and his eyes
   Did view, in robes of Paradise,
That tender angel of the Lord,
That into men's sore bosoms pour'd
   Sweet balms and comfort, being set
   To temper justice and the fret
Of life with love most pitiful.
And whilst he thus did gaze his full
   Upon the radiance of that wight,
   The soft and undefiled delight,
That in his eyes did hold full sway,
So purged all Floris' awe away
   And eke such boldness to him gave
   That he was fain of him to crave
His name.

                              Then, "I am Galahad,
Christ's knight," he said.

                              Whereat full glad
was Floris, and all reverently
Unto the earth he bent his knee
   Before the knight, and (an he list)
   Would fain the broider'd hem have kiss'd
Of his white robe; but Galahad
Did raise him quickly up and bade
   Him henceforth kneel to God alone,
   That on the height of Heaven's throne
Is for man's soul the only one
Of worship, save sweet Christ, His Son.
   And Mary mother pitiful;
   And henceforth were no kings that rule
So blest as Floris now should be,
Since that with such high constancy
   And noble faith he had withstood
   The shock of that unholy brood,
And if fair fight had vanquish'd them.
Wherefore for crown and diadem
   Of triumph, on the greensward freed
   From those foul beasts that there did bleed
Their life away beneath his blade,
In goodly order were array'd
   For him those pleasant blooms and fair,
   That not alone so debonair
And blithe of aspect were, but eke
Had virtues--more than one might speak
   In wearing of a summer's day--
   For purging fleshly lusts away
And cleansing from his heart--who wore
Their beauty fairly--all the sore
   Sad doubts and weariness of earth,
   So that with an immortal mirth
And constant faith his soul was glad,
And evermore sweet peace he had
   In love of God and eke of Christ,
   The which against all ills sufficed
Of mortal life. And as he spoke
From the slight stems those flowers he broke
   That 'midst the herbage did entreat
   The eye with blossom very sweet
And gracious; and (O wonderment!)
Being in his hand conjoin'd, they blent
   Their essences in such rare wise,
   It seem'd from each sweet bell did rise
A sweeter perfume, and more bright
Their semblance grew, as 'twere some might
   Of amity was moved in them--
   Being so join'd into one stem--
To heighten each one's loveliness
With all its fellows did possess
   Of blithe and sweet. And therewithal,
   When from the grass those flow'rets all
Were gather'd, to Sir Floris came
That noblest knight, and in Christ's name,
   With fairest look and friendliest speech,
   Him of kindness did beseech
That he from him those blooms would take
And breathe their fragrance.

                              Scarce awake
   From swoon was Floris yet; and so
   He took them with dull hands and slow,
And did address himself to scent
Their breath, as one half indolent
   With sleep; but when the gracious smell
   Was won to him, that from each bell
Did float and hovering was blent
Into some wondrous ravishment
   Of sweets,--there smote him such a sense
   Of gladsome ease and recompense
Of all his labours, that the dull
Gross drowsiness, that did annul
   The soul within the man, forsook
   Him wholly; and withal he took
Such gladness, that in every vein
The life seem'd blithely born again;
   And through his frame so fresh a flood
   Of ardour pour;d, it seem'd the blood--
That in men's pulses sluggishly
Does throb and flutter--was made free
   From earthly baseness and was turn'd
   To heavenly ichor. For there burn'd
Within him such a fire of hope,
He felt his soul no more did grope
   Within the dreary dusk of earth,
   But on the wings of a new birth
Towards the highest heaven did soar.
Nor was there for him any more
   A thought of weariness or woe;
   But from the earth he rose, and so
Was ready for all venturing
And all the quest of holy thing
   God might appoint him.

                              Then that knight,
   That was apparell'd all in white,--
Most brightly smiling at the new
Glad ardour that did straight ensue
   In Floris with those blossoms' scent,
   And at the holy joy that brent
Upon the dial of his face,--
Within his arms did him embrace
   And kiss'd him very lovingly.
   Then in this wise to him spake he,
With grave sweet speech.

                              "Beyond the brine,
Where in the Orient first the sign
   Of dawn upon the sky is set,--
   In that sweet clime where men forget
The winter, and the summer lies
So lovingly upon the skies,
   That of a truth the very night
   Is lucent and the cruel sprite
Of darkness never wholly hides
The flowers, but aye some light abides,
   Wherefore men call it morning-land,--
   A fair and stately house doth stand,
Wherein, by help of God His grace,
Unto my lot it fell to place
   That holy token of the Lord,
   That He to mortals did afford
Awhile on earth to look upon
For consolation; but anon,
   Moved to slow anger by their sin
   And stubborn wickedness, within
His mystery He did withdraw
The blessèd thing: but yet the law
   Of that sad doom He temperèd--
   Of His great grace and kindlihead--
With mercy. For it was ordain'd
That of one kept himself unstain'd
   And pure from every lust and sin,
   A virgin, he should surely win
And come to taste of that sweet food
Of the Redemeer's flesh and blood.
   And unto me such grace was given
   That of all champions that have striven
I have been chosen from the rest
For winning of the Holy Quest;
   Since that, as in the Writ we read,
   God of the humblest may indeed
Be pleased to make His instrument,
Even unto me that joy was sent,
   Surpassing all that of old time
   Is told for us in minstrel's rhyme
Of Heaven's mercy: and, God wot,
Were passèd o'er Sir Lancelot
   And sweet Sir Tristam, that again
   The world shall never of those twain
Behold the like, such debonair
And perfect gentle knights they were.

   "Wherefore to God it seemèd fit
   That a fair dwelling over it
Should for its safe keeping be built:
And that no breath of sin or guilt
   Might there approach, there was enroll'd
   A band of knight, in whom the gold
Of virtue had been smelted out
And purified from sin and doubt
   By toil and venture perilous.
   And in that high and holy house
In goodly fellowship they dwell,
Until to God it seemeth well--
   For long good service done--to call
   One of the brethren from the thrall
Of earthly life, and with His blest
In Paradise to give him rest.
   Wherefore, when one is call'd away,
   It is ordain'd that from the grey
Of the sad world another knight--
To fill his place who, benedight,
   Has won the guerdon of his strife--
   Be chosen out, to cast off life
And with much labour and much pain
Be purified from earthly stain
   And tried with woe. If he endure
   And from the furnace come out pure
Of sin and lusting, he shall stand
For the dead brother in the band
   Angelical, and shall be set
   With those that, pure of earthly fret,
Do guard the shrine miraculous.

"In such a wise enrollèd was
   Sir Percivale; and Lohengrin
   By like adventuring did win
Among the holy knights to sit;
And many more of whom ye wit.
   And lately it the Lord hath pleased
   That yet another should be eased
Of his long service and preferr'd
Among the angels to be heard
   And scent the breath of heaven's rosen.
   And in his stead hast thou been chosen
In much hard strife to be assay'd
And for Christ's service fitting made.
   Wherefore this venture has been given
   To thee, in which thou now hast striven
So wonder-well, that thou mightst win
To purge thyself of earthly sin.
   And having in good sooth prevail'd
   Against all dangers that assail'd
Thee and this garden's purity,
There is great bliss ordain'd for thee;
   For that thy name shall be enroll'd
   Among those knights in ward that hold
The blessed Grail; and thou with me
Beyond the billows of the sea
   Shalt come to where that house is fair
   Withouten any pain or care,
And shalt awhile taste heaven's bliss,
And on thy mouth shalt have the kiss
   Of Christ the Lord, that doth assoil
   All weariness of earthly toil
And gives unto all sorrows peace
Undying."

                              So the strain did cease
   Of his sweet speaking, and awhile
   The very sweetness of his smile
Did hinder Floris from reply:
And eke the thought of bliss so nigh
   His lips and all the ravishment
   Of promise that he did prevent
In his imagining and lack
Of words for utterance held back
   His tongue from speaking anything.
   But Galahad for answering
Stay'd not, but, with a doubled grace
Of sweet assurance in his face,
   Began to say, in very deed,
   That presently there was great need
They should withouten more delay
Towards the dawning take their way,
   For many a mile the voyage was
   And for great distance tedious.

Then Floris said to him, "Fair knight,
That in whole armour of pure white
   Dost serve God in all chastity,
   I pri'thee, lightly show to me
How we may gain that distant land
That by the rising sun is scann'd,--
   Since neither boat is here nor had?"

   Whereat no word spake Galahad
But with his hand the sign he made,
That makes all evil things afraid
   And compasses all good about
   With armour against sin and doubt;
And straightway with the holy sign
A white cross in the air did shine
   A second, as for answering;
   And then the stream's soft murmuring
Grew louder to the sweep of waves
Along the reed-crests and the glaives
   Of rushes, and its silver thread
   Into a river's mightihead
Was stretch'd; and on the stream did float
The silver wonder of a boat,
   Gold-keel'd and fair with silken sails,
   Such boat as, in old Eastern tales,
The genii bring at the command
Of some enchanter's magic wand.
   And on the prow of cymophane--
   Translucent as the pearly wane
Of that fair star that rules the night,
With an internal glory bright--
   The milk-white holy bird did sit
   And spread soft pinions over it,
That flutter'd with desire of flight.

Therein stepp'd Galahad, Christ's knight;
   And after him did Floris come
   At beckoning, wholly dazed and dumb
With wonders of that wondrous time.
And as into the stern did climb
   The valiant knight, the soft sweet wind
   That 'mid the blossom'd trees was twined,
Ceased from its disport in the flowers
And leafage of those magic bowers,
   And with such strong yet gentle stress
   Within the silken sails did press
Towards the dawning, that the keel
Slid through the waters blue as steel
   As swiftly as the morning sun
   Shears through the mists when night is done
And day is golden in the sky.
And as it through the lymph did fly
   Of that enchanted rivulet,
   The golden keel to song did fret
The thronging currents, and the ring
Of murmurous water-notes did sing
   And ripple in the diamond deeps,
   Such music as the West wind sweeps
From out the harps of Fairyland,
When elves are met on some sweet strand
   Of Broceliaund or Lyonesse,
   For revel and for wantonness.

On all sides round them as they went
The dim grey woods were sad and spent
   With weariness of winter-time,
   And in the fields the rugged rime
Held all things in the sleep of death,
Stern white, and void of living breath;
   And with the weary weight of snow
   The laden boughs were bent and low.
But in their sails a breath there blew
Of April zephyrs, and there drew
   Unto their course a summer cloud
   With scents of flowers and birdsongs strow'd;
And echoings of July woods--
When in the green the bluebell broods--
   Were thick and sweet about their way,
   And ever round the boat's prow lay
The scent of grass-swaths newly mown;
And wildflowers in gold grain and brown
   Waved in the sweet dream-haunted air.

   So went they,--while the night was bare
Of sound or breath to break the sleep
Of winter,--through the woodlands deep,
   And past the well-remember'd plains
   And towns and meadows, where the lanes
And streets were hush'd with winter-time,--
And saw no creature on the rime,
   Save some stray sheep shut out from fold
   Or wolf, that from his forest hold
Was by hard hunger forced to seek
Scant prey upon the moorlands bleak.

   So ever without cease they sped
   Above that swift sweet river's bed;
And truly, as the golden morn
From out the dim grey mists was born
   And all things 'gan to wake from sleep,
   They heard the silver rush and sweep
Of waves upon a pebbled shore;
And gliding past the meadows frore,
   They came to where the river's tide
   Was fleck'd with foam, and far and wide
The main, as far as eye could see,
Slept in a sweet serenity.

   Far out to seaward fled their boat,
   Across the wild white flowers that float
And blossom on the azure leas;
And swiftly as the culver flees
   Among the trees with shadow twined,
   They left the frozen fields behind,
And saw the spangled foam divide
The firmament on every side.

   The golden calm of summer seas
   Was there, and eke the July breeze
That waves upon the silver foam,
When in the azure heaven's dome
   The sign of summer-prime is set:
   And still no winds opposed they met,
Nor break of billows in their way;
But through the dancing ripples' play
   The shallop sped towards the dawn,
   As by some starry influence drawn
Over the ridges of the main
Unstirr'd and clear. And still the rain
   Of blossoms fell about the stem,
   And still sweet odours breathed on them
Of rose and jasmine, and the song
Of birds about the sail was strong.

   So over silver seas they went,
   And heaven, wide-eyed for wonderment,
Hung o'er them open blue the while,
As though all nature were asmile
   To see the lovely way they made:
   And ever round the sharp keel play'd
The fretted lacework of the foam,
And through the jewell'd deeps did roam
   Great golden fish, and corals red
   Waved in the dim sweet goodlihead
Of that clear blue; and through the wave
The shells of many a rich cave
   Were visible, wherein the sea
   Held in a sweet security
Treasures of pearl and lovely gold,
That eye of man might ne'er behold
   Until the main should leave its bed;
   And over all the deeps was shed
A glancing play of emerald light,
So that the unembarrass'd sight
   Pierced through the cool sweet mystery
   Of folded billows, and the eye
Was free in shadows jewel-clear.
Nor was there anything of fear
   For them in lapse of hyaline
   Or silver breakers of the brine;
Nor in the crystals of the air
Was anything but blithe and fair,
   Sweet winds and glitter of fair birds,
   Whose song was sweeter than sweet words
Between the pauses of a kiss,
When lovers meet in equal bliss.

   So many a day they sail'd and long,
   Lull'd by the breezes' flower-sweet song
And pipe of jewel-birds that went
Above them, fair to ravishment;
   Until, one morn, athwart the lift
   Of blue was visible a rift
Of purple mountain; and a spire
Of amethyst rose ever higher
   Into the sapphire firmament.
   And drawing nigh, they saw where blent
Its silver currents with the blue
Of that bright ocean, blithe to view,
   A fair clear river that outpour'd
   Its waters 'twixt soft green of sward
And slope of flower-besprinkled banks,
Where rushes stood in arching ranks,
   Tipt with a jewel of fair flower
   As blue as is the morning hour,
When in the golden prime of May
The sweet dawn blends into the day.

   The swift keel slid between the rows
   Of ripples,--as a steed that knows
The road of some familiar place,--
And past the bubbled foamy race
   Of eddies, through the sapphire cleft
   Of that bright pass, and quickly left
The billows of the sea behind,
As on that goodly stream the wind
   Did urge it far into the land.
   Surely was never kingdom spann'd
On earth by river such as this,
Where ever some enchanted bliss
   Ran in the ripples, and the stream
   With liquid gold and pearl did seem
To glitter. There is nought more fair
Beneath the regions of the air
   Than this same river; nor in all
   Birdnotes is aught more musical
Than the delight of its clear flow
Across the pebbles, soft and low.
   And in the banks were wondrous things,
   All lovely creatures that bear wings;
And every precious thing of green,
And flower of gold and jewell'd sheen,
   Was there in such a perfect shape,
   Its essence must full needs escape
The grasp of my poor minstrelsy.
The very grass was fair to see
   Beyond the fairest flower of earth;
   For with the gold of some new birth
It burnt, and was aflame with bright
Sweet gladness. Very flames of light
   The flowers seem'd, zaffiran and blue
   And crystal-clear with wonder-dew.
It seem'd their scent so heavenly was,
That into music it must pass
   And soar into a perfumed song.
   And as the boat was borne along
The golden ripples, in its speed
Dividing many a woven weed,
   That with its many-colour'd mesh
   Of trailing leaves and flowers did stretch
And wave upon the waters bright,--
Sir Floris, with what prayers he might,
   That gracious Galahad besought
   That from his lips he might be taught
What was that river and that realm,
That all earth's sweets did hide and whelm
   In one etern forgetfulness,
   And made all joys that men possess
Seem poor and naught with the delight
Of its exceeding lovely might.
   And without pausing, Galahad
   To him made answer fair and glad.

"Fair knight, this land through which we pass,
About the city of Sarras
   Doth lie; and all the golden plain
   Beyond thy vision, for demesne--
By grace and favour of high Heaven--
Unto the Holy Town was given,
   Where lies in hold the blessed Grail.--

   "Before from Paradise did fail
Adam and Eva for their sin,
These happy fields and glades within
   The golden gates of Eden were
   Wherein was nothing but was fair:
And this same river of those four
Was one, that of old times did pour
   Blithe waters over all the plain,
   When life was young and free from stain,
And angels walk'd upon the earth.
And (for their flow) came never dearth
   Of kindly fruits nor any drought
   Of summer-time the place about;
Nor for the warmth of their clear flood
Might winter nip the flowery bud
   Of the perpetual spring, that rain'd
   Fresh blossoms there; nor ever waned
The balms of summer in the air,
But evermore the place was fair
   With all May-sweets and summer-spells.
   And still,-although the cloister'd dells
Of the lost garden no more stand
Upon the peace of the fair land,--
   Around its precincts, as of old,
   A silver stream with sands of gold
Flows ever, which no foot of man,
Or eye, without Christ's leave, can span;
   Of all the four the only one
   That still with murmurous waves doth run
In the old channel. Very fair
Its marges are with all things rare;
   And over all the land is strown
   Thick bdellium and the onyx-stone."

And many another wondrous thing
Unto Sir Floris, listening,
   Spake Galahad of that fair land,
   That eye of man hath never scann'd,
Save he have won to Christ His grace.
And and as he spoke, came on apace
   The tender day, and gilded all
   The ripples; and the golden ball
Of the sweet sun rose high in heaven;
And unto every thing was given
   New ravishment and new delight
   Of very waking. Fairer sight
Saw mortal never (nor indeed
So fair within our earthly need
   Is compass'd) than the morning hour
   That open'd into full sweet flower
With many a rosy flush and rain
Of golden sunlight over plain
   And mead, and many a tender shade
   Kiss'd into warmth--that in green glade
Lay waiting for the frolic light--
And changed to fleecy gold the white
   Of dawn-clouds over hill and wold.
   It was so gracious to behold
The day in that sweet Paradise,
There is no man with mortal eyes
   Could drink its beauty wholly in,
   For dust of care and mirk of sin
That hide much loveliness from men.

And Floris ever and again
   Was dumb with awe of much delight
   And wonderment; as with swift flight
The boat sped through the flowers that shone
With blazon'd gold and blue upon
   That magic river of a dream,
He sat and stored the influence
Of the lush balms within his sense,
   And watch'd the ripples all agleam
With jewels, and the constant smile
Of the sweet sunlight. And the while
   The songs of his birds co-ordinate
   And zephyrs with a peace so great
And sweet upon his soul did seize,
And whiles his spirit had such ease
   In that sweet speech of Galahad,
   He needs forgot that aught of sad
Or dreary in this life is set,
Or weariness of earthly fret;
   And did, without a backward glance,
   Yield up himself into the trance
Of that new joy.

                              So sped they on
Towards the orient: and anon,--
   Whenas the noon was borne along
   The midmost heaven, to the song
Triumphal of the joyous choir
Of birds and breezes, ever higher
   Soaring in one sweet antiphon,--
   There rose in the sweet sky--upon
The fair broad hem of woven gold,
That marged with many a fleecy fold
   The sapphire-chaliced firmament--
   A glitter of tall spires, that brent
With an unearthly radiance;
And many a jewel-colour'd lance
   Of belfry pierced the golden air
   On the horizon: and there bare
The wind to them a strain of song
Ineffable, the stream along--
   Faint for great distance--that for joy
   And triumph over earth's annoy
With such a rapturous sweetness smote
On Floris, he could neither note
   The kingdom's varied loveliness
   Nor the sweet antiphonal stress
Of winds and birds and rivulet,
But it alone could hear, nor let
   Himself from striving up to it;
   For with its melody was knit
About his soul an influence
So strong, it seem'd his every sense
   Must press towards it. And at last,
   For ecstasy he would have cast
Himself headlong into the stream,
That therewithal, as he did deem,
   He might the swiftlier win toward
   That wondrous singing and the ward
Of that bright town miraculous.
But Galahad the good knight was
   Mindful of him, and by his arm
   Withholding him therefrom, did charm
His soul with such sweet words, that he
Must for a while contented be
   To wait the progress of the boat,
   That very speedily did float,
God wot, across the ripples' race,
To where the turrets of the place
   Were clear.

                              And so they came at last
   To where the running river pass'd
From the long lapse of pleasant wood
And meadow with enchantments strew'd
   Of flowers and sun-gold, and were ware
   Of the bright town that all the air
With towers and pinnacles did fill,
Set on the slope of a soft hill,
   That in the sun wore one clear hue
   Of purple blending into blue,
Most like a great sweet amethyst.

And now the gunwale softly kiss'd
   The golden shore; and, thick with gem
   And coral, round the entering stem
Was wrinkled up the glittering sand.
Then Galahad upon the strand
   Stepp'd lightly out; and as his feet
   Upon the grainèd gold did meet
Of the rich shingle, there was borne
To them the noise of a blown horn,
   That was as if a warder blew
   To challenge, from some tower of view
Within the amber-gated town;
Wherefrom to them it floated down
   And fill'd the air with echoings
   So sweet, there is no bird that sings
Could find such music in his throat
Melodious. And as the note
   Of welcome swell'd and waned around
   The hollows of the hills,--unwound
From his mail'd breast Sir Galahad
A silver horn he thereon had
   In its white baldrick, and therein
   Breathing, its hollow bell did win
Unto so sweet an answering blast,
It seem'd to Floris that at last
   He heard the trumps angelical.
   Then at the silver clarion's call
The beryl gates were open'd wide
Of the fair town; and on the side
   Of the soft hill there was to them
   Made visible--upon the hem
Of woven grass with blue-bells strew'd
And asphodels--a multitude
   Of holy knights, that down the sward
   In a bright painted pageant pour'd,
With many a waving pennoncel
Of gold and azure; and the swell
   Of clarions, co-ordinate
   To mystic harmonies, did wait,
With cadences most grave and sweet,
Upon the rhythm of their feet.
   So goodly were they of aspèct
   And in such pictured raiment deck'd
Of say and samite, there is none,
Minstrel or bard, beneath the sun,
   That could have sung of their array
   As it befits to sing it,--nay
Not even he who many a day
In Fäerie enchanted lay
   And learnt full many a year and long
   The cadences of elfin song,
True Thomas; nor that couthliest wight
In gramarye, that Merlin hight.

   Full bright their arms and lucent were
   And of a sheen so wonder-fair,
The sun seem'd of a nobler kind
To glitter, when his beamings shined
   Upon the silver-mirror'd mail.
   And at the sight of them did fail
Sir Floris' courage, that till now
Had never seen thing high enow
   To give him pause; for there did come
   So strange a fear on him, that dumb
And cold he grew, and haply might
Have swoon'd away for sheer affright
   Of wonder and great reverence
   That lay upon his every sense.
Indeed, awhile the blood did leave
Its courses and great awe did weave
   Strange terrors in him; and with pain
   And fear despiteous, he was fain
To hide his visage from the might
Of that much brightness.

                              Then that knight
   Sir Galahad laid hands on him,
   And quickly freed him from the grim
Sad grasp of that unreal fear,
And bade him that of right good cheer
   He should become, for knighthood's sake,
   And for his honour comfort take
And new stout heart, for shame it was
And despite, one so valorous
   And bold in arms should faint and fail,
   Where he most surely should prevail,
'Midst those that now his comrades were
And fellow-knights: and with much fair
   Discourse did win him from affright.
   So that at last he dared the sight
Of those fair knights, and saw they gazed
Right courteously on him and praised
   His hard-won victory. So he took
   New heart, and with assurèd look
Leapt out upon the jewell'd sand:
And as the twain were come to land,
   From those knights all so sweet a sound
   Of songful greeting did resound,
The blue of heaven could never tire
Of answering; and from many a lyre
   And cithern the alternate joy
   Of harpings join'd in sweet alloy
Its silver with that golden song.

So Floris was among that throng
   Of knights received, with many a kiss
   And glad embracement: nor, I wis,
Fail'd Galahad that he should name
Each knight that to the greeting came.
   To him was Titurel made known,
   And Percivale, to whom was shown--
With Bors--such grace of God most high,
By reason of much purity,
   That they alone with Galahad
   Upon the earthly questing had
The blessed vision of the Grail:
Nor Lohengrin to him did fail;
   And may another noble knight
Of fabled prowess and approved
In gentilesse and all Christ loved,
   Did there rejoice him with his sight.

   So, for the meed of his good fight,
Into the wonder-town they bare
Sir Floris,--wherein many a rare
   Delight to him appointed was.

   Bright was the place and glorious
With glory of the abiding love
Of God and Christ, that is above
   All splendours marvellous and fair;
   And luminous its ramparts were
With pearls and rubies constellate
And diamonds into such state
   And harmony as, save in heaven,
   Unto no place or thing is given
To wear or look on: such a blaze
Of joy was there, without amaze;
   For all was gracious and sweet
   With Christ His grace. The very feet
That fell upon the jewell'd stones
Compell'd them to such silver tones
   Of music, and the ruffled air
   Was stirr'd to harmonies so fair,
And, for mere passage through the place,
Was won to such a subtle grace
   Of perfume, that therein to be
   And move, was one long ecstasy:
And there the dole of earth and stress
Of hope unfill'd and weariness
   Was purged, and life was one delight
   Of perfect function, by the might
Unfailing of the doubtless soul;
And every act and thought was whole
   In strifeless àccord. If one spoke,
   The hinder'd voice no longer broke
Into harsh sadness, spent and wried
With weary effort, but did glide
   Into an unconstrain'd consent
   Of harmony and ravishment
Unstressful; and the every geste
Was with like subtle grace possess'd,
   And every faculty was cast
   In symmetry, what time one pass'd
The portals of the place, and heard
The echoes of his feet that stirr'd
   The holy quiet.

                              So the spell
   Of the charm'd place on Floris fell
Transfiguringly, as the wide
Gold-trellised leaves on either side
   Swung back for him: there came a change
   Upon his senses, and a strange
Sweet ease of life, as if the soul,
Way-worn and rusted with the dole
   And fret of earth, were softly riven
   From him, and its stead were given
To him a new and perfect one,
In a whole body as the sun
   Lucent, and worthy for the seat
   Of the fair spirit.

                              Up the street
Gold-paven and with chrysolite
And jacinth marged, they brought the knight,
   Past many a goodly hostelry
   And many a dwelling fair to see,
Unto a portal sculptured all
With handiwork angelical,
   In stories of the love of Christ,
   And all the time it hath sufficed
To win sad living to much ease;--
And passing through with harmonies
   Of choral song, they came unto
   A vaulted courtyard, stretching through
A cloister'd vista to fair halls
Of alabaster, where the walls
   With many a colour'd crystal shone
   Of jewell'd casement; and thereon
The questing of the Holy Grail,
In many a wonder-lovely tale,
   Was with bright gold and wonderment
   Of colour'd jewel-fretwork blent
To harmony, depicturèd.
And there, in truth, Sir Floris read,--
   Beside much other venturing,
   And many another goodly thing
Achieved in service of the Lord,--
The fight that he with his good sword
   Had in the wonder-garden fought.
   Nor, therewithal, was missing aught
Of all that did that night befall
Unto him: but upon the wall
   Was in bright colours pictured forth
   The tale of all his knightly worth
And service.

                              Little strange it is
If much he wonder'd was at this,
   And could for wonder scarce believe
   His eyes, that any should achieve
So vast a work and of such grace
And splendour in so scant a space
   Of time. But Lohengrin besought
   Him very fairly that of nought
He saw he should be wonderèd,
Nor any venture have in dread;
   Since that to that high Lord, that there
   Did reign, all wonders easy were
And wonderless; nor of His grace
Was anything in all that place
   That might avail for any fear
   Or doubt, but rather to give cheer
And love and confidence was fit,
So sweet a peace did dwell in it
   Of amity and holiness.

   Then with slow feet they did address
Their further steps,--by a long aisle
Of cloister'd pearl, wherethrough the smile
   Of sunlight filter'd lingeringly
   And lay in one sweet soften'd sea
Of gold upon the silver mail,--
Towards the temple of the Grail.
   And in a vestibule, that was
   Thereto adjacent, did they pause
And in fair garments clad the knight,
With silver radiant and white.
   And then into an armoury
   They led him, very fair to see
With noble weapons, all arow
Against the wainscot. There a snow
   Of plumes upon his crest they bound,
   And from the swords that hung around
A goodly blade was given him,
That to the sound of many a hymn
   And many a golden litany,
   Had in the glorious armoury
Of highest heaven forgèd been:
So trenchant was it and so keen,--
   Being in celestial fires assay'd
   And in strange dews of heaven made
Attemper'd,--there might none withstand
The thunderstroke of that good brand,
   Except his bosom armour'd were
   With equal virtue. Then the fair
Graven presentment of a dove
With eyes of gold ws set above
   His helm,--most like the fowl that brought
   Him to the garden where he wrought
Such deeds of arms; and on the field
Coerulean of his virgin shield
   There was a like resemblant set,
   That men might know him, when they met
In sharp sword-play or battle-throng.

Then, with a ripple of sweet song,
   The golden doors were backward roll'd,
   That in sweet mystery did fold
The holy place; and Floris came
Into a hall, where with a flame
   Of jewell'd light the air was gilt;
   And therewithin the walls were built
Of that clear sapphire jewelry
That can in nowise elsewhere be
   Save for the pavement of the sky
   And for the throne of God most high.
And under foot the floor was bright
With one clear topaz, as the light
   Of the sweet sun in hue. Above
   There was y-sprad a flower-bell roof
Of that sweet colour of deep blue
One in the spring may chance to view,
   When in the golden-threaded moss
   The deep wood-dells are odorous
With violets and the cluster'd bells
Of bee-loved hyacinths, or else
   The deep clear colours pers and inde
   Of wild-flowers in the gold corn twined
With many a tassel of bright blue,
When summer in the skies is new.--
   And in the bell were golden lights,
   Most like the tender eye-delights
Of the gold kingcups in the green,
That in quaint wise were set between
   The fretted azure of the dome.
   And therethrough did meteors roam,
As 'twere in truth the very heaven,
And the sweet symbols of the seven
   Great angels that do rule the skies
   Where therein jewell'd. In such wise
The varied lights were mixt and blent
With those that heavenward were sent
   From walls and pavement,--all the air
   Was with that lightsomeness most fair
And tender fill'd, that in the May
Is weft about the sweet young day,
   When whiles it seems the sky is dight
   With one great primrose of soft light,
Most pure and tender. On the ground
There stood fair statues all around,
   Deep-set in woven flowers and green
   Of lavish leafage, stretch'd between
Tall carven pillars of that bright
Jewel that chrysoberyl hight,
   And many another precious stone.
   Nor there were images alone
Of holy things, as one might deem;
But eke full many a lovely dream
   Of tender love and constancy
   Was in clear gold and ivory
With loving hand made manifest.
For there was nothing there confess'd
   Of sin or wantonness in love,--
   As ancient doctors teach, that prove
All pleasant things that are, to be
Unloved of God. And verily
Sir Floris wonder'd there to see
   The histories that makers tell
   Of Parisate and Floridelle,
The tale of Tristan and Ysolde,
   Of Lancelot and Guenevere,
And many another tale of old,
   That men on earth do dully lere
That we should count accurst and ill:
But there depictured were they still,
   In very piteous fashion told;
   And on the wall in words of gold
Was writ this legend, "Quiconque aime
Complait a Dieu en pechié mesme."

   And while Sir Floris stood and gazed
   Upon the statues,--much amazed
At all that he did hear and see
Within the temple,--suddenly
   There was a fluted singing heard,
   As of some wonder-lovely bird.
And then one took him by the hand,
And led him where a gold screen spann'd
   The topaz paved work of the floor.

   Then was he ware of a high door,
That with much wonderwork of gold
And unknown metals was enscroll'd
   In many a trellis of fair flowers
   And fronds enough fair for the bowers
Of Paradise; and in the leaves
There sat a bird, that was as sheaves
   Of ripen'd corn in hue, and sang--
   That therewithal the temple rang--
Of unknown glories of the May,
Therein where life is one long day
   Of spring and never change is there,
   Nor any sadness in the air.
And as he sang, the golden gate
Swung open slowly, and the great
   Sweet hollow of a pure white pearl
   Lay clear behind that golden merle,
Into a chamber fashionèd.

There was an altar built and spread
   With tapestry of silver white,
Woven with lilies; and thereon
Was set a chalice, out of one
   Great emerald moulded,--with samite,
The colour of the heart's best blood,
Enshrouded; and thereover stood
A great white cross and fill'd the air
With living radiance, as it were
   A sculptured work of very light.

   Then with the wonder of the sight
Was Floris fill'd; and for great awe
And reverence of all he saw
   Within the pearl, straightway he fell
   Upon his knees. But Titurel
With counsel very fair and wise
Required of him that he should rise
   From off the ground and without fear
   Unto the altar should draw near
And for an offering thereon
Should lay those blossoms he had won
   In parlous fight, and much duresse,
   That of their blended goodliness
And eke their perfume's ravishment,
There might a sacrifice be sent,
   To God and Christ acceptable.

   And now a wondrous thing befell,
(God grant us all the like to see);
For as Sir Floris reverently
   Upon the silver cloth did lay
   The holy flowers (that, sooth to say
Were bright of bloom and sweet of scent,
Unfaded, as when first they sprent
   The greensward) and withdrawing thence
   A little space, in reverence
The issue did await,--there came
A hand all shapen out of flame,
   And from the emerald of the cup
   The crimson samite lifted up;
And as this thing was done, there fell--
As 'twere from out the midmost bell--
   A light that through the emerald sped
   And mingled with the holy bread;
And with the light, came one that pass'd
Thought-swift athwart the air and cast
   Himself into the cup,--as 'twere
   The angel of a child,--most fair
And awful. Wherewithal thereout
There went a fire the place about,
   And fill'd the temple with its breath,
   Wherein was neither hurt nor death;
But of its contact there were given
To Floris very balms of heaven
   For consecration; and to eat
   There was vouchsafed him food so sweet
And goodly such as no man knows.

Then from the chaliced gem there rose
   The semblance of a face, that was
   With such a splendour glorious
And awful--and withal as mild
And tender as a little child--
   There is no bard can sing of it
   As it befitteth, save he sit
(And hardly then) among the choirs,
That to the throb of golden lyres
   Do praise God ever night and day
   With music such as no man may.--
There is but one of woman born
By whom such aspect can be worn
   Of perfect love and perfect awe
   Commingled.

                              And when Floris saw
The glory of the eyes, and knew
The holy love, that like a dew
   From out their radiant deeps was shed
   Upon his soul,--for very dread
Of ravishment he could not gaze
Upon their light, but with amaze
   And wonderment of joy was fain
   Down to the earth to bend again
His face: but ere he ceased to see
The vision, of a surety
   It was made known to him (although
   He wist not how he came to know)
That heavenly face no other's was
Than that same Lord's who erst did pass
   Before his vision in the green
   Of the fair garden, all beseen
With glittering hair.

                              Then as he knelt,
Unseeing, suddenly he felt
   Upon his mouth a burning kiss,
   That with such sharp unearthly bliss
His soul did kindle into flame
Of ravishment, the wayworn frame
   Could not for frailty sustain
   The rapturous ecstatic pain
Of that strange joyance, nor the spright
Embodied, 'gainst the fierce delight
   Endure of that unearthly boon;
   And so for bliss he fell aswoon,
And heard therein a great sweet voice,
That bade him fear not, but rejoice,
   For Christ the Lord his lips had kiss'd;
   And therewithal the Eucharist
Was borne into his mouth, with sound
Of harps angelic all around
   Soft-smitten; nor therefore did break
   His charmèd sleep.

                              Then did one speak
To him as in the trance he lay,
And with a murmurous voice did say,
   That for the service of that Lord,
   To whom was sacred now his sword,
It was ordain'd that for a space
He should return unto his place
   Upon the earth, and in all things
   That life on earth to mortals brings,
Should for his Master's honour strive,
Until the order'd time arrive
   When God should set him free from soil
   And weariness of earthly toil.
And there was given him a sign
When it should please the Lord Divine
   To make His will beneficent
   Patent to him,--there should be sent,
Twice more before the period set
For his release from earthly fret,
   To him the self-same silver dove,
   The holy symbol of the love
Of Christ and of His chivalry.
And it was told him that when he
   Of the white messenger had wit,
   He should leave all and follow it:
For when it should of him be seen
Anew, as it of late had been,
   He should be ware that God had need
   Of him elsewhere--in very deed--
Upon the earth, and will'd essay
His service yet within the way
   Of living: but what time he heard
   The thrice-said summons, and the bird
Miraculous unto him came
A third time, in the holy name,--
   He should, in following, be freed
   From toil and labour and the need
And weariness of day and night,
And from the knowledge and the sight
   Of men be ravish'd, to abide
   In that fair town beatified,
And serve the Grail, till it seem'd fit
Unto the Lord that he should sit
   Among the blest in Paradise
   And praise Him ever.

                              In this wise
It seem'd to Floris that one spoke
To him with soft sweet speech, that broke
   His slumber not, as he did lie
   In that long swoon; and, suddenly,
The murmur of the speech forsook
His hearing wholly; nor with look
   Or ears awhile was anything
   Apparent to him, that could bring
The wonders of the holy town
Back to his senses; but the brown
   And fleecy-plumaged wings of sleep
   Inclosed him wholly. In a deep
And senseless dream awhile he lay,
Until it seem'd to him the gray
   Of night that compass'd him about
   Was by a radiance from without
Transmicate, and the fluted song
Of the gold merle again was strong
   Upon his hearing. Then the dim
   Gray webs of slumber were from him
Unfolded slowly, and there burst
A golden light on him. At first
   The drowsy cumber on his eyes
   Allow'd him not to recognize
The place wherein he was, nor know
Wherefrom the amber-colour'd glow
   Of light was borne: but speedily
   He was aware that he did lie
Upon his bed, and through the fold
Of silken tapestries the gold
   Of the young sun upon his face
   Was shed; and past the window-space,
Without the casement, could he see,--
Snow-pure against brown stem and tree,--
   The charmèd flowerage of that thorn
   That ever on the Christmas morn
Is--for a memory and delight
Of the Lord's birth--with blossoms white
   Transfigurate. And on a spray
   There sat a mavis brown and grey,
That sang as if his heart were shed
Into his minstrelsy and fled
   On wings of music heavenward,
   A sacrifice of song outpour'd
To God most high.

                              Awhile it seem'd
To Floris he had surely dream'd
   The coming of the dove to him
   And all his strife against the grim
Fierce beasts, and all the after-bliss
And wonderment, and Christ His kiss.
   But looking closelier, he was ware
   At bed-head of his helm that bare
A silver dove with eyes of gold,
That on the crest did sit and fold
   White wings above it; and he knew
   The holy semblant on the blue
Of his fair shield, and eke the blade
Celestial, by his harness laid
   Naked at bedfood. So the doubt
   Was from his spirit blotted out;
And he was surely certified
That verily he did abide
   That wondrous venture, and had known
   Awhile the glories that alone
For those that many a toil have dared
In Christ His service, are prepared
   Within the city of the Grail,
   Wherein is neither pain nor wail,
But ever holiness and peace
And ravishment without surcease,
   In very perfectness of rest.

               * * * *

   So hath Sir Floris found his quest;
And so the tale is told and done,
Of how, before life's rest was won,
   The first time unto Floris came
   The holy dove, in Lord Christ's name.

Christmas, 1868

---

---

SIR HORNBOOK;

or,

CHILDE LAUNCELOT'S EXPEDITION,
A GRAMMATICO-ALLEGORICAL BALLAD.

by

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

I.
O'er bush and briar Childe Launcelot sprung [1]
With ardent hopes elate,
And loudly blew the horn that hung
Before Sir Hornbook's gate.

The inner portals opened wide,
And forward strode the chief,
Arrayed in paper helmet's pride,
And arms of golden leaf.

--"What means," -- he cried, -- "This daring noise,
That wakes the summer day?
I hate all idle truant boys:
Away, Sir Childe, away!" --

-- "No idle, truant boy am I," --
Childe Launcelot answered straight;
--"Resolved to climb this hill so high,
I seek thy castle gate.

"Behold the talisman I bear,
And aid my bold design:" --
Sir Hornbook gazed, and written there,
Knew Emulation's sign

"If Emulation sent thee here,"
Sir Hornbook quick replied,
"My merrymen all shall soon appear,
To aid thy cause with shield and spear,
And I will head thy bold career,
And prove thy faithful guide." --

Loud rung the chains; the drawbridge fell;
The gates asunder flew:
The knight thrice beat the portal bell,
And thrice he call'd "Halloo."

And out, and out, in hasty rout,
By ones, twos, threes, and fours;
His merrymen rush'd the walls without,
And stood before the doors.

II.
Full six and twenty men were they, [2]
In line of battle spread:
The first that came was mighty A,
The last was little Z.

Six Vocal men Sir Hornbook had, [3]
Four Double men to boot, [4]
And four were Liquids soft and sad, [5]
And all the rest were Mute. [6]

He called his Corporal , Syllable, [7]
To range the scatter'd throng;
And Captain Word dispos'd them well [8]
In bands compact and strong.

-- "Now mark, Sir Childe," -- Sir Hornbook said: --
"These well-compacted powers,
Shall lead thy vent'rous steps to tread
Through all the Muses' bowers,

"If rightly thou thyself address,
To use their proffer'd aid:
Still unallur'd by idleness,
By labor undismay'd;

"For many troubles intervene,
And perils widely spread,
Around the groves of evergreen,
That crown this mountain's head:
But rich reward he finds, I ween,
Who through them all has sped." --

Childe Launcelot felt his bosom glow
At thought of noble deed;
Resolved through every path to go,
Where that bold knight should lead.

Sir Hornbook wound his bugle horn,
Full long, and loud, and shrill;
His merrymen all, for conquest born,
With armour glittering to the morn,
Went marching up the hill.

III.
-- "What men are you beside the way?" --
The bold Sir Hornbook cried:
-- "My name is The , my brother's A ," --
Sir Article replied. [9]

"My brother's home is any where, [10]
At large and undefin'd;
But I a preference ever bear [11]
For one fix'd spot, and settle there;
Which speaks my constant mind."

-- "What ho! Childe Launcelot! seize them there,
And look you have them sure!" --
-- Sir Hornbook cried, -- "my men shall bear
Your captives off secure." --

The twain were seized: Sir Hornbook blew
His bugle loud and shrill:
His merrymen all, so stout and true,
Went marching up the hill.

IV.

And now a wider space they gained,
A steeper, harder ground,
Where by one ample wall contained,
All earthly things they found: [12]

All beings , rich, poor, weak, or wise,
Were there, full strange to see,
And attributes and qualities
Of high and low degree.

Before the circle stood a knight,
Sir Substantive his name, [13]
With Adjective, his lady bright,
Who seemed a portly dame;

Yet only seemed ; for whenso'er
She strove to stand alone , [14]
She proved no more than smoke and air,
Who looked like flesh and bone.

And therefore to her husband's arm
She clung for evermore,
And lent him many a grace and charm
He had not known before;

Yet these the knight felt well advised,
He might have done without;
For lightly foreign help he prized
He was so staunch and stout.

Five sons had they, their dear delight,
Of different forms and faces;
And two of them were Numbers bright, [15]
And three they christened Cases. [16]

Now loudly rung Sir Hornbook's horn;
Childe Launcelot poised his spear;
And on they rushed, to conquest borne,
In swift and full career.

Sir Substantive kicked down the wall:
It fell with furious rattle:
And earthly things and beings all
Rushed forth to join the battle.

But earthly things and beings all,
Though mixed in boundless plenty,
Must one by one dissolving fall
To Hornbook's six-and-twenty.

Childe Launcelot won the arduous fray,
And, when they ceased from strife,
Led stout Sir Substantive away,
His children, and his wife.

Sir Hornbook wound his horn again,
Full long, and loud, and shrill:
His merrymen all, a warlike train,
Went marching up the hill.

V.
Now when Sir Pronoun look'd abroad, [17]
And spied the coming train,
He left his fort beside the road,
And ran with might and main.

Two cloth-yard shafts from I and U,
Went forth with whizzing sound:
Like lightning sped the arrows true;
Sir Pronoun pressed the ground:
But darts of science ever flew
To conquer, not to wound.

His fear was great: his hurt was small:
Childe Launcelot took his hand:
-- "Sir Knight," -- said he, -- "though doomed to fall
Before my conquering band,

"Yet knightly treatment shall you find,
On faith of cavalier:
Then join Sir Substantive behind,
And follow our career." --

Sir Substantive, that man of might,
Felt knightly anger rise;
For he had marked Sir Pronoun's flight
With no approving eyes.

"Great Substantive, my sovereign liege!" --
Thus sad Sir Pronoun cried,
-- "When you had fallen in furious siege,
Could I the shock abide?"

"That all resistance would be vain,
Too well, alas! I knew:
For what could I, when you were ta'en,
Your poor lieutenant , do?"

Then louder rung Sir Hornbook's horn,
In signals long and shrill:
His merrymen all, for conquest born,
Went marching up the hill.

VI.
Now steeper grew the rising ground,
And rougher grew the road,
As up the steep ascent they wound
To bold Sir Verb's abode. [18]

Sir Verb was old, and many a year,
All scenes and climates seeing,
Had run a wild and strange career
Through every mode of being.

And every aspect, shape, and change
Of action , and of passion :
And known to him was all the range
Of feeling, taste, and fashion.

He was an Augur, quite at home
In all things present done, [19]
Deeds past, and every act to come
In ages yet to run.

Entrenched in intricacies strong,
Ditch, fort, and palisado,
He marked with scorn the coming throng,
And breathed a bold bravado:

-- "Ho! who are you that dare invade
My turrets, moats, and fences?
Soon will your vaunting courage fade,
When on the walls, in lines array'd,
You see me marshal undismay'd
My host of moods and tenses." -- [20]

-- "In vain," -- Childe Launcelot cried in scorn, --
-- "On them is your reliance;" --
Sir Hornbook wound his bugle horn,
And twang'd a loud defiance.

They swam the moat, they scal'd the wall,
Sir Verb, with rage and shame,
Beheld his valiant general fall,
Infinitive by name.[21]

Indicative declar'd the foes [22]
Should perish by his hand;
And stout Imperative arose, [23]
The squadron to command .

Potential [24]and Subjunctive [25] then
Came forth with doubt [24] and chance : [25]
All fell alike, with all their men,
Before Sir Hornbook's lance.

Action and Passion nought could do
To save Sir Verb from fate;
Whose doom poor Participle knew, [26]
He must participate .

Then Adverb, who had skulk'd behind, [27]
To shun the mighty jar,
Came forward, and himself resign'd
A prisoner of war.

Three children of Imperative,
Full strong, though somewhat small,
Next forward came, themselves to give
To conquering Launcelot's thrall.

Conjunction press'd to join the crowd; [28]
But Preposition swore, [29]
Though Interjection sobb'd aloud, [30]
That he would go before .

Again his horn Sir Hornbook blew,
Full long, and loud, and shrill;
His merrymen all, so stout and true,
Went marching up the hill.

VII.
Sir Syntax dwelt in thick fir-grove, [31]
All strown with scraps of flowers, [32]
Which he had pluck'd to please his love,
Among the Muses' bowers.

His love was gentle Prosody, [33]
More fair than morning beam;
Who liv'd beneath a flowering tree,
Beside a falling stream.

And these two claim'd, with high pretence
The whole Parnassian ground,
Albeit some little difference
Between their taste was found:
Sir Syntax he was all for sense,
And Prosody for sound.

Yet in them both the Muses fair
Exceedingly delighted;
And thought no earthly thing so rare,
That might with that fond twain compare,
When they were both united .

--"Ho! yield, Sir Syntax!" -- Hornbook cried,
"This youth must pass thy grove,
Led on by me, his faithful guide,
In yonder bowers to rove." --

Thereat full much, Sir Syntax said,
But found resistance vain:
And through his grove Childe Launcelot sped,
With all Sir Hornbook's train.

They reach'd the tree where Prosody
Was singing in the shade:
Great joy Childe Launcelot had to see,
And hear that lovely maid.

Now, onward as they press'd along,
Did nought their course oppose;
Till full before the martial throng
The Muses' gates arose.

There Etymology they found, [34]
Who scorn'd surrounding fruits;
And ever dug in deepest ground,
For old and mouldy Roots.

Sir Hornbook took Childe Launcelot's hand,
And tears at parting fell:
-- "Sir Childe," -- he said, -- "with all my band
I bid you here farewell.

"Then wander through these sacred bowers,
Unfearing and alone:
All shrubs are here, and fruits, and flowers,
To happiest climates known." --

Once more his horn Sir Hornbook blew,
A parting signal shrill:
His merrymen all, so stout and true,
Went marching down the hill.

Childe Launcelot pressed the sacred ground,
With hope's exulting glow;
Some future song perchance may sound
The wondrous thing which there he found,
If you the same would know.

---

FOOTNOTES

1 Childe, in our old ballads, often signifies a knight .

2 There are twenty-six letters, A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. M. N. O. P. Q. R. S. T. U. V. W. X. Y. Z.

3 . Of these are vowels, a. e. i. o. u. y.

4 Four are double letters, j. w. x. z.

5 Four are liquids, l. m. n. r.

6 And twelve are mutes, b. c. d. f. g. h. k. p. q. s. t. v.

7 A syllable is a distinct sound of one or more letters pronounced in a breath.

8 Words are articulate sounds used by common consent, as signs of our ideas.

9 There are two articles, the , definite; a or an , indefinite.

10 The indefinite article is used generally and indeterminately to point out one single thing of a kind: as, " There is a dog ;" " Give me an orange ."

11 The definite article defines and specifies particular objects: as, " Those are the men ;" --" Give me the book ."

12 A noun is the name of whatsoever thing or being we see or discourse of.

13 Nouns are of two kinds, substantives and adjectives. A noun substantive declares its own meaning, and requires not another word to be joined with it to show its signification; as, man, book, apple.

14 A noun adjective cannot stand alone , but always requires to be joined with a substantive, of which it shows the nature or quality, as, " a good girl ," -- " a naughty boy ."

15 Nouns have two numbers, singular and plural; --

16 and three cases: nominative, possessive, and objective.

17 A pronoun is used instead of a noun, and may be considered its locum tenens , or deputy: as, " The King is gone to Windsor, he will return to-morrow. "

18 A verb is a word which signifies to be, to do, or to suffer; as, " I am, I love, I am loved. "

19 The two lines in Italics are taken from Chapman's Homer.

20 Verbs have five moods: The indicative, imperative, potential, subjunctive, and infinitive.

21 The infinitive mood expresses a thing in a general and unlimited manner: as, " To love, to walk, to be ruled."

22 The indicative mood simply indicates or declares a thing: as, " He loves:" "he is loved:" or asks a question: as, " Does he love?" -- "Is he loved?"

23 The imperative mood commands or entreats: as, " Depart:" "Come hither:" -- "Forgive me."

24 The potential mood implies possibility or obligation : as, " It may rain:" -- "They should learn ."

25 The subjunctive mood implies contingency : as, " If he were good, he would be happy."

26 The participle is a certain form of the verb, and is so called from participating the nature of a verb and an adjective: as, " he is an admired character; she is a loving child ."

27 The adverb is joined to verbs, to adjectives, and to other adverbs, to qualify their signification: as, " that is a remarkably swift horse: it is extremely well done ."

28 A conjunction is a part of speech chiefly used to connect words: as, " King and constitution; " or sentences: as, " I went to the theatre, and saw the new pantomime. "

29 A preposition is most commonly set before another word to show its relation to some word or sentence preceding: as, " The fisherman went down the river with his boat. "

    Conjunctions and Prepositions are for the most part Imperative moods of obsolete verbs: Thus, and signifies add : " John and Peter --John add Peter:" -- "The fisherman with his boat -- The fisherman, join his boat."

30 Interjections are words thrown in between the parts of sentence, to express passions or emotions: as " Oh! Alas! "

31 Syntax is that part of grammar, which treats of the agreement and construction of words in a sentence.

32 I allude to the poetical fragments with which syntax is illustrated.

33 Prosody is that part of grammar which treats of the true pronunciation of words, and the rules of versification.

34 Etymology is that part of grammar, which investigates the roots or derivation , of words.

---

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CALIDORE: A FRAGMENT OF A ROMANCE

by

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

Chapter I.
   Notwithstanding the great improvements of machinery in this rapidly improving age, which is so much wiser, better, and happier than all that went before it, every gentleman is not yet accommodated with the convenience of a pocket boat. We may therefore readily imagine that Miss Ap-Nanny and her sister Ellen, the daughters of the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, were not a little astonished in a Sunday evening walk on the sea shore, when a little skiff, which, by the rapidity of its motion had attracted their attention while but a speck upon the waves, ran upon the beach, from which emerged a very handsome young gentleman, dressed not exactly in the newest fashion, who, after taking down the sail and hauling up the boat upon the beach, carefully folded it up in the size of a prayer-book and transferred it to his pocket. He did not notice the young ladies till he had completed this operation, and when he looked round and discovered them he seemed a little confused, but made them a very courteous bow in a fine but rather singular style of ancient politeness. From the moment of his first landing, and the commencement of the curious process of folding up his boat, Miss Ap-Nanny had been dying with curiosity, and had consulted her sister Ellen as to the propriety of addressing the stranger, having, however, fully made up her mind beforehand as usual with young ladies when they ask advice.
.               .            .            .                The inn was filled with picturesque tourists who had arrived in various vehicles by the help of those noble quadrupeds who confer so much dignity on the insignificant biped, that if he venture to travel without them and rest his reception on his own merits the difference of his welcome may serve to show him how much more of his imaginary importance belongs to his horse than to himself. Our traveller arriving alone and on foot was received with half a courtesy by the landlady, and shown into the common parlour where the incipient cold of the autumnal evening was dispelled by an immense turf fire, by which were sitting two elderly gentlemen of the clerical profession, recumbent in arm chairs, with their eyes half shut, and their legs stretched out so that the points of their shoes came in contact at the centre of the fender. Each was smoking his pipe with contemplative gravity. Neither spoke nor moved, except now and then as if by mechanism, to fill his glass from the jug of ale that stood between them on the table, and the moment this good example was set by one the other followed it instantaneously and automatically as the two figures at St Dunstan's strike upon the bell to the great delight of Cockneys, amazement of rustics, and consolation of pickpockets. The stranger made several attempts to draw them into conversation, but could not succeed in extracting more than a "hum" from either of them. At length one of the reverend gentlemen, having buzzed the jug, articulated, with slow and minute emphasis: "Will you join in another jug?" "Hum!" said the other. A violent rattling of copper ensued in their respective coat pockets; two equal quantities of half-pence were deliberately counted down upon the table; the bell was rung, and the little, round, Welsh waiting-maid carried out the money, and replenished the jug in silence. They went on as before till the liquor was exhausted, when it became the other's turn to ask the question, and the same eventful words, "Will you join in another jug?" were repeated, with the same ceremonies and the same results. Our traveller, in the meanwhile, looked over his tablets of instruction. These two reverend gentlemen were the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd and the Rector of Bwlchpenbach. The rector performed afternoon service at a chapel twenty miles from his rectory, and Llanglasrhyd lying half-way between them, he slept every Sunday night under the roof of Gwyneth Owen, where his dearest friend, the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, met him to smoke away the evening. They had thus passed together every Sunday evening for forty years, and during the whole period had scarcely said ten words to each other beyond the usual forms of meeting and parting, and "Will you join in another jug?" Yet were their meetings so interwoven with their habitual comforts that either would have regarded the loss of the other as the greatest earthly misfortune that could have befallen him, and would never, perhaps, have mustered sufficient firmness of voice to address the same question, "Will you join in another jug?" to any other human being. It may seem singular to those who have heard the extensive form of Welsh hospitality that the vicar did not invite the rector to pass these evenings at his vicarage; but it must be remembered that the Rector of Bwlchpenbach was every week at Llanglasrhyd in the way of his business, and that the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd had no business whatever to take him on any single occasion to Bwlchpenbach; therefore the balance of the consumption of ale would have been entirely against the vicar, and as they regularly drank three quarts each at a sitting, or one hundred and fifty-six quarts in a year, the Rector of Bwlchpenbach would have consumed in forty years six thousand two hundred and forty quarts of ale, without equivalent or compensation, at the expense of the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, a circumstance not to be thought of without vexation of spirit.
   Our traveller folded up his tablets, rung the bell, and inquired what he could have for supper, and what wine was to be had? The landlady entered with a tempting list of articles, and enumerated several names of wine. The stranger seemed perplexed, and at length said he would have them all, for he liked to see a well-covered table, having always been used to one. The landlady dropped a double courtesy, and the reverend gentlemen dropped their pipes; the pipes broke, and the odorous embers were scattered on the hearth.
   When the supper smoked, and the wine sparkled on the table, the stranger pressed the reverend gentlemen to join him. They did not indeed require much pressing, and assisted with great industry in the demolition of his abundant banquet: but still not a syllable could he extract from either of them except that the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, when his heart was warmed with Madeira, invited the rector and the young stranger to breakfast with him the next morning at the vicarage, which the latter joyfully accepted, as he very well by this time understood that his lively and jovial companion was the father of the beautiful creature who had charmed him on the sea-shore. He sate from this time in contented silence, contemplating the happy meeting of the following morning while the reverend gentlemen sipped the liquid so far and only till with their usual felicitous sympathy they vanished at the same instant under the table. The landlady and her household were summoned to their assistance. The Vicar of Llanglasrhyd was carried home by the postillions, and the Rector of Bwlchpenbach was put to bed by the ostler.
      .      .      .      .      .      .    Allow me to hand you some toast: you must have had a very pleasant sail yesterday.--Very pleasant!--Did you come far? Very far.--From Ireland perhaps.--Not from Ireland.--Then you must have come a long way in such a small boat, such a very small boat.--Not so very small: it is one of our best sea boats.--Do you carry your best sea boats in your waistcoat pockets? Then I suppose in your great-coat pockets you carry your ships of the line.--But, dear me, sir, you must come from a very strange place.--I come from a part of the world which is known to the rest by the name of Terra Incognita. I am not at liberty to say more concerning it.--But, sir, if it is a fair question, what has brought you to Wales?--I have landed on this shore by accident. My present destination is London. I am to remain in this island twelve months, and return with a wife and a philosopher.--God bless me! what can Terra Incognita want with a philosopher, and how are you to take them away?--In the same boat that brought me.--Why, who do you think will trust herself? You would like some more tea?--Ellen, my dear, do you think any lady would trust herself?--If she had love enough, said Ellen.--Cream and sugar, said Miss Ap-Nanny.--The boat is perfectly safe, said the stranger, looking at Ellen. I could go through a hurricane with it.--Love, to be sure, will do anything, said Miss Ap-Nanny, but, Lord bless me! I may take an egg, and to be sure it would be worth some risk just in the way of curiosity to see Terra Incognita. They must be very strange people, but what they can want of a philosopher I cannot imagine.--I hope if you bring him this way you will keep him muzzled, for my papa says they are very terrible monsters, fiends of darkness and imps of the devil. I would not trust myself in a boat with one for the world. Would you, Ellen, my dear?--I should not be much afraid, said Ellen, smiling, if he were in the hands of a safe keeper.--We have a philosopher or two among us already, said the stranger, and they are by no means such formidable animals as you seem to suppose.--But my papa says so, said Miss Ap-Nanny.--I bow acquiescence, said the stranger, but perhaps the Welsh variety is a peculiarly fierce breed.--I am happy to say there is not one in all Wales, said Miss Ap-Nanny.--I hear they run tame in London, said Ellen..--Then you are not so much afraid of them as your sister, said the stranger.--Not quite, said Ellen, smiling again, I think I would venture into the same room with one even if he were not in an iron cage.--Oh, fie, Ellen, said Miss Ap-Nanny, that is what you call having liberal opinions. I cannot imagine where you got them. I am sure you did not learn them from me. Do you know, sir, Ellen is very heterodox. My papa actually detected her in the fact of reading a wicked book called "Principles of Moral Science," which, with his usual sweet temper, he put, without saying a word, behind the fire. He says liberal opinions are only another name for impiety.--Dear, good man! said Mrs AP-Nanny, opening her mouth for the first time, he never was guilty of a liberal opinion in the course of his life. .            .            .            .                Sir, what can a young man of your figure--you look like a courtier--mean by making love at first sight to my daughter? What can you mean, sir? Perhaps you have heard that she will have a thousand pounds, and that may be a temptation.--Money, said the stranger, is to me mere chaff; and producing a bag from his pocket, and shaking it by one corner, he scattered on the floor a profusion of gold. The Vicar, who had seen nothing but paper money for twenty years, was astonished at these yellow apparitions, and picking up one inspected it with great curiosity. On one side was the phenomenon of a crowned head with a handsome and intelligent face, and the legend ARTHURUS REX. On the reverse, a lion sleeping at Neptune's feet, and the legend REDIBO.--Here is a foreign potentate, said the Reverend Dr Ap-Nanny, whom I never remember to have heard of. Pray, is he legitimate by the grace of God, or a blasphemous and seditious usurper whom the people have had the impudence to choose for themselves?--He is very legitimate and has an older title than any other being in the world.--Then I reverence him, said the Vicar. Old Authority, sir, old Authority, there is nothing like old Authority. But what do you want with my daughter?--Candidly, sir, said the stranger, I am on a quest for a wife, and am so far inspired by the grace of Venus, Cupid, and Juno, that I am willing my quest should end where it begins--here.--On a quest, exclaimed the Vicar; Venus, Cupid, and Juno! Ah! I see how it is. Rich, humoured, and touched in the head. Pray, what do you mean by Juno?--Juno Pronuba, said the stranger, the goddess of marriage.--I see, sir, you are inclined to make a joke of both me and my daughter. Sir, I must tell you this very unbecoming levity.--My dear sir, I assure you.--Sir, it is palpable. Would any man make a serious proposal to a man of my cloth for his daughter, and talk to him of the grace of Venus and Cupid and Juno Pronuba, the goddess of marriage?--I swear to you, sir, said the stranger, earnestly, by the sacred head of Pan.
      .      .      .      .      .      .    When they approached the destinied island they were delighted to perceive that its aspect presented a most promising diversity of mountain, valley, and forest reposing in the sunshine of a delicious climate. Two very singular persons were walking on the seashore; one in the appearance a young and handsome man with a crown of vine-leaves on his head; the other a wild and singular figure in a fine state of picturesque roughness with goat's horns and feet and a laughing face. As the vessel fixed its keel in the shore and King Arthur and his party landed, the two strangers approached and inquired who they were, and whence they came?--This, replied Merlin, is the great King Arthur; this is his fair queen, Guenevere: and I am the potent Merlin: these are the illustrious knights of the round table: and this is the King's butler, Bedevere. The butler, said the first stranger, shall be welcome. And so shall the ladies, said the second. But as to the rest of you, pursued the first, we must know you a little better before we accord you our permission to advance a step in this island. I am Bacchus, and I, said the other, am Pan. So, said Sir Launcelot, I find we have to contend with the evil powers. If you mean us by that appellation, said Bacchus, you will find us too strong for you. This island is the retreat of all the gods and goddesses, genii and nymphs, who formerly reigned in Olympus, and dwelt in the mountains and valleys of Greece and Italy. Though we had not much need of mankind, we had a great affection for them, and lived among them on good terms and in an interchange of kind offices. They regaled us with the odours of sacrifice, built us magnificent temples, and especially showed their piety by singing and dancing, and being always social and cheerful, and full of pleasure and life, which is the most gratifying appearance that man can present to the gods. But after a certain time they began to change most lamentably for the worse. They discontinued their sacrifices; they broke our images, many of which we had sate for ourselves; they called us frightful and cacophonous names--Beelzebub and Amaimon and Astaroth: they plundered and demolished our temples, and built ugly structures on their ruins, where, instead of dancing and rejoicing as they had been used to do, and delighting us with spectacles of human happiness, they were eternally sighing and groaning, and beating their breasts, and dropping their lower jaws, and turning up the whites of their eyes, and cursing each other and all mankind, and chaunting such dismal staves that we shut our eyes and ears, and, flying from our favourite terrestrial scenes, assembled in a body among the clouds of Olympus. Here we held a council as to what was to be done for the amendment of these perverted mortals; but Jupiter informed us that necessity, his mistress, and that of the world, compelled him to acquiesce for a time in this condition of things, that mankind, who had never been good for a great deal, were now become so worthless, and withal so disagreeable, that the wisest course we could adopt would be to leave them to themselves and retire to an undisturbed island for which he had stipulated with the fates. Here, then, we are, and have been for ages. That mountain on which the white clouds are resting is now Mount Olympus, and there dwell Jupiter and the Olympian deities. In these forests and valleys reside Pan and Silenus, the Fauns and the Satyrs, and the small nymphs and genii. I divide my time between the two, for though my home is Olympus, I have a most special friendship for Pan. Now I have only this to say, that if you come here to make frightful faces, chaunt long tunes, and curse each other through the nose, I give you fair warning to depart in peace: if not, we shall find no trouble in expelling you by force, as Jupiter will testify to you. Jupiter gave the required testification by a peal of thunder from Olympus.
   Merlin and King Arthur fell on their knees, and the rest of their party followed the example. Great Bacchus and mighty Pan, said Merlin, pity our ignorance and take us under your protection, for if you banish us from this happy shore, our vessel must wander over the seas for ever, like the Flying Dutchman that is to be, and we are very ill victualled for such a navigation.
.            .            .            .                The first object of Calidore on arriving in London was to change some of his gold Arthurs into the circulating medium of the country, and on making inquiry at his hotel, he was directed, for this purpose, to a spacious stone building with high walls and no windows. Alighting from his hackney-coach, with a money-box in his hand, he wandered through a labyrinth of paved courts and spacious rooms filled with smoky-faced clerks and solid globes of Jews, through some of which he had great difficulty in forcing his way. After some time, he discovered the office he wanted, presented his gold, which was duly tried, weighed, and carefully removed from his sight. The sum was enounced with very distinct articulation, and a piece of paper was given to him, with which he was sent to another place. How would you like it, sir? said a little sharp-nosed man with a quill behind his ear.--In the circulating medium of this city, said Calidore.--But I mean, sir, in what portions?--In no portions: I wish to have it all at once.--Thousands, sir? said the little man.--The specified sum, sir, said Calidore.--The little man put into his hand several slips of paper.--Well, sir! said Calidore, what am I to do with these?--Whatever you please, sir, said the little man, smiling. I wish I could say as much for myself.--I am much obliged to you, said Calidore; and I have no doubt you are an exceedingly facetious and agreeable person; but, at the same time, if you would have the goodness to direct me where I can receive my money.--Sir, said the little man, that is your money.--This!--Certainly, sir; that. What would you have?--Gold coin, to be sure, said Calidore.--Gold coin! I am afraid, sir, you are a disaffected man and a Jacobin, or you would not ask for such a thing, when I have given you the best money in the world. Pray, sir, look at it--you are a stranger, perhaps--look at it, sir; that's all.--Calidore looked at one of the pieces of paper, and read aloud: I promise to pay to Mr Henry Hare--One Thousand Pounds--John Figginbotham.--Well, sir; and what have I to do with John Figginbotham's promise to pay a thousand pounds to Henry Hare?--John Figginbotham, sir, having made that promise, and put it upon that paper, makes that paper worth a thousand pounds.--To Henry Hare, said Calidore.--To any one, said the little man. You overlook the words: or bearer. Now, sir, you are the bearer.--I understand. John Figginbotham promises to pay me a thousand pounds.--Precisely.--Then, sir, if you will have the goodness to direct me to John Figginbotham I will thank him to pay me directly.--But, good God, sir! you mistake the matter.--Mistake, sir!--Yes, sir! John Figginbotham does not pay; he only signs. We pay: we, who are here; I and my chums.--Very well, sir; then why can you not pay me without all this circumlocution?--Sir, I have paid you.--How, sir?--With those notes, sir. Sir, these are promises to pay, made by one Figginbotham. I wish these promises to be performed. You send me round in a circle from Hare to Figginbotham, and from Figginbotham to yourself, and I am still as much in the dark as ever, as to where I am to look for the performance of their very liberal promises.--Oh! the performance, sir,--very true sir,--as you say; but, sir, promises are of two kinds, those which are meant to be performed, and those which are not, the latter being forms used for convenience and dispatch of business.--Then, sir, these promises are not meant to be performed.--Pardon me, sir, they are meant to be performed, not literally, but in a manner. They used to be performed by giving gold to the bearer, but that having been found peculiarly inconvenient has been laid aside by Act of Parliament ever since the year Ninety-Seven, and we now pay paper with paper, which simplifies business exceedingly.--And pray, sir, do these promises to pay pass for realities among the people?--Certainly they do, sir; one of those slips of paper which you hold in your hand will purchase the labour of fifty men for a year.--John Figginbotham must be a person of very great consequence, there is not much trouble I presume in making one of these things.--Not much, sir.--Then I suppose, sir, John Figginbotham has all the labour of the country under his absolute disposal. Assuredly this Figginbotham must be a great magician, and profoundly skilled in magic and demonology; for this is almost more than Merlin could do, to make the eternal repetition of the same promise pass for its eternal performance, and exercise unlimited control over the lives and fortunes of a whole nation, merely by putting his name upon pieces of paper. However, since, such is the case, I must try to make the best of the matter: but if I find that these talismans of the great magician Figginbotham do not act upon the people as you give me to understand they will, I shall take the liberty of blowing my bugle in his enchanted castle, and in the meantime, sir, I respectfully take leave of your courtly presence.--Poor, deranged gentleman! exclaimed the little man after Calidore was gone, did you ever hear a man talk so in all your life, Mr Solomons?--Very much cracked, said Mr Solomons, very much cracked in the head; but seems to be sound in the pocket, which is the better part of man.

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THE ROUND TABLE; OR KING ARTHUR'S FEAST

by

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

INTRODUCTION

King Arthur is said to have disappeared after the battle of Camlan, and to have never been seen again; which gave rise to a tradition that he had been carried away by Merlin, a famous prophet and magician of his time, and would return to his kingdom at some future period.--The Welch continued to expect him for many hundred years; and it is by no means certain that they have entirely given him up. He is here represented as inhabiting a solitary island, under the influence of the prophet Merlin; by whose magic power he is shown all the kings and queens who have sat on his throne since his death, and giving to them a grand feast, at his old established round table, attended by their principal secretaries, dukes, lords, admirals, generals, poets, and a long train of courtiers. The kings are of course mentioned in the order of succession. The allegory is illustrated as concisely as possible in the notes. So many histories of England being published for the use of young persons, we have only attached the names of the kings, and to such instances as might not be considered sufficiently explanatory.

KING ARTHUR'S FEAST
THE ROUND TABLE
King Arthur sat down by the lonely sea-coast,
As thin as a lath, and as pale as a ghost:
He looked on the east, and the west, and the south,
With a tear in his eye, and a pipe in his mouth;
And he said to old Merlin, who near him did stand,
Drawing circles, triangles, and squares on the sand,
"Sure nothing more dismal and tedious can be,
Than to sit always smoking and watching the sea:
Say when shall the fates re-establish my reign,
And spread my round-table in Britain again?"

Old Merlin replied: "By my art it appears,
Not in less than three hundred and seventy years;
But in the mean time I am very well able
To spread in this island your ancient round table;
And to grace it with guests of unparallelled splendour,
I'll summon old Pluto forthwith to surrender
All the kings who have sat on your throne, from the day
When from Camlan's destruction I snatched you away."

King Arthur's long face, by these accents restored,
Grew as round as his table, as bright as his sword;
While the wand of old Merlin waved over the ocean,
Soon covered its billows with brilliant commotion;
For ships of all ages and sizes appearing,
Towards the same shore were all rapidly steering,
Came cleaving the billows with sail and with oar,
Yacht, pinnace, sloop, frigate, and seventy-four.

King Arthur scarce spied them afar from the land,
Ere their keels were fixed deep in the yellow sea-sand;
And from under their canopies, golden and gay,
Came kings, queens and courtiers in gallant array,
Much musing and marvelling who it might be,
That was smoking his pipe by the side of the sea;
But Merlin stepped forth with a greeting right warm,
And then introduced them in order and form.

The Saxons [1] came first, the pre-eminence claiming,
With scarce one among them but Alfred worth naming.
Full slily they looked upon Canute [2] the bold,
And remembered the drubbing he gave them of old:
Sad Harold [3] came last; and the crown which he wore
Had been broken, and trampled in dust and in gore.

Now the sun in the west had gone down to repose,
When before them at once a pavilion arose;
Where Arthur's round table was royally spread,
And illumined with lamps, purple, yellow, and red.
The smell of roast beef put them all in a foment,
So they scrambled for seats, and were ranged in a moment.

The Conqueror [4] stood up, as they thought, to say grace;
But he scowled around the board with a resolute face;
And the company stared, when he swore by the fates,
That a list he would have of their names and estates, [5]
And lest too much liquor their brains should inspire
To set the pavilion and table on fire,
He hoped they'd acknowledge he counselled right well,
To put out the lights when he tinkled his bell. [6]

His speech was cut short by a general dismay;
For William the Second [7] had fainted away,
At the smell of some New Forest Venison [8] before him;
But a tweak of the nose, Arthur said, would restore him.

But another disturbance compelled him to mark
The pitiful state of poor Henry Beauclerk; [9]
Who had fallen on the lampreys with ardour so stout, [10]
That he dropped from his chair in the midst of the rout.
Old Arthur, surprised at a king so voracious,
Thought a salt-water dunking might prove efficacious.

Now Stephen, [11] for whom some bold barons had carved, [12]
Said, while some could get surfeited, he was half-starved:
For his arms were so pinioned, unfortunate elf! [13]
He could hit on no method of helping himself.

But a tumult more furious called Arthur to check it,
'Twixt Henry the Second [14] and Thomas-a-Becket. [15]
"Turn out," exclaimed Arthur, "that prelate so free,
And from the first rock see him thrown in the sea."
So they hustled out Becket without judge or jury,
Who quickly returned in a terrible fury.
The lords were enraged, and the ladies affrighted;
But his head was soon cracked in the fray he excited;
When in rushed some monks in a great perturbation,
And gave good King Henry a sound flagellation;
Which so coolly he took, that the president swore,
He ne'er saw such a bigoted milk-sop before.

But Arthur's good humour was quickly restored,
When to lion-heart Richard [16] a bumper he poured
Whose pilgrim's array told the tale of his toils,
Half-veiling his arms and his Saracen spoils; [17]
As he sliced up the venison of merry Sherwood,
He told a long story of bold Robin Hood, [18]
Which gave good King Arthur such hearty delight,
That he vow'd he'd make Robin a round-table knight.

While Merlin to fetch Robin Hood was preparing,
John Lackland [19] was blustering, and vapouring, and swearing,
And seemed quite determined the roast to be ruling; [20]
But some stout fellows near him prepared him a cooling;
Who seized him, and held him, nor gave him release,
Till he signed them a bond for preserving the peace. [21]

While Henry the Third, [22] dull, contemned, and forsaken,
Sat stupidly silent, regaling on Bacon, [23]
The First of the Edwards [24] charmed Arthur with tales
Of fighting in Palestine, Scotland, and Wales; [25]
But Merlin asserted his angry regards,
Recollecting how Edward had treated the Bards. [26]
The Second, [27] whose days in affliction had run, [28]
Sat pensive and sad 'twixt his father and son.
But on the Third Edward [29] resplendently glance
The blazons of knighthood, and trophies of France; [30]
Beside him his son in black armour appears,
That yet bears the marks of the field of Poictiers. [31]

From the festival's pomp, and the table's array,
Pale Richard of Bourdeaux [32] turned sadly away;
The thought of that time his remembrance appals,
When Famine scowled on him in Pomfret's dark walls. [33]

Beside him sat Bolingbroke, [34] gloomy and stern,
Nor dared his dark eyes on his victim to turn; [35]
The wrinkles of care o'er his features were spread,
And thorns lined the crown that encircled his head. [36]
But Harry of Monmouth [37] some guests had brought in,
Who drank so much liquor, and made such a din, [38]
(While Arthur full loudly his mirth did disclose
At Falstaff's fat belly and Bardolph's red nose)
That he turned them all out with monarchical pride, [39]
And laid the plumed cap of his revels aside,
And put on the helmet, and breastplate, and shield,
That did such great service on Agincourt's field. [40]

And now rang the tent with unusual alarms,
For the white and red roses were calling to arms; [41]
Confusion and tumult established their reign,
And Arthur stood up, and called silence in vain.

Poor Harry the Sixth, [42] hustled, beaten, and prest,
Had his nosegay of lilies [43] soon torn from his breast;
And, though Margaret, to shield him, had clasped him around, [44]
From her arms he was shaken, and hurled to the ground; [45]
While Edward of York [46] flourished over his head
The rose's pale blossoms, and trampled the red;
Though Warwick strove vainly the ill to repair,
And set fallen Henry again on his chair.

The children [47] of Edward stood up in the fray,
But, touched by cruel Richard, [48] they vanished away;
Who, knowing none loved him, resolved all should fear him,
And therefore knocked every one down who was near him.
Till him in his turn Harry Richmond [49] assailed,
And at once, on his downfall, good order prevailed;
And Richmond uplifted, to prove the strife ended,
A wreath where the white and red roses were blended. [50]

With his Jane, and his Annes, and his Catherines beside,
Sat Henry the Eighth, [51] in true Ottoman pride,
And quaffed off with Wolsey the goblet's red tide;
But over the head of each lady so fair
An axe was impending, that hung by a hair. [52]

Bold Arthur, whose fancy this king had not won,
Look'd with hope and delight on young Edward [53 ]his son;
But had scarcely commended his learning and grace,
Ere he found his attention called off [54] to the place
Where the infamous Mary [55] polluted the feast,
Who sat drinking blood from the skull of a priest. [56]

But he struggled his horror and rage to repress,
And sought consolation from worthy Queen Bess, [57]
Who had brought Drake and Raleigh her state to sustain, [58]
With American spoils and the trophies of Spain;
While Shakspeare and Spencer, [59] with song and with fable,
Enchanted King Arthur and all round his table.

Now the First of the James's [60] complained of the heat,
And seemed ill at ease in his ricketty seat;
It proved, when examined (which made them all stare),
A gunpowder barrel instead of a chair. [61]

The first of the Charles's [62] was clearing the dishes,
Taking more than his share of the loaves and the fishes, [63]
Not minding at all what the company said,
When up started Cromwell, and sliced off his head. [64]

Charles the Second, [65] enraged at the villainous deed,
Tried to turn out old Cromwell, but could not succeed;
But he mastered young Dick, and then cooled his own wrath
In syllabub, trifle, and fillagree broth. [66]

James the Second, [67] with looks full of anger and gloom,
Pronounced nothing good but the cookery of Rome; [68]
So begged of King Arthur, his dear royal crony,
To make all the company eat macaroni; [69]
But Arthur bade Mary an orange present, [70]
At which James grew queasy, and fled from the tent.
So she placed on his seat honest William, [71] her spouse,
And with laurel and olive encircled his brows; [72]
Wreath of glory and peace, by young Freedom entwined, [73]
And gave him a key to the lock [73] of the mind.

Now as Arthur continued the party to scan,
He did not well know what to make of Queen Anne; [74]
But Marlborough, [75] he saw, did her credit uplift,
And he heartily laughed at the jokes of Dean Swift. [76]
Then shook hands with two Georges, [77] who near him were seated,
Who closed in his left, and the circle completed;
He liked them both well, but he frankly averred,
He expected to prove better pleased with the Third.

---

FOOTNOTES

1 The Saxons invaded England, and dispossessed the Britons. The most famous of the Saxon kings was Alfred.

2 The Danes, under Canute, conquered the Saxons. The sons of Canute died without children, and the government returned to the Saxon kings.

3 The last of the Saxon kings was Harold II., who was killed in the battle of Hastings, when William, Duke of Normandy, gained a decisive victory.

4 William I. the Conqueror.

5 Doomsday Book.

6 The curfew.

7 William II. Rufus.

8 Accidentally killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest.

9 Henry I. Beauclerk.

10 Died eating lampreys.

11 Stephen, of Bloix.

12 Held in subjection by the barons.

13 And so restricted in his authority, that he had little more than the name of a king.

14 Henry II. Fitz-Empress.

15 Quarrelled with his minister, Thomas-a-Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was compelled to fly the country; but afterwards returning, was murdered by some followers of the king; for which Henry was forced to do penance, and was whipped by the monks at Becket's tomb.

16 Richard Coeur-de-Lion.

17 Returned in a pilgrim's disguise through Europe from his wars in the Holy Land.

18 In his time lived Robin Hood, the celebrated robber of Sherwood Forest.

19 King John, surnamed Lackland.

20 Ambitious of absolute power.

21 Forced by his barons to sign Magna Charta.

22 Henry III. of Winchester.

23 A weak and foolish king, in whose reign lived Friar Bacon.

24 Edward I. Longshanks.

25 Gained many victories.

26 Massacred the Welch Bards.

27 Edward II. of Caernarvon.

28 Murdered by his wife's knowledge in Berkeley Castle.

29 Edward III.

30 Conquered France in conjunction with his son, the Black Prince.

31 The Battle of Poictiers.

32 Richard II. of Bordeaux.

33 Killed in Pomfret Castle.

34 Henry IV. Bolingbroke.

35 Obtained the crown by rebelling against Richard II.

36 Was miserable all his reign.

37 Henry V. of Monmouth.

38 Led a very dissolute life while Prince of Wales, and kept a set of drunken companions, to whom Shakespeare has given the names of Falstaff, Bardolph, & c.

39 Discarded them when he came to be king.

40 And gained great victories in France, particularly the battle of Agincourt.

41 The civil wars of York and Lancaster, of which respective parties the white and red roses were the emblems.

42 Henry VI. of Windsor.

43 Lost the kingdom of France.

44 Supported by his queen, Margaret.

45 Overcome by the York party, and made a prisoner in the tower.

46 Edward IV., raised to the throne by the aid of the Earl of Warwick; who afterwards quarrelled with Edward, and endeavoured to restore Henry, but without success.

47 Edward V. and his brother, the Duke of York, died while children, supposed to have been murdered in the Tower by order of their Uncle Richard.

48 Richard III., a cruel and sanguinary tyrant.

49 Conquered in the battle of Bosworth by Henry of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII.

50 Being himself of the house of Lancaster, married Elizabeth, sister of Edward V., who was of the house of York; thus uniting the two huoses, and ending the civil wars.

51 Henry VIII.

52 Had six wives--one Jane, two Annes, and three Catherines, in the following order:

1. Catherine of Arragon, whom he divorced.
2. Ann Boleyn, whom he beheaded.
3. Jane Seymour, who died in giving birth to Edward VI.
4. Ann of Cleves, whom he sent back to her parents.
5. Catherine Howard, whom he beheaded.
6. Catherine Parr, who outlived him.

53 Edward VI., a very promising young prince.

54 Died in his sixteenth year.

55 Mary. Cruel Queen Mary. Daughter of Henry the Eighth.

56 Burned three hundred persons for not being of her opinion in religion.

57 Elizabeth. A wise and fortunate queen.

58 Her admirals, among whom were Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, sailed round the world, settled colonies in North America, defeated the Spanish Armada, & c.

59 In her reign lived many eminent authors, particularly Shakspeare and Spenser.

60 James the First.

61 The gunpowder plot, 5th November, 1605.

62 Charles I.

63 Overstrained his prerogative; encroached on the liberties of the people, and on the privileges of parliament. The consequence was a civil war and the loss of his head.

64 The commonwealth succeeded, at the head of which was Oliver Cromwell. He was succeeded by his son Richard, who was displaced by the restoration of Charles II.

65 Charles II.

66 A frivolous and dissolute king.

67 James II.

68 A bigoted Roman Catholic.

69 Used violent measures to establish that religion in England.

70 Was obliged to fly the country; and the crown devolved to his daughter Mary, and her husband, William, Prince of Orange.

71 William III.

72 His reign was distinguished by foreign victories and domestic prosperity.

73 By being the origin of the present form of the English constitution, in the glorious revolution of 1688; and by the life and writings of the philosopher Locke.

74 Anne.

75 Her general, the Duke of Marlborough, gained several great victories in France.

76 Many eminent literary characters flourished in her time, particularly Swift and Pope.

77 The House of Hanover.

George I.
George II.
George III.

---

Legends/Sagas

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KING ARTHUR'S DEATH
from RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

by

BISHOP THOMAS PERCY

On Trinitye Mondaye in the morne,
   &This sore battayle was doom'd to bee,
Where manye a knighte cry'd, Well-awaye!
   &Alacke, it was the more pittìe.

Ere the first crowinge of the cocke,
   &When as the kinge in his bed laye,
He thoughte Sir Gawaine to him came,
   &And there to him these wordes did saye:

"Nowe, as you are mine unkle deare,
   &And as you prize your life, this daye
O meet not with your foe in fight;
   &Putt off the battayle, if yee maye.

"For Sir Launcelot is nowe in Fraunce,
   &And with him many an hardye knighte:
Who will within this moneth be backe,
   &And will assiste yee in the fighte."

The kinge then call'd his nobles all,
   &Before the breakinge of the daye;
And told them howe Sir Gawaine came,
   &And there to him these wordes did saye.

His nobles all this counsayle gave,
   &That earlye in the morning, hee
Shold send awaye an herauld-at-armes,
   &To aske a parley faire and free.

Then twelve good knightes King Arthur chose,
   &The best of all that with him were,
To parley with the foe in field,
   &And make with him agreement faire.

The king he charged all his hoste,
   &In readinesse there for to bee;
But noe man shold noe weapon sturre,
   &Unlesse a sword drawne they shold see.

And Mordred, on the other parte,
   &Twelve of his knights did likewise bringe,
The best of all his companye,
   &To hold the parley with the kinge.

Sir Mordred alsoe charged his hoste,
   &In readinesse there for to bee;
But noe man sholde noe weapon sturre,
   &But if a sworde drawne they shold see.

For he durste not his unkle truste,
   &Nor he his nephewe, sothe to tell;
Alacke! it was a woefulle case,
   &As ere in Christentye befelle.

But when they were together mette,
   &And both to faire accordance broughte,
And a month's league betweene them sette,
   &Before the battayle sholde be foughte,

An addere crept forth of a bushe,
   &Stunge one o' th' king's knightes on the knee;
Alacke! It was a woefulle chance,
   &As ever was in Christentìe.

When the knighte found him wounded sore,
   &And sawe the wild-worm hanginge there,
His sworde he from his scabberde drewe;
   &A piteous case, as ye shall heare.

For when the two hostes sawe the sworde,
   &They joyned battayle instantlye;
Till of soe manye noble knightes,
   &On one side there were left but three.

For all were slain that durst abide,
   &And but some fewe that fled awaye:
Ay mee! it was a bloodye fielde,
   &As ere was foughte on a summer's daye.

Upon King Arthur's own partyè,
   &Onlye himselfe escaped there,
And Lukyn Duke of Gloster free,
   &And the king's butler Bedevere.

And when the king beheld his knightes
   &All dead and scattered on the molde,
The teares fast trickled downe his face;
   &That manlye face in fight so bolde.

"Nowe reste yee all, brave knights," he said,
   &"Soe true and faithful to your trust:
And must ye then, ye valiant hearts,
   &Be lefte to moulder into dust!

"Most loyal have yee been to mee,
   &Most true and faithful unto deathe:
And, oh! to rayse yee up againe,
   &How freelye could I yield my breathe!

"But see, the traitor's yet alive!
   &Lo where hee stalkes among the deade!
Nowe bitterlye he shall abye:
   &And vengeance fall upon his head."

"O staye, my liege," then sayd the duke;
   &"O staye for love and charitìe;
Remember what the vision spake,
   &Nor meete your foe, if it may bee."

"O staye mee not, thou worthye wight,
   &This debt my loyal knights I owe:
Betide my life, betide me death,
   &I will avenge them of their foe."

Then straite he grasp'd his trustye speare,
   &And on his horse then mounted hee:
As his butler holpe him to his horse,
   &His bowels gushed to his knee.

"Alas!" then sayd the noble king,
   &"That I should live this sight to see!
To see this good knight here be slaine,
   &All for his love in helping mee!

He put his speare into his reste.
   &And to Sir Mordred loud gan crye:
"Nowe sette thyself upon thy guarde,
   &For, traitor, nowe thy death is nye."

Sir Mordred lifted up his sworde,
   &And fierce to meet the king ran hee:
The king his speare he through him thrust,
   &A fathom thorow his bodìe.

When Mordered felt the stroke of death,
   &And found that he was wounded soe,
He thrust himselfe upon the speare,
   &And strucke the king a deadlye blowe.

Then grimmlye dyed Sir Mordered,
   &Presentlye upon that tree:
And bloody streames ranne from the kinge,
   &Ere to the duke returned hee.

Sir Lukyn then he thus bespake:
   &"Sir Knighte, thou hast been faithfulle tryde;
Nowe take my sworde Excalibar,
   &That hangs so freelye by my syde;

"O take my sword Excalibar,
   &And there into the river throwe:
For here, henceforth, benethe this tree,
   &All use of weapons I forgoe.

"And fare thee well, thou trustye sword,
   & A better neer had valiant knighte;
With thee full ofte, and many a daye,
   &Have I withstood my foe in fighte.

   &With this good fauchion in my hande,
   &Oft have I reapd the bloody feelde:
But nowe the fatalle houre is come,
   &That never more I may thee weelde."

The duke to the river side he went,
   &And there his owne sword in threwe he;
But he kept back Excalibar,
   &He kept it back in privitie.

For all of coleyne was the blade,
   &And all the hilte of precious stone:
"And ever alacke!" then sayd the knighte,
   &"Must such a sword awaye be throwne?"

Then backe he came unto the kinge,
   &Who sayd, Sir Lukyn, what did yee see?"
"Nothing, my liege, save that the winde
   &Blewe oer the waters faire and free."

"O goe againe," then said the kinge,
   &"O good Sir Lukyn, goe againe:
Into the rivere throwe my sword,
   &Nor keepe me lingering here in paine."

The duke then to the river went,
   &And the kings scabberd in threwe hee;
But he kept backe Excalibar,
   &And hid it undernethe a tree.

Then backe he came to tell the kinge,
   &Who sayde, "Sir Lukyn, sawe ye oughte?"
"Nothinge, my liege, save that the winde
   &Nowe with the angrye waters fought."

"O Lukyn, Lukyn," said the kinge,
   &"Twice haste thou dealt deceytfullye:
Alacke, whom may wee ever truste,
   &When suche a knighte soe false can bee!

"Saye, wouldst thou have thy master dead,
   &All for a sword that wins thine eye?
Now goe againe, and throwe it in,
   &Or here the one of us shall dye."

The duke, all shent with this rebuke,
   &No aunswere made unto the kinge;
But to the rivere tooke the sworde,
   &And threwe it far as he coulde flinge.

A hande and an arme did meete the sworde,
   &And flourishd three times in the air;
Then sunke benethe the renninge streme,
   &And of the duke was seene noe mair.

All sore astonied stood the duke,
   &He stood as still, as still mote bee;
Then hastened backe to telle the kinge,
   &But he was gone from under the tree.

But to what place he cold not tell,
   &For never after hee did him spye;
But hee sawe a barge goe from the land,
   &And hee heard ladyes howle and crye.

And whether the kinge were there or not,
   &Hee never knewe, nor ever colde,
For from that sad and direfulle daye,
   &Hee never more was seene on molde.

---

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KING RYENCE'S CHALLENGE
from RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

by

BISHOP THOMAS PERCY

As it fell out on a Pentecost day,
    King Arthur at Camelot kept his court royall,
With his faire queene dame Guenever the gay,
    And many bold barons sitting in hall,
With ladies attired in purple and pall,
    And heraults in hewkes, hooting on high,
Cryed, Largesse , Largesse , Chevaliers tres-hardie .

A doughty dwarfe to the uppermost deas
    Right pertlye gan pricke, kneeling on knee;
With steven fulle stoute amids all the preas,
    Say'd, "Nowe Sir King Arthur, God save thee and see!
Sir Ryence of North-Gales greeteth well thee,
    And bids thee thy beard anon to him send,
Or else from thy jaws hewill it off rend.

"For his robe of state is a rich scarlet mantle,
    With eleven kings beards bordered about,
And there is room lefte yet in a kantle,
For thine to stande, to make the twelfth out.
    This must be done, be thou never so stout;
This must be done, I tell thee no fable,
Maugre the teethe of all thy Round Table."

When this mortal message from his mouthe past,
    Great was the noyse bothe in hall and in bower:
The king fum'd; the queene screecht; ladies were aghast;
    Princes puff'd; barons blustred; lords began lower;
    Knights stormed; squires startled, like steeds in a stower;
Pages and yeomen yell'd out in the hall;
Then in came Sir Kay, the king's seneschal.

"Silence, my soveraignes," quoth this courteous knight,
    And in that stound the stowre began still:
Then the dwarfe's dinner full deerely was dight;
    Of wine and wassel he had his wille,
    And when he had eaten and drunken his fill,
An hundred pieces of fine coynd gold
Were given this dwarf for his message bold.

"But say to Sir Ryence, thou dwarf," quoth the king,
    "That for his bold message I do him defye,
And shortlyewith basins and pans will him ring
    Out of North-Gales; where he and I
    With swords, and not razors, quickly shall trye,
Whether he, or King Arthur, will prove the best barbor:"
And therewith he shook his good sword Escalàbor.

---

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SIR LANCELOT DU LAKE
from RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

by

BISHOP THOMAS PERCY

When Arthur first in court began,
   And was approvèd king,
By force of armes great victorys wonne,
   And conquest home did bring;

Then into England straight he came
   With fifty good and able
Knights that resorted unto him,
   And were of the Round Table.

And many justs and turnaments
   Whereto were many prest,
Wherein some knights did farr excell,
   And eke surmount the rest.

But one Sir Lancelot du Lake,
   Who was approvèd well,
He for his deeds and feates of armes
   All others did excell.

When he had rested him a while,
   In play, and game, and sportt,
He said he wold goe prove himselfe,
   In some adventurous sort.

He armèd rode in forrest wide,
   And met a damsell faire,
Who told him of adventures great,
   Whereto he gave good care.

"Why shold I not?" quoth Lancelott tho,
   "For that cause came I hither."
"Thou seemst," quoth she, "a knight full good,"
   And I will bring thee thither,

"Wheras a mighty knight doth dwell,
   That now is of great fame;
Therefore tell me what knight thou art,
   And what may be thy name."

"My name is Lancelot du Lake."
   Quoth she, "It likes me than;
Here dwelles a knight who never was
   Yet matcht with any man;

"Who has in prison threescore knights
   And four, that he did wound;
Knights of King Arthurs court they be,
   And of his Table Round."

She brought him to a river side,
   And also to a tree,
Whereon a copper bason hung,
   And many shields to see.

He struck soe hard, the bason broke:
   And Tarquin soon he spyed:
Who drove a horse before him fast,
   Whereon a knight lay tyed.

"Sir Knight," then sayd Sir Lancelòtt,
   "Bring me that horse-load hither,
And lay him downe, and let him rest;
   Weel try our force together.

"For, as I understand, thou hast,
   Soe far as thou art able,
Done great despite and shame unto
   The knights of the Round Table."

"If thou be of the Table Round,"
   Quoth Tarquin, speedilye,
"Both thee and all thy fellowship
   I utterly defye."

"That's over much," quoth Lancelott tho,
   "Defend thee by and by."
They sett their speares unto their steeds,
   And each att other flye.

They coucht their speares, (their horses ran,
   As though there had been thunder);
And strucke them each immidst their shields,
   Wherewith they broke in sunder.

Their horsses backes brake under them,
   The knights were both astound;
To avoyd their horsses they made great haste,
   And light upon the ground.

They tooke them to their shields full fast,
   Their swords they drew out than;
With mighty strokes most eagerlye
   Each at the other ran.

They wounded were, and bled full sore,
   They both for breath did stand,
And leaning on their swordes awhile,
   Quoth Tarquine, "Hold thy hand,

"And tell to me what I shall aske;"
   "Say on," quoth Lancelot tho.
"Thou art," quoth Tarquine, "the best knight
   That ever I did know;

"And like a knight that I did hate;
   Soe that thou be not hee,
I will deliver all the rest,
   And eke accord with thee."

"That is well sayd," quoth Lancelott tho,
   "But sith it must be soe,
What knight is that thou hatest thus?
   I pray thee to meshow."

"His name is Lancelot du Lake,
   He slew my brother deere;
Him I suspect of all the rest:
   I would I had him here."

"Thy wish thou hast, but yet unknowne;
   I am Lancelot du Lake,
Now knight of Arthurs Table Round;
   King Hauds son of Schuwake;

"And I desire thee do thy worst."
   "Ho, ho," quoth Tarquin tho,
"One of us two shall end our lives,
   Before that we do go.

"If thou be Lancelot du Lake
   Then welcome shalt thou bee;
Wherfore see thou thyself defend,
   For now defye I thee."

They buckled then together so,
   Like unto wild boares rashing,
And with their swords and shields they ran
   At one another slashing.

The ground besprinkled was with blood,
   Tarquin began to yield;
For he gave backe for wearinesse,
   And lowe did beare his shield.

This soone Sir Lancelot espyde,
   He leapt upon him then,
He pull'd him downe upon his knee,
   And rushing off his helm,

Forthwith he strucke his necke in two;
   And when he had soe done,
From prison, threescore knights and four
   Delivered everye one.

---

---

THE BOY AND THE MANTLE
from RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

by

BISHOP THOMAS PERCY

In the third day of May,
To Carleile did come
A kind curteous child,
That cold much of wisdome.

A kirtle and a mantle
This child had uppon,
With brouches and ringes
Full richelye bedone.

He had a sute of silke
About his middle drawne;
Without he cold of curtesye,
He thought itt much shame.

"God speed thee, King Arthur,
Sitting at thy meate:
And the goodly Queene Guénever
I cannott her forgett.

"I tell you, lords, in this hall,
I hett you all to heede,
Except you be the more surer,
Is you for to dread."

He plucked out of his poterner,
And longer wold not dwell;
He pulled forth a pretty mantle,
Betweene two nut-shells.

"Have thou here, King Arthur,
Have thou heere of mee;
Give itt to thy comely queene,
Shapen as itt is alreadye.

"Itt shall never become that wiffe,
That hath once done amisse:-"
Then every knight in the kings court
Began to care for his.

Forth came dame Guénever;
To the mantle shee her hied;
The ladye shee was newfangle,
But yett shee was affrayd.

When shee had taken the mantle,
She stoode as shee had beene madd:
It was from the top to the toe
As sheeres had itt shread.

One while was it gule,
Another while was itt greene;
Another while was it wadded;
Ill itt did her beseeme.

Another while was it blacke,
And bore the worst hue:
"By my troth," quoth King Arthur,
"I thinke thou be not true."

Shee threw downe the mantle,
That bright was of blee;
Fast, with a rudd redd,
To her chamber can shee flee.

She curst the weaver and the walker
That clothe that had wrought,
And bade a vengeance on his crowne
That hither hath itt brought.

"I had rather be in a wood,
Under a greene tree,
Then in King Arthurs court
Shamed for to bee."

Kay called forth his ladye,
And bade her come neere;
Saies, "Madam, and thou be guiltye,
I pray thee hold thee there."

Forth came his ladye,
Shortlye and anon;
Boldlye to the mantle
Then is shee gone.

When she had tane the mantle,
And cast it her about,
Then was shee bare
Before all the rout.

Then every knight,
That was in the kings court,
Talked, laughed, and showted
Full oft att that sport.

She threw downe the mantle,
That bright was of blee;
Fast, with a red rudd,
To her chamber can shee flee.

Forth came an old knight
Pattering ore a creede,
And he proferred to this little boy
Twenty markes to his meede,

And all the time of the Christmasse,
Willinglye to ffeede;
For why this mantle might
Doe his wiffe some need.

When she had tane the mantle,
Of cloth that was made,
Shee had no more left on her,
But a tassell and a threed:
Then every knight in the kings court
Bade evill might shee speed.

Shee threw downe the mantle,
That bright was of blee;
And fast, with a redd rudd,
To her chamber can shee flee.

Craddocke called forth his ladye,
And bade her come in;
Saith, "Winne this mantle, ladye,
With a litle dinne.

"Winne this mantle, ladye,
And it shal be thine,
If thou never did amisse
Since thou wast mine."

Forth came Craddockes ladye,
Shortlye and anon;
But boldlye to the mantle
Then is shee gone.

When she had tane the mantle,
And cast it her about,
Upp att her great toe
It began to crinkle and crowt:
Shee said, "Bowe downe, mantle,
And shame me not for nought.

"Once I did amisse,
I tell you certainlye,
When I kist Craddockes mouth
Under a greene tree;
When I kist Craddockes mouth
Before he marryed mee."

When shee had her shreeven,
And her sines shee had tolde,
The mantle stoode about her
Right as shee wold,

Seemelye of coulour,
Glittering like gold:
Then every knight in Arthurs court
Did her behold.

Then spake dame Guénever
To Arthur our king;
"She hath tane yonder mantle
Not with right, but with wronge.

"See you not yonder woman,
That maketh her self soe cleane?
I have seene tane out of her bedd
Of men fiveteene;

"Priests, clarkes, and wedded men
From her, bedeene:
Yett shee taketh the mantle,
And maketh her self cleane."

Then spake the little boy,
That kept the mantle in hold;
Sayes, "King, chasten thy wiffe,
Of her words shee is to bold:

"Shee is a bitch and a witch,
And a whore bold:
King, in thine owne hall
Thou art a cuckold."

The little boy stoode
Looking out a dore;
And there as he was lookinge
He was ware of a wyld bore.

He was ware of a wyld bore,
Wold have werryed a man:
He pulld forth a wood kniffe,
Fast thither that he ran:
He brought in the bores head,
And quitted him like a man.

He brought in the bores head,
And was wonderous bold:
He said there was never a cuckolds kniffe
Carve itt that cold.

Some rubbed their knives
Uppon a whetstone:
Some threw them under the table,
And said they had none.

King Arthur and the child
Stood looking upon them;
All their knives edges
Turned backe againe.

Craddocke had a little knive
Of iron and of steele;
He britled the bores head
Wonderous weele,
That every knight in the kings court
Had a morssell.

The little boy had a horne,
Of red gold that ronge:
He said there was "noe cuckolde
Shall drinke of my horne,
But he shold it sheede,
Either behind or beforne."

Some shedd on their shoulder,
And some on their knee;
He that cold not hitt his mouthe,
Put it in his eye:
And he that was a cuckold
Every man might him see.

Craddocke wan the horne,
And the bores head:
His ladie wan the mantle
Unto her meede.
Everye such a lovely ladye
      God send her well to speede.

---

---

THE LEGEND OF KING ARTHUR
from RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

by

BISHOP THOMAS PERCY

Of Brutus' blood, in Brittaine borne,
   King Arthur I am to name;
Through Christendome and Heathynesse
   Well knowne is my worthy fame.

In Jesus Christ I doe beleeve;
   I am a Christyan bore;
The Father, Sone, and Holy Gost,
   One God, I doe adore.

In the four hundred ninetieth yeere,
   Oer Brittaine I did rayne,
After my Savior Christ his byrth,
   What time I did maintaine

The fellowshipp of the Table Round,
   Soe famous in those dayes;
Whereatt a hundred noble knights
   And thirty sat alwayes:

Who for their deeds and martiall feates,
   As bookes done yett record,
Amongst all other nations
   Wer feared through the world

And in the castle of Tyntagill
   King Uther mee begate,
Of Agyana, a bewtyous ladye,
   And come of hie estate.

And when I was fifteen yeere old,
   Then was I crowned kinge:
All Brittaine, that was att an upròre,
   I did to quiett bringe;

And drove the Saxons from the realme,
   Who had opprest this land;
All Scotland then, throughe manly feates,
   I conquered with my hand.

Ireland, Denmarke, Norwaye,
   These countryes wan I all;
Iseland, Gotheland, and Swetheland;
   And made their kings my thrall.

I conquered all Gallya,
   That now is called France;
And slew the hardye Froll in feild,
   My honor to advance.

And the ugly gyant Dynabus,
   Soe terrible to vewe,
That in Saint Barnards mount did lye,
   By force of armes I slew.

And Lucyus, the emperour of Rome,
   I brought to deadly wracke;
And a thousand more of noble knightes
   For feare did turne their backe.

Five kinges of paynims I did kill
   Amidst that bloody strife;
Besides the Grecian emperour,
   Who alsoe lost his liffe.

Whose carcasse I did send to Rome,
   Cladd poorlye on a beere;
And afterward I past Mount-Joye
   The next approaching yeere.

Then I came to Rome, where I was mett
   Right as a conquerour,
And by all the cardinalls solempnelye
   I was crowned an emperour.

One winter there I made abode,
   Then word to mee was brought,
How Mordred had oppressd the crowne,
   What treason he had wrought

Att home in Brittaine with my queene:
   Therfore I came with speede
To Brittaine backe, with all my power,
   To quitt that traiterous deede;

And soone at Sandwiche I arrivde,
   Where Mordred me withstoode:
But yett at last I landed there,
   With effusion of much blood.

For there my nephew Sir Gawaine dyed,
   Being wounded in that sore
The whiche Sir Launcelot in fight
   Had given him before.

Then chased I Mordered away,
   Who fledd to London right,
From London to Winchester, and
   To Cornwalle tooke his flyght.

And still I him pursued with speed,
   Till at the last wee mett;
Wherby an appointed day of fight
   Was there agreed and set:

Where we did fight, of mortal life
   Eche other to deprive,
Till of a hundred thousand men
   Scarce one was left alive.

There all the noble chivalrye
   Of Brittaine took their end.
O see how fickle is their state
   That doe on fates depend!

There all the traiterous men were slaine,
   Not one escapte away;
And there dyed all my vallyant knightes.
   Alas! that woefull day!

Two and twenty yeere I ware the crowne
   In honor and great fame,
And thus by death was suddenlye
   Deprived of the same.

---

---

THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAINE

from

BISHOP THOMAS PERCY'S RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

PART THE FIRST
King Arthur lives in merry Carleile,
   And seemely is to see;
And there with him queene Guenever,
   That bride soe bright of blee.

And there with him queene Guenever,
   That bride so bright in bowre:
And all his barons about him stoode,
   That were both stiffe and stowre.

The king a royale Christmasse kept,
   With mirth and princelye cheare;
To him repaired many a knighte,
   That came both farre and neare.

And when they were to dinner sette,
   And cups went freely round;
Before them came a faire damsèlle,
   And knelt upon the ground.

A boone, a boone, O kinge Arthùre,
   I beg a boone of thee;
Avenge me of a carlish knighte,
   Who hath shent my love and me.

At Tearne-Wadling his castle stands,
   Near to that lake so fair,
And proudlye rise the battlements,
   And streamers deck the air.

Noe gentle knighte, nor ladye gay,
   May pass that castle-walle:
But from that foule discurteous knighte,
   Mishappe will them befalle.

Hee's twyce the size of common men,
   Wi' thewes, and sinewes stronge,
And on his backe he bears a clubbe,
   That is both thicke and longe.

This grimme baròne 'twas our harde happe,
   But yester morne to see;
When to his bowre he bare my love,
   And sore misused mee.

And when I told him, king Arthùre
   As lyttle shold him spare;
Goe tell, sayd hee, that cuckold kinge,
   To meete mee if he dare.

Upp then sterted king Arthùre,
   And sware by hille and dale,
He ne'er wolde quitt that grimme baròne,
   Till he had made him quail.

Goe fetch my sword Excalibar:
   Goe saddle mee my steede;
Nowe, by my faye, that grimme baròne
   Shall rue this ruthfulle deede.

And when he came to Tearne Wadlinge
   Benethe the castle walle:
"Come forth; come forth; thou proude baròne,
   Or yielde thyself my thralle."

On magicke grounde that castle stoode,
   And fenc'd with many a spelle:
Noe valiant knighte could tread thereon,
   But straite his courage felle.

Forth then rush'd that carlish knight,
   King Arthur felte the charme:
His sturdy sinewes lost their strengthe,
   Downe sunke his feeble arme.

Nowe yield thee, yield thee, kinge Arthùre,
   Now yield thee, unto mee:
Or fighte with mee, or lose thy lande,
   Noe better termes maye bee,

Unless thou sweare upon the rood,
   And promise on thy faye,
Here to returne to Tearne-Wadling,
   Upon the new-yeare's daye;

And bringe me worde what thing it is
   All women moste desyre;
This is thy ransome, Arthur, he sayes,
   Ile have noe other hyre.

King Arthur then helde up his hande,
   And sware upon his faye,
Then tooke his leave of the grimme barone
   And faste hee rode awaye.

And he rode east, and he rode west,
   And did of all inquyre,
What thing it is all women crave,
   And what they most desyre.

Some told him riches, pompe, or state;
   Some rayment fine and brighte;
Some told him mirthe; some flatterye;
   And some a jollye knighte.

In letters all king Arthur wrote,
   And seal'd them with his ringe:
But still his minde was helde in doubte,
   Each tolde a different thinge.

As ruthfulle he rode over a more,
   He saw a ladye sette
Betweene an oke, and a greene holléye,
   All clad in red scarlette.

Her nose was crookt and turnd outwàrde,
   Her chin stoode all awrye;
And where as sholde have been her mouthe,
   Lo! there was set her eye:

Her haires, like serpents, clung aboute
   Her cheekes of deadlye hewe:
A worse-form'd ladye than she was,
   No man mote ever viewe.

To hail the king in seemelye sorte
   This ladye was fulle faine;
But king Arthùre all sore amaz'd,
   No aunswere made againe.

What wight art thou, the ladye sayd,
   That wilt not speake to mee;
Sir, I may chance to ease thy paine,
   Though I be foule to see.

If thou wilt ease my paine, he sayd,
   And helpe me in my neede;
Ask what thou wilt, thou grimme ladyè
   And it shall bee thy meede.

O sweare mee this upon the roode,
   And promise on thy faye;
And here the secrette I will telle,
   That shall thy ransome paye.

King Arthur promis'd on his faye,
   And sware upon the roode;
The secrette then the ladye told,
   As lightlye well shee cou'de.

Now this shall be my paye, sir king,
   And this my guerdon bee,
That some yong fair and courtlye knight,
   Thou bringe to marrye mee.

Fast then pricked king Arthùre
   Ore hille, and dale, and downe:
And soone he founde the barone's bowre:
   And soone the grimme baroùne.

He bare his clubbe upon his backe,
   Hee stoode bothe stiffe and stronge;
And, when he had the letters reade,
   Awaye the lettres flunge.

Nowe yielde thee, Arthur, and thy lands,
   All forfeit unto mee;
For this is not thy paye, sir king,
   Nor may thy ransome bee.

Yet hold thy hand, thou proud baròne,
   I praye thee hold thy hand;
And give mee leave to speake once more
   In reskewe of my land.

This morne, as I came over a more,
   I saw a ladye sette
Betwene an oke, and a greene hollèye,
   All clad in red scarlètte.

Shee sayes, all women will have their wille,
   This is their chief desyre;
Now yield, as thou art a barone true,
   That I have payd mine hyre.

An earlye vengeaunce light on her!
   The carlish baron swore:
Shee was my sister tolde thee this,
   And shee's a mishapen whore.

But here I will make mine avowe,
   To do her as ill a turne:
For an ever I may that foule theefe gette,
   In a fyre I will her burne.

PART THE SECONDE

Homewarde pricked king Arthùre,
   And a wearye man was hee;
And soon he mette queene Guenever,
   That bride so bright of blee.

What newes! what newes! thou noble king,
   Howe, Arthur, hast thou sped?
Where hast thou hung the carlish knighte?
   And where bestow'd his head?

The carlish knight is safe for mee,
   And free fro mortal harme:
On magicke grounde his castle stands,
   And fenc'd with many a charme.

To bowe to him I was full faine,
   And yielde mee to his hand:
And but for a lothly ladye, there
   I sholde have lost my land.

And nowe this fills my hearte with woe,
   And sorrowe of my life;
I swore a yonge and courtlye knight,
   Sholde marry her to his wife.

Then bespake him sir Gawàine,
   That was ever a gentle knighte:
That lothly ladye I will wed;
   Therefore be merrye and lighte.

Nowe naye, nowe naye, good sir Gawàine;
   My sister's sonne yee bee;
This lothlye ladye's all too grimme,
   And all too foule for yee.

Her nose is crookt and turn'd outwàrde;
   Her chin stands all awrye;
A worse form'd ladye than shee is
   Was never seen with eye.

What though her chin stand all awrye,
   And shee be foule to see:
I'll marry her, unkle, for thy sake,
   And I'll thy ransome bee.

Nowe thankes, nowe thankes, good sir Gawàine;
   And a blessing thee betyde!
To-morrow wee'll have knights and squires,
   And wee'll goe fetch thy bride.

And wee'll have hawkes and wee'll have houndes,
   To cover our intent;
And wee'll away to the greene forèst,
   As wee a hunting went.

Sir Lancelot, sir Stephen bolde,
   They rode with them that daye;
And foremoste of the companye
   There rode the stewarde Kaye:

Soe did sir Banier and sir Bore,
   And eke sir Garratte keene;
Sir Tristram too, that gentle knight,
   To the forest freshe and greene.

And when they came to the greene forrèst,
   Beneathe a faire holley tree
There sate that ladye in red scarlètte
   That unseemelye was to see.

Sir Kay beheld that lady's face,
   And looked upon her sweere;
Whoever kisses that ladye, he sayes,
   Of his kisse he stands in feare.

Sir Kay beheld that ladye againe,
   And looked upon her snout;
Whoever kisses that ladye, he sayes,
   Of his kisse he stands in doubt.

Peace, brother Kay, sayde sir Gawàine,
   And amend thee of thy life:
For there is a knight amongst us all,
   Must marry her to his wife.

What marry this foule queane, quoth Kay,
   I' the devil's name anone;
Gett mee a wife wherever I maye,
   In sooth shee shall be none.

Then some tooke up their hawkes in haste,
   And some took up their houndes;
And sayd they wolde not marry her,
   For cities, nor for townes.

Then bespake him king Arthùre,
   And sware there by this daye;
For a little foule sighte and mislikìnge,
   Yee shall not say her naye.

Peace, lordinges, peace; sir Gawaine sayd;
   Nor make debate and strife;
This lothlye ladye I will take,
   And marry her to my wife.

Nowe thankes, nowe thankes, good sir Gawaine,
   And a blessinge be thy meede!
For as I am thine owne ladyè,
   Thou never shalt rue this deede.

Then up they took that lothly dame,
   And home anone they bringe:
And there sir Gawaine he her wed,
   And married her with a ringe.

And when they were in wed-bed laid,
   And all were done awaye:
"Come turne to mee, mine owne wed-lord
   Come turne to mee I praye."

Sir Gawaine scant could lift his head,
   For sorrowe and for care;
When, lo! instead of that lothelye dame,
   Hee sawe a young ladye faire.

Sweet blushes stayn'd her rud-red cheeke,
   Her eyen were blacke as sloe:
The ripening cherrye swellde her lippe,
   And all her necke was snowe.

Sir Gawaine kiss'd that lady faire,
   Lying upon the sheete:
And swore, as he was a true knighte,
   The spice was never soe sweete.

Sir Gawaine kiss'd that lady brighte,
   Lying there by his side:
"The fairest flower is not soe faire:
   Thou never can'st bee my bride."

I am thy bride, mine owne deare lorde,
   The same whiche thou didst knowe,
That was soe lothlye, and was wont
   Upon the wild more to goe.

Nowe, gentle Gawaine, chuse, quoth shee,
   And make thy choice with care;
Whether by night, or else by daye,
   Shall I be foule or faire?

"To have thee foule still in the night,
   When I with thee should playe!
I had rather farre, my lady deare,
   To have thee foule by daye."

What when gaye ladyes goe with their lordes
   To drinke the ale and wine;
Alas! then I must hide myself,
   I must not goe with mine?

"My faire ladyè, sir Gawaine sayd,
   I yield me to thy skille;
Because thou art mine owne ladyè
   Thou shalt have all thy wille."

Nowe blessed be thou, sweete Gawàine,
   And the daye that I thee see;
For as thou seest mee at this time,
   Soe shall I ever bee.

My father was an aged knighte,
   And yet it chanced soe,
He tooke to wife a false ladyè,
   Whiche broughte me to this woe.

She witch'd mee, being a faire yonge maide,
   In the greene forèst to dwelle;
And there to abide in lothlye shape,
   Most like a fiend of helle.

Midst mores and mosses; woods, and wilds;
   To lead a lonesome life:
Till some yong faire and courtlye knighte
   Wolde marrye me to his wife:

Nor fully to gaine mine owne trewe shape,
   Such was her devilish skille;
Until he wolde yielde to be rul'd by mee,
   And let mee have all my wille.

She witchd my brother to a carlish boore,
   And made him stiffe and stronge;
And built him a bowre on magicke grounde,
   To live by rapine and wronge.

But now the spelle is broken throughe,
   And wronge is turnde to righte;
Henceforth I shall bee a faire ladyè,
   And hee be a gentle knighte.

---

---

THE CHRISTMAS OF SIR GALAHAD

by

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

     When a fancy, fashioned neither after the inductive nor the deductive methods, attributable neither to natural selection nor to protoplasm, definable by no law of contradiction nor of excluded middle, presents itself to the public acquaintance nowadays, it is apt, as we all know, to receive rather a sorry welcome. And when, after the sadly tardy discovery of the Lady of Shalott, in South street, one of those remarkable rumors, credence to which is at once a danger and a delight, stole about town, it stole on tiptoe, looking over its shoulder meanwhile at corners with one soft sly eye on the police and another on the daily press, and a startled glance at the fashionable churches, and a tender shudder at the shadow of the "Institute," and its beautiful finger at its lips--making thus slow progress, and, for every warmhearted faith which it shook by the outstretched hand, leaving two doubts to close ranks behind it.
     Such as it is, however, and for what it may mean, this is the whisper. It would be found, so it is said, had we the eyes that see or the ears that hear either signs or sounds of such a matter, that certain of the old romances which we have been accustomed to regard as finished and fated for all time are, in fact, re-enacting and repeating themselves, with a timidity amounting almost to stealth, in the chilling and alien climate of our modern civilization: that steam has not scorched out valor, nor the telegraph overtaken chivalry, nor universal suffrage extinguished loyalty; that the golden years did not go dumbly to their graves, as we are wont to think; that they have arisen, like Lazarus, with their chin-cloths on, acquainted with things unlawful to utter--reserved, still visitors, shunned and strange. It is breathed that there somewhere walks the earth to-day the Blameless King; it is hinted that there somewhere hides the Mismated Queen; it has been said that at times the Vanished Knights of the Round Table gather together in strange guise, to stranger conclave; that a student familiar with their story would be well puzzled should he stumble upon them; that Sir Percivale has been seen in a Pennsylvania coal-mine; that Bohort was discovered in New York one day, in a bricklayer's apron, with a trowel in his hand; that Isoude the Fair was all but identified in a hospital at Washington during the War of the Rebellion; that Launcelot, penitent and pale, may be heard, if one is so fortunate as to trace him, in the form of a certain street preacher, but little known, who gathers ill-favored men and women about him in an unsavory part of the town at the decline of the Sunday afternoon; that Guinevere is rumored to spend much time alone in a chamber looking toward the west, engaged in keeping a certain watch which has been set her, for a peril and a promise which no man knows; that Arthur himself filled a post of high official importance at Washington not long ago, and, escaping identification through two terms' service, disappeared suddenly and mysteriously from public life; that, in short, a Romance never died, nor ever will, but is adjudged to be the only immortal thing on earth, save the soul of man.
     As much as this, in common with a few others, so far favored, I had heard and forgotten, till chance threw the whole chain of pretty dreams before me, by lassooing one link around my very hands. As much as this I found myself compelled to recall with more than common thoughtfulness when I came face to face with Sir Galahad at a butcher's stall, last Christmas morning.
     Did you ever know a lost knight to be found until a woman tracked him? Is it, therefore, surprising that if it had not been for Rebecca Rock, Sir Galahad Holt would have escaped recognition completely, and the modest number of men and women now admitted to the secret of the discovery have gone the hungrier and the sadder for the loss?
     It was always a matter of deep scientific speculation to Rebecca Rock why, when she came to town to find work in the neck-tie factory, she should have chosen lodgings in the second back corner of 16½ Primrose Court. She would say: "If I had hit on the western side!" or, "If I had been able to pay the rent of that room opposite the factory!" or, "How near I came to settling on the little south attic of 17!"
     And she sat and mused upon it with a puzzled face. If, indeed! What an "If" it was! Such an If as there would have been in the world if that other Rebecca had taken the wrong road and missed of meeting Isaac in the desert at the set of the sun; or if Eve had lost her way in the shrubbery of Eden, and just happened not to find Adam till nobody knows when!
     Perhaps, too, such an If as there would have been if Heloise had never gone to school to Abelard, or Di Rimini had never seen her lover's face? The world would have lost a grand temptation. So much as that, Rebecca Rock, cutting "foundation" into strips for the public neck, eleven hours a day, confusedly felt; but she had never heard of Heloise, and if she had been obliged to sit beside Francesca Di Rimini in the necktie factory she would have shrunk in the wounded wonder of a snow-drift from a foot-mark.
     How long it was before Galahad Holt, coming home from the organ factory at seven o'clock to his solitary ground-floor lodging at 16½, noticed the tall woman in the blanket shawl, who came a little later and passed his door in going up-stairs; how long before a sense of anything more than tallness and a shawl occurred to him; how soon he noticed the outline of her arm when the shawl fell from it, as she laid her large, strong hand upon the banisters; when he first observed the regular, calm echo which her step left upon the croaking stairs; when first he met her carrying a pail of water from the Court, and instead of feeling moved to carry it for her, only thought how evenly she carried it for herself; when first she smiled at suddenly observing him; when first he gravely said good-morning; when first he gravely joined her if they chanced upon the same side of the street in passing to and fro from work; how first he gravely learned to discuss with her the fall in wages, and the wind we had on Saturday, the rise in coal, and the sunset there would be to-night; and when first he gravely came to feel that wind and fuel, sun and pay-day were no longer common matters for the common world in consequence, but a heritage of his and her discovery, ownership, and wealth, is not accurately known.
     Strictly speaking, he himself knew accurately nothing. He worked, he ate, he slept; he shut himself into his lonely lodging (it was so singular, said all the Court, in Sir Galahad to board himself!); suns rose and set; she smiled and came and went; but he knew distinctly nothing. Nothing till, once upon a Sunday afternoon, he followed her to a little mission church they knew, sat on a wooden bench and watched her sing; but left in the middle of the chorus, and went abruptly home. He shut and locked the door; he stood still in the middle of the room.
     "God bless her!" he said aloud. But he sat down and covered his face with his grimy, princely hands, and flushed as if he had done her a deadly wrong.
     Had he the right to take a woman into his swept and garnished heart, even long enough to bless her in God's name and let her go? "It would turn to curses," said Sir Galahad, "upon us both. I will not bless her." Now he turned his head, at this, and saw her coming up the Court. "I will not, will not!" said Sir Galahad. But all his soul rose up and went to meet her, and laid its hands upon her head in benediction. And when Sir Galahad felt within himself that this was so, he fell upon his knees, and there remained till midnight. And in the morning he arose with a countenance as calm as ever knight wore in love or death or victory, and went away in his blue overalls to work, with his dinner-pail upon his arm, and nodded gravely to Rebecca; but smiled little and spoke less.
     And so the Lady Rebecca, grieved and puzzled in her heart, would have dropped a tear or two upon her foundation strips, but for a heat upon her cheeks that burned and dried them all the day; and so at night, being feverish and wakeful, and, stepping down into the Court at an early hour for fresh water, she came suddenly upon a woman clambering into Sir Galahad's low window.
     So she dropped her pail, and, in the icy swash that fell about her feet, sat down to catch her breath.
     There, in the mud-puddle which the chilly water made, Sir Galahad found her sitting, when he had shut his window, had turned the key in his door, had come out, and had stopped and stood beside her.
     "That's my wife, Rebecca, I've just locked in, in there," said Sir Galahad, standing in the starlight. "Will you come to the window and take a look at her?"
     "I'd rather not," said Rebecca from her mud-puddle; but she rose, and shook the spatter from her clothes.
     "Very well," said Galahad.
     "You never told me," said Rebecca, picking up her pail, "that you had a wife, Sir Galahad!" "I never thought of it till yesterday," said Galahad. "I ought to have. I ask your pardon, Miss Rebecca. She's crazy."
     "Oh!" said the Lady Rebecca, stretching out her strong, large hand; but she drew it back, and hid it in her shawl.
     "And takes opium," said Galahad Holt, patiently, "and is up to pretty much everything. It's going on six year now sence she left me. But she keeps a coming on me unexpected. The ground floor's saved a deal of talk and shame, I think; don't you? I thought I'd best keep house for her, all things taken in't the count; don't you? Sometimes I think she'll slick herself up a little and stay. But in a day or two she's off. She's got the Old Un in her head to-night," said Galahad.
     "It's very hard; it's very, very hard!" Rebecca moaned.
     "Rebecca Rock," said Sir Galahad, solemnly, "it's a curious place and time to say it; but I think there'll never come a better--"
     "Oh! no," said Rebecca.
     "And I may as well out with it, my girl, first as last, and once for all, and tell you how, if you'd been my wife, instead of her, I couldn't have loved you truer nor more single in my heart than I love you in the sight of God and these here stars this wretched night. And I'm a married man!"
     "Oh! yes, yes!" said Rebecca.
     "But I'm a married man," said he.
     "People unmarry," said she.
     She looked in a frightened way about the Court, at the stars, at the pump, at the mud-puddle; she gasped and thrust her hand out, but drew it back within her shawl. Sir Galahad did not touch it.
     "I suppose," said Sir Galahad, very slowly, "as I could get divorced from Merry Ann. I've thought o't. I thought o't yesterday a long while. But if seems to me as if I'd better not. She'd be a coming back, ye see. Anyways, she'd be a living on this living arth. We might be meeting her face to face most any day. It seems to me, Rebecca, as if it was agin Natur for me to marry any woman while Merry Ann's a living creetur. How does it seem to you?"
     "Galahad Holt," said Rebecca, "I'm not so good as you, and I'm very fond of you."
     "For God's sake, don't tell me o't!" cried Sir Galahad.
     "Well, I won't," said Rebecca.
     "For, if it's agin Natur," said Sir Galahad, lifting his face to the stars above Primrose Court, "it's agin God. And rather than be agin them two I'd be on't the safe side, it seems to me."
     "Very well," said Rebecca.
   "So I think we'll wait," said Sir Galahad, taking off his hat and holding out his hand.
     "Is the safe side always the right side, Galahad?" asked Rebecca.
     "I don't exactly know," said Sir Galahad, with a puzzled face.
     "Nor I," said Rebecca; "but I think we'll wait."
     "Some folks wouldn't," said Sir Galahad. "But I don't see as that makes any odds."
     "No," said Rebecca. So they shook hands, while Sir Galahad stood with his hat off beneath the stars; and the Lady Rebecca picked up her pail from the mud-puddle, and went up-stairs; and Sir Galahad went to the grocer's to get a little tea for his wife; and the world ran on as if nothing had happened.
     Now the world had been running on quite as if nothing would ever happen again for four years, when Sir Galahad's Christmas came. And the Lady Rebecca had walked alone to the neck-tie factory; and Galahad had kept house on the ground floor; and Rebecca had lain sick of a deadly fever, and Sir Galahad had lost six months' wages in a strike; and the man's face had grown gaunt, and the woman's old, and his had pinched and hers had paled:--yet their hands had never met since they stood by the pump in the starlight; nor had Sir Galahad's knightly foot once crossed the croaking stairs which bore the regular, calm feet of the Lady Rebecca to the solitary second back corner of 16½; nor had he said, God bless her! when she sung at the little church, lest, indeed, his whole soul should rise up perforce, and choose cursing for blessing and death for life.
     And if Di Rimini had worked beside Rebecca at the neck-tie factory, she would have learned a royal lesson. And Abelard might well have sat at the feet of Galahad, making organs with his grimy hands. And if Eve or Isaac had wandered into the first floor front, or second back corner of 16½, on a lonesome, rainy evening, they would have wept for pity, and smiled for blessing, and mused much.

     Now, it was on a rainy evening, with melting snow upon the ground and melting chills upon the wind, that the Lady Rebecca, crooked and crouching by her little lamp, sat darning stockings for Sir Galahad--a questionable exercise of taste, we must admit. She had not even offered to embroider him a banner, nor to net him a silken favor, nor to fringe so much as a scarf for the next tournament to be held in Primrose Court. She had only said: "Will it be proper?" And he said: "Ask the landlady." And the landlady had said: "Law, yes!" And the Lady Rebecca had said: "Bring all you have." And Sir Galahad said: "I haven't got but two pairs to my name." And so here she was, crouching and darning and crooked, by her little lamp, when a knock startled the door of the second back corner of 16½ till it shook for fright to its sunken hinges, and the Lady Rebecca shook for sympathy till she opened the door, and shook on her on account when she had.
     For Sir Galahad Holt stood in the door, erect and pale.
     "I did not hear you on the stairs!" gasped the Lady Rebecca.
     "I couldn't come up them stairs in my boots someway," said Sir Galahad, very huskily. Now the Lady Rebecca did not altogether understand in her own mind what Sir Galahad meant; but she saw that his feet lay bare and white upon her threshold--since, indeed, poor man! she had his stockings--and a fancy as of patient pilgrims came to her, and a dream of holy ground. But she said:
     "Did you come to get the stockings?" But Sir Galahad answered solemnly:
     "Did you think I'd cross the stairway till I came for you? Merry Ann's down below, Rebecca. Will you be afraid to step down with me?"
     Where would Rebecca have been afraid to step with him? She followed him down the stairs, which would have croaked, it seemed, but could not, beneath Sir Galahad's solemn, shining feet.
     Merry Ann was below, indeed--at length upon Sir Galahad's floor, before the cook-stove, a sickening, silent heap. A little shawl was tied about her head, and her face was hidden on her arm.
     "I but just come in and found her," said Sir Galahad, in his commonplace, unromantic way; "and I thought I'd tell you what had happened, Rebecca, before the coroner was called. I don't think it was a fit. She'd walked a distance, I can't but think, and hoped to have catched a look at me. Poor Merry Ann!"
     "Poor Merry Ann!" said Rebecca Rock, with all her heart. She had fallen on her knees beside the dead, and had dropped her face into her hands.
     "And now, Rebecca," said Sir Galahad. "Now, Rebecca--" But when he saw her on her knees he dropped beside her and said no more. And when the landlady came in they did not ask her if it were proper; but she said "Law, yes!" as if they had, and turned her face away.

     "And now Rebecca," said Sir Galahad again--"now the grave is covered decent, and the room is swept, and the storm is over, and I've waited four years for you honest, in the sight of God and the stars o' Heaven, and Christmas comes o' Monday--"
     "Very well," said Rebecca.
     "I don't seem," said Sir Galahad, "to have the words I thought I had to say, my girl. I'd got so used waiting; hadn't you? I do not rightly see my way to take it natural and safe. I think I'd not like, nor dare, my dear, to have it any other day than Christmas Day; would you?"

     I was glad there was no wind on Christmas, and that the snow lay drifted over from a little, laughing storm; and that the sun brooded with golden wings in the Primrose Court; and that the town was full of holly; and that the Lady Rebecca had a spray of myrtle in her large, firm hand, when she walked with Sir Galahad to the minister's front door.
     And when I met Sir Galahad at the meat-stall, buying steak for dinner, and saw the eyes and smile he carried in the sight of God and Christmas Day, I bethought me of the records of the Spotless Knight; how he--tried, stainless, and alone--was found worthy to be the guardian ("pure in thought and word and deed") of the blessed cup from which our Lord drank the last wine which should touch his lips till he drank it new in the kingdom of the Father; how his mortal eyes beheld it, palled in red samite, treasured by "a great fellowship of angels"; how his mortal hand laid hold of it and Heaven, and his mortal name grew to be a holy thing upon the lips of men forever; and how since then "was there never one so hardy as to say that he had seen the Sangreal on earth any more."
     "Sir Galahad," said I, "you have found the Sangreal, and I have found you!"
     But he, smiling, shook his head.
     "I don't feel altogether sure. It seems to me a man don't know what he's found till he's learned to bear his happiness as he bore his longing for't, and his waiting, and his loss. But I can't help hoping, somehow, that I'm fit to be married on a Christmas Day."

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Legends/Sagas

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THE LADY OF SHALOTT

by

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

     It is not generally known that the Lady of Shalott lived last summer in an attic, at the east end of South Street.
     The wee-est, thinnest, whitest little lady! And yet the brightest, stillest, and ah, such a smiling little lady!
     If you had held her up by the window--for she could not hold up herself--she would have hung like a porcelain transparency in your hands. And if you had said, laying her gently down, and giving the tears a smart dash, that they should not fall on her lifted face, "Poor child!" the Lady of Shalott would have said, "Oh, don't" and smiled. And you would have smiled yourself, for very surprise that she should outdo you; and between the two there would have been so much smiling done that one would have fairly thought that it was a delightful thing to live last summer in an attic at the east end of South Street.
     This, perhaps, was the more natural in the Lady of Shalott because she had never lived anywhere else.
     When the Lady of Shalott was five years old, her mother threw her down-stairs one day, by mistake, instead of the whiskey-jug.
     This is a fact which I think Mr. Tennyson has omitted to mention in his poem.
     They picked the Lady of Shalott up and put her on the bed; and there she lay from that day until last summer, unless, as I said, somebody had occasion to use her for a transparency.
     The mother and the jug both went down the stairs together a few years after, and never came up at all; and that was a great convenience, for the Lady of Shalott's palace in the attic was not large, and they took up much unnecessary room.
     Since that the Lady of Shalott had lived with her sister, Sary Jane.
     Sary Jane made nankeen vests, at sixteen and three-quarter cents a dozen.
     Sary Jane had red hair, and crooked shoulders, and a voice so much like the snap of a rat-trap which she sometimes set on the stairs, that the Lady of Shalott could seldom tell which was which until she had thought about it a little while. When there was a rat caught, she was apt to ask, "What?" and when Sary Jane spoke she more often than not said, "There 's another!"
     Her crooked shoulders Sary Jane had acquired from sitting under the eaves of the palace to sew. That physiological problem was simple. There was not room enough under the eaves to sit straight.
     Sary Jane's red hair was the result of sitting in the sun on July noons under those eaves, to see to thread her needle. There was no question about that. The Lady of Shalott had settled it in her own mind, past dispute. Sary Jane's hair had been--what was it? brown? once. Sary Jane was slowly taking fire. Who would not, to sit in the sun in that palace? The only matter of surprise to the Lady of Shalott was that the palace itself did not smoke. Sometimes, when Sary Jane hit the rafters, she was sure that she saw sparks.
     As for Sary Jane's voice, when one knew that she made nankeen vests at sixteen and three-quarter cents a dozen, that was a matter of no surprise. It never surprised the Lady of Shalott.
     But Sary Jane was very cross; there was no denying that; very cross.
     And the palace. Let me tell you about the palace. It measured just twelve by nine feet. It would have been seven feet post--if there had been a post in the middle of it. From the centre it sloped away to the windows, where Sary Jane had just room enough to sit crooked under the eaves at work. There were two windows and a loose scuttle to the palace. The scuttle let in the snow in winter and the sun in summer, and the rain and wind at all times. It was quite a diversion to the Lady of Shalott to see how many different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay, there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a shelf, with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon, and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she ran a little rope from one of the windows to the other for a drying-rope. It would have been more exact to have said on washing-nights; for Sary Jane always did her washing after dark. The reason was evident. If the rest of us were in the habit of wearing all the clothes we had, like Sary Jane, I have little doubt that we should do the same.
     I should mention that there was no sink in the Lady of Shalott's palace; no water. There was a dirty hydrant in the yard, four flights below, which supplied the Lady of Shalott and all her neighbors. The Lady of Shalott kept her coal under the bed; her flour, a pound at a time, in a paper parcel, on the shelf, with the teacups and the pewter spoon. If she had anything else to keep, it went out through the palace scuttle and lay on the roof. The Lady of Shalott's palace opened directly upon a precipice. The lessor of the house called it a flight of stairs. When Sary Jane went up and down, she went sideways to preserve her balance. There were no banisters to the precipice. The entry was dark. Some dozen or twenty of the Lady of Shalott's neighbors patronized the precipice, and about once a week a baby patronized the rat-trap, instead. Once, when there was a fire-alarm, the precipice was very serviceable. Four women and an old man went over. With one exception (she was eighteen, and could bear a broken collar-bone), they will not, I am informed, go over again.
     The Lady of Shalott paid one dollar a week for the rent of her palace.
     But then there was a looking-glass in the palace. I think I noticed it. It hung on the slope of the rafters, just opposite the Lady of Shalott's window,--for she considered that her window at which Sary Jane did not make nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarter-cents a dozen.
     Now, because the looking-glass was opposite the window at which Sary Jane did not make vests, and because the rafters sloped, and because the bed lay almost between the looking-glass and the window, the Lady of Shalott was happy. And because, to the patient heart that is a seeker after happiness "the little more, and how much it is!" (and the little less, what worlds away!) the Lady of Shalott was proud as well as happy. The looking-glass measured in inches ten by six. I think that the Lady of Shalott would have experienced rather a touch of mortification than of envy if she had known that there was a mirror in a house just around the corner measuring almost as many feet. But that was one of the advantages of being the Lady of Shalott. She never parsed life in the comparative degree.
     I suppose that one must go through a process of education to understand what comfort there may be in a ten by six inch looking-glass. All the world came for the Lady of Shalott into her little looking-glass,--the joy of it, the anguish of it, the hope and fear of it, the health and hurt,--ten by six inches of it exactly.
     "It is next best to not having been thrown down-stairs yourself!" said the Lady of Shalott.
     To tell the truth, it sometimes occurred to her that there was a monotony about the world. A garret window like her own, for instance, would fill her sight if she did not tip the glass a little. Children sat in it, and did not play. They made lean faces at her. They were locked in for the day, and were hungry. She could not help knowing how hungry they were, and so tipped the glass. Then there was the trap-door in the sidewalk. She became occasionally tired of that trap-door. Seven people lived under the sidewalk; and when they lifted and slammed the trap, coming in and out, they reminded her of something which Sary Jane bought her once, when she was a very little child, at Christmas time,--long ago, when rents were cheaper and flour low. It was a monkey, with whiskers and a calico jacket, who jumped out of a box when the cover was lifted; and then you crushed him down and hasped him in. Sometimes she wished she had never had that monkey, he was so much like the people coming out of the sidewalk.
     In fact, there was a monotony about all the people in the Lady of Shalott's looking-glass. If their faces were not dirty, their hands were. It they had hats they went without shoes. If they did not sit in the sun with their heads on their knees, they lay in the mud with their heads on a jug.
     "Their faces look blue!" she said to Sary Jane.
     "No wonder!" snapped Sary Jane.
     "Why?" asked the Lady of Shalott.
     "Wonder is we ain't all dead!" barked Sary Jane.
     "But we ain't, you know," said the Lady of Shalott, after some thought.
     The people in the Lady of Shalott's glass died, however, sometimes,--often in the summer; more often last summer, when the attic smoked continually, and she mistook Sary Jane's voice for the rat-trap every day.
     The people were jostled into pine boxes (in the glass), and carried away (in the glass) by twilight, in a cart. Three of the monkeys from the spring-box in the sidewalk went, in one week, out into foul, purple twilight, away from the looking-glass, in carts.
     "I'm glad of that, poor things!" said the Lady of Shalott, for she had always felt a kind of sorrow for the monkeys. Principally, I think, because they had no glass.
     When the monkeys had gone, the sickly twilight folded itself up, over the spring-box, into great feathers, like the feathers of a wing. That was pleasant. The Lady of Shalott could almost put out her fingers and stroke it, it hung so near, and was so clear, and brought such a peacefulness into the looking glass.
     "Sary Jane, dear, it's very pleasant," said the Lady of Shalott. Sary Jane said, it was very dangerous, the Lord knew, and bit her threads off.
     "And Sary Jane, dear!" added the Lady of Shalott, "I see so many other pleasant things."
     "The more fool you!" said Sary Jane.
     But she wondered about it that day over her tenth nankeen vest. What, for example, could the Lady of Shalott see?
     "Waves!" said the Lady of Shalott, suddenly, as if she had been asked the question. Sary Jane jumped. She said, "Nonsense!" For the Lady of Shalott had only seen the little wash-tub full of dingy water on Sunday nights, and the dirty little hydrant (in the glass) spouting dingy jets. She would not have known a wave if she had seen it.
     "But I see waves," said the Lady of Shalott. She felt sure of it. They ran up and down across the glass. They had green faces and gray hair. They threw back their hands, like cool people resting, and it seemed unaccountable, at the east end of South Street last summer, that anything, anywhere, if only a wave in a looking-glass, could be cool or at rest. Besides this, they kept their faces clean. Therefore the Lady of Shalott took pleasure in watching them run up and down across the glass. That a thing could be clean, and green, and white, was only less a wonder than cool and rest last summer in South Street.
     "Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, one day, "how hot is it up here?"
     "Hot as Hell!" said Sary Jane.
     "I thought it was a little warm," said the Lady of Shalott. "Sary Jane, dear? Isn't the yard down there a little--dirty?"
     Sary Jane put down her needles and looked out of the blazing, blindless window. It had always been a subject of satisfaction, to Sary Jane somewhere down below her lean shoulders and in the very teeth of the rat-trap, that the Lady of Shalott could not see out of that window. So she winked at the window, as if she would caution it to hold its burning tongue, and said never a word.
     "Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, once more, "had you ever thought that perhaps I was a little--weaker--than I was--once?"
     "I guess you can stand it if I can!" said the rat-trap.
     "Oh, yes, dear," said the Lady of Shalott. "I can stand it if you can."
     "Well, then!" said Sary Jane. But she sat and winked at the bald window, and the window held its burning tongue.
     It grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. The lean children, in the attic opposite, fell sick, and sat no longer in the window making faces, in the Lady of Shalott's glass.
     Two more monkeys from the spring-box were carried away one ugly twilight in a cart. The purple wing that hung over the spring-box lifted to let them pass; and then fell, as if it had brushed them away.
     "It has such a soft color!" said the Lady of Shalott, smiling.
     "So has nightshade!" said Sary Jane.
     One day a beautiful thing happened. One could scarcely understand how a beautiful thing could happen at the east end of South Street. The Lady of Shalott herself did not entirely understand.
     "It is all the glass," she said.
     She was lying very still when she said it. She had folded her hands, which were hot, to keep them quiet, too. She had closed her eyes, which ached, to close away the glare of the noon. At once she opened them, and said:--
     "It is the glass."
     Sary Jane stood in the glass. Now Sary Jane, she well knew, was not in the room that noon. She had gone out to see what she could find for dinner. She had five cents to spend on dinner. Yet Sary Jane stood in the glass. And in the glass, ah! what a beautiful thing!
     "Flowers!" cried the Lady of Shalott aloud. But she had never seen flowers. But neither had she seen waves. So she said, "They come as the waves come;" and knew them, and lay smiling. Ah! what a beautiful, beautiful thing!
     Sary Jane's hair was fiery and tumbled (in the glass), as if she had walked fast and far. Sary Jane (in the glass) was winking, as she had winked at the blazing window; as if she said to what she held in her arms, Don't tell! And in her arms (in the glass), where the waves were--oh! beautiful, beautiful! The Lady of Shalott lay whispering: "Beautiful, beautiful!" She did not know what else to do. She dared not stir. Sary Jane's lean arms (in the glass) were full of silver bells; they hung out of a soft green shadow, like a church tower; they nodded to and fro: when they shook, they shook out sweetness.
     "Will they ring?" asked the Lady of Shalott of the little glass.
     I doubt, in my own mind, if you or I, being in South Street, and seeing a lily of the valley (in a ten by six inch looking-glass) for the very first time, would have asked so sensible a question.
     "Try 'em and see," said the looking-glass. Was it the looking-glass? Or the rat-trap? Or was it--
     Oh, the beautiful thing! That the glass should have nothing to do with it, after all! That Sary Jane, in flesh and blood, and tumbled hair, and trembling, lean arms, should stand and shake an armful of church towers and silver bells down into the Lady of Shalott's little puzzled face and burning hands!
     And that the Lady of Shalott should think that she must have got into the glass herself, by a blunder,--as the only explanation possible of such a beautiful thing!
     "No, it isn't glass-dreams," said Sary Jane, winking at the church towers, where they made a solemn green shadow against the Lady of Shalott's poor cheek. "Smell 'em, and see! You can 'most stand the yard with them round. Smell 'em and see! It ain't the glass; it's the Flower Charity."
     "The what?" asked the Lady of Shalott, slowly.
     "The Flower Charity. Heaven bless it!"
     "Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott. But she said nothing more.
     She laid her cheek over into the shadow of the leaves. "And there'll be more," said Sary Jane, hunting for her wax. "There'll be more, whenever I can call for 'em--bless it!"
     "Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott again.
     "But I only got a lemon for dinner," said Sary Jane.
     "Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott, with her face hidden under the leaves. But I don't think that she meant the lemon, though Sary Jane did.
     "They do ring," said the Lady of Shalott, by and by. She drew the tip of her thin fingers across the tip of the tiny bells. "I thought they would."
     "Humph!" said Sary Jane, squeezing her lemon under her work-box. "I never see your beat for glass-dreams. What do they say? Come, now!"
     Now the Lady of Shalott knew very well what they said. Very well! But she only drew the tips of her poor fingers over the tips of the silver bells. Never mind! It was not necessary to tell Sary Jane.
     But it grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. Even the Flower Charity (bless it!) could not sweeten the dreadfulness of that yard. Even the purple wing above the spring-box fell heavily upon the Lady of Shalott's strained eyes, across the glass. Even the gray-haired waves ceased running up and down and throwing back their hands before her; they sat still, in heaps upon a blistering beach, and gasped for breath. The Lady of Shalott herself gasped sometimes, in watching them.
     One day she said: "There's a man in them."
     "A what in which ?" buzzed Sary Jane. "Oh! There's a man across the yard, I suppose you mean. Among them young ones, yonder. I wish he'd stop 'em throwing stones, plague on 'em! See him, don't you?"
     "I don't see the children," said the Lady of Shalott, a little troubled. Her glass had shown her so many things strangely since the days grew hot. "But I see a man, and he walks upon the waves. See, see!"

The Lady of Shalott tried to pull herself up on the elbow of her calico night-dress, to see.
     "That's one of them Hospital doctors," said Sary Jane, looking out of the blazing window. "I've seen him round before. Don't know what business he's got down here; but I've seen him. He's talking to them boys now, about the stones. There! He'd better! If they don't look out, they'll hit"--
      "Oh the glass! the glass!"
     The Hospital Doctor stood still, so did Sary Jane, half risen from her chair; so did the very South Street boys, gaping in the gutter, with their hands full of stones,--such a cry rang out from the palace window.
      "Oh, the glass! the glass! the glass!"
     In a twinkling the South Street boys were at the mercy of the South Street police; and the Hospital Doctor, bounding over a beachful of shattered, scattered waves, stood, out of breath, beside the Lady of Shalott's bed.
     "Oh the little less and what worlds away."
     The Lady of Shalott lay quite still in her brown calico night-gown [I cannot learn, by the way, that Bulfinch's studious and in general trustworthy researches have put him in possession of this point. Indeed, I feel justified in asserting that Mr. Bulfinch never so much as intimated that the Lady of Shalott wore a brown calico night-dress]--the Lady of Shalott lay quite still, and her lips turned blue.
     "Are you very much hurt? Where were you struck? I heard the cry, and came. Can you tell me where the blow was?"
     But then the Doctor saw the glass, broken and blown in a thousand glittering sparks across the palace floor: and then the Lady of Shalott gave him a little blue smile.
     "It's not me. Never mind, I wish it was. I'd rather it was me than the glass. Oh, my glass! My glass! But never mind. I suppose there'll be some other--pleasant thing."
     "Were you so fond of the glass?" asked the Doctor, taking one of the two chairs that Sary Jane brought him, and looking sorrowfully about the room. What other "pleasant thing" could even the Lady of Shalott discover in that room last summer, at the east end of South Street?
     "How long have you lain here?" asked the sorrowful Doctor, suddenly.
     "Since I can remember, sir," said the Lady of Shalott, with that blue smile. "But then I have always had my glass."
     "Ah!" said the Doctor, "the Lady of Shalott!"
     "Sir?" said the Lady of Shalott.
     "Where is the pain?" asked the Doctor, gently, with his finger on the Lady of Shalott's pulse.
     The Lady of Shalott touched the shoulders of her brown calico night-dress, smiling.
     "And what did you see in your glass?" asked the Doctor, once more, stooping to examine "the pain."
     The Lady of Shalott tried to tell him, but felt confused. So she only said that there were waves and a purple wing, and that they were broken now, and lay upon the floor.
     "Purple wings?" asked the Doctor.
     "Over the sidewalk," nodded the Lady of Shalott. "It comes up at night."
     "Oh!" said the Doctor, "the malaria. No wonder!"
     "And what about the waves?" asked the Doctor, talking while he touched and tried the little brown calico shoulders. "I have a little girl of my own down by the waves this summer. She--I suppose she is no older than you!"
     "I am seventeen, sir," said the Lady of Shalott. "Do they have green faces and white hair? Does she see them run up and down? I never saw any waves, sir, but those in my glass. I am very glad to know your little girl is by the waves."
     "Where you ought to be," said the Doctor, half under his breath. "It is cruel, cruel!"
     "What is cruel?" asked the Lady of Shalott, looking up into the Doctor's face.
     The little brown calico night-dress swam suddenly before the Doctor's eyes. He got up and walked across the room. As he walked he stepped upon the pieces of the broken glass.
     "Oh, don't!" cried the Lady of Shalott. But then she thought that perhaps she had hurt the Doctor's feelings; so she smiled, and said, "Never mind."
     "Her case could be cured," said the Doctor, still under his breath, to Sary Jane. "The case could be cured yet. It is cruel!"
     "Sir," said Sary Jane,--she lifted her sharp face sharply out of billows of nankeen vests,--"it may be because I make vests at sixteen and three-quarter cents a dozen, sir: but I say before God there's something cruel somewhere . Look at her. Look at me. Look at them stairs. Just see that scuttle, will you? Just feel the sun in t' these windows. Look at the rent we pay for this 'ere oven. What do you s'pose the merkiry is up here? Look at them pisen fogs arisin' out over the sidewalk. Look at the dead as have died in the Devil in this street this week. Then look out here!"
     Sary Jane drew the Doctor to the blazing, blindless window, out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.
     "Now talk of curin' her !" said Sary Jane.
     The Doctor turned away from the window, with a sudden white face.
     "The Board of Health"--
     "Don't talk to me about the Board of Health!" said Sary Jane.
     "I'll talk to them ," said the Doctor. "I did not know matters were so bad. They shall be attended to directly. To-morrow I leave town"--He stopped, looking down at the Lady of Shalott, thinking of the little lady by the waves, whom he would see to-morrow, hardly knowing what to say. "But something shall be done at once. Meantime, there's the Hospital."
     "She tried Horspital long ago," said Sary Jane. "They said they couldn't do nothing. What's the use? Don't bother her. Let her be."
     "Yes, let me be," said the Lady of Shalott, faintly. "The glass is broken."
     "But something must be done!" urged the Doctor, hurrying away. "I will attend to the matter directly, directly."
     He spoke in a busy doctor's busy way. Undoubtedly he thought that he should attend to the matter directly.
     "You have flowers here, I see." He lifted, in hurrying away, a spray of lilies that lay upon the bed, freshly sent to the Lady of Shalott that morning.
     "They ring," said the Lady of Shalott, softly. "Can you hear? ' Bless --it! Bless --it!' Ah, yes, they ring!"
     "Bless what?" asked the Doctor, half out of the door.
     "The Flower Charity," said the Lady of Shalott.
     " Amen !" said the Doctor. "But I'll attend to it directly." And he was quite out of the door, and the door was shut.
     "Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott, a few minutes after.
     "Well!" said Sary Jane.
     "The glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.
     "Should think I might know that!" said Sary Jane, who was down upon her knees sweeping shining pieces away into a pasteboard dust-pan.
     "Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott again.
     "Dear, dear!" echoed Sary Jane, tossing purple feathers out of the window and seeming, to the eyes of the Lady of Shalott, to have the spray of green waves upon her hands. "There they go!"
     "Yes, there they go," said the Lady of Shalott. But she said no more till night.
     It was a hot night for South Street. It was a very hot night for even South Street. The lean children in the attic opposite cried savagely, like lean cubs. The monkeys from the spring-box came out and sat upon the lid for air. Dirty people lay around the dirty hydrant; and the purple wing stretched itself a little in a quiet way to cover them.
     "Sary Jane, dear"? said the Lady of Shalott, at night. "The glass is broken. And, Sary Jane, dear, I am afraid I can't stand it as well as you can."
     Sary Jane gave the Lady of Shalott a sharp look, and put away her nankeen vests. She came to the bed.
     "It isn't time to stop sewing, is it?" asked the Lady of Shalott, in faint surprise. Sary Jane only said:--
     "Nonsense! That man will be back again yet. He'll look after ye, maybe. Nonsense!"
     "Yes," said the Lady of Shalott, "he will come back again. But my glass is broken."
     "Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. But she did not go back to her sewing. She sat down on the edge of the bed, by the Lady of Shalott; and it grew dark.
     "Perhaps they'll do something about the yards; who knows?" said Sary Jane.
     "But my glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.
     "Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "He is walking on the waves."
     "Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. For it was quite, quite dark.
     "Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "Not that man. But there is a Man, and he is walking on the waves."
     The Lady of Shalott raised herself upon her calico night-dress sleeve. She looked at the wall where the ten by six inch looking-glass had hung.
     "Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "I am glad that girl is down by the waves. I am very glad. But the glass is broken."

     Two days after, the Board of Health at the foot of the precipice which the lessor called a flight of stairs, the one that led into the Lady of Shalott's palace, were met and stopped by another board.
     " This one's got the right of way, gentlemen!" said something at the brink of the precipice, which sounded so much like a rat-trap that the Board of Health looked down by instinct at its individual and collective feet, to see if they were in danger, and dared not by instinct stir a step.
     The board which had the right of way was a pine board, and the Lady of Shalott lay on it, in her brown calico night-dress, with Sary Jane's old shawl across her feet. The Flower Charity (Heaven bless it!) had half-covered the old shawl with silver bells, and solemn green shadows, like the shadows of church towers. And it was a comfort to Sary Jane to know that these were the only bells which tolled for the Lady of Shalott, and that no other church shadow fell upon her burial.
     "Gentlemen," said the Hospital Doctor, "we're too late, I see. But you'd better go on."
     The gentlemen of the Board of Health went on; and the Lady of Shalott went on.
     The Lady of Shalott went out into the cart that had carried away the monkeys from the spring-box, and the purple wing lifted to let her pass; then fell again, as if it had brushed her away.
     The Board of Health went up the precipice, and stood by the window out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.
     They sent orders to the scavenger, and orders to the Water Board, and how many other orders nobody knows; and they sprinkled themselves with camphor, and they went their ways.
     And the board that had the Right of Way went its way, too. And Sary Jane folded up the shawl, which she could not afford to lose, and came home, and made nankeen vests at sixteen and three-quarter cents a dozen in the window out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

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Legends/Sagas

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THE TRUE STORY OF GUENEVER

by

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

In all the wide, dead, old world of story, there is to me no wraith more piteously pursuant than the wraith of Guenever. No other voice has in it the ring of sweet harmonies so intricately bejangled; no other face turns to us eyes of such luminous entreaty from slow descents of despair; no other figure, majestic though in ruins, carries through every strained muscle and tense nerve and full artery so magnetic a consciousness of the deeps of its deserved humiliation the height of its lost privilege. One pauses as before an awful problem, before the nature of this miserable lady. A nature wrought, it is plain, of the finer tissues, since it not only won but returned the love of the blameless king. One follows her young years with bated breath. We see a delicate, high-strung, impulsive creature, a trifle mismated to a faultless, unimpulsive man. We shudder to discover in her, before she discovers it for or in herself, that, having given herself to Arthur, she yet has not given all; that there arises now another self, an existence hitherto unknown, unsuspected,--a character groping, unstable, unable, a wandering wind, a mist of darkness, a chaos, over which Arthur has no empire, of which he has no comprehension, and of which she--whether of Nature or of training who shall judge?--has long since discrowned herself the Queen. Guenever is unbalanced, crude, primeval woman. She must be at once passionately wooed and peremptorily ruled; and in wooing or in ruling there must be no despondencies or declines. There are no soundings to be found in her capacities of loving, as long as the mariner cares to go on striking for them. At his peril let him hold his plummet lightly or weary of the sweet toil taken in the measure of it; at his peril, and at hers.
     To Arthur love is a state, not a process; an atmosphere, not a study; an assurance, not a hope; a fact, not an ideal. He is serene, reflective, a statesman. The Queen is intense, ill-educated, idle. Undreamed of by the one, unsuspected by the other, they grow apart. Ungoverned, how shall Guenever govern herself? Misinterpreted, value herself? Far upon the sunlit moor, a speck against the pure horizon, Launcelot rides,--silent, subtle, swift, as Fate rides ever. . . .
     Poor Guenever! After all, poor Guenever! Song and story, life and death are so cruel to a woman. To Launcelot, repentant, is given in later life the best thing left upon earth for a penitent man--a spotless son. To Launcelot is reserved the aureola of that blessed fatherhood from which sprang the finder of the Holy Grael, "pure in thought and word and deed." To Guenever is given the convent and solitary expiation; to Guenever disgrace, exile, and despair. Prone upon the convent floor, our fancy leaves her, kissing Arthur's kingly and forgiving, but departing feet, half dead for joy because he bids her hope that in some other world--in which she has not sinned--those spotless feet may yet return to her, her true and stronger soul return to him; but neither in this world--never in this. Poor soul! Erring, weak, unclean; but for that, and that, and that, poor soul! Poor soul! I can never bear to leave her there upon the convent floor. I rebel against the story. I am sure the half of it was never told us. It must be that Arthur went back some autumn day and brought her gravely home. It must be that penitence and patience and acquired purity shall sometime win the respect and confidence of men, as they receive the respect and confidence of God. It must be that at some distant but approaching day something of the tenderness of divine stainlessness shall creep into the instinct of human imperfection, and a repentant sinner become to human estimates an object sorrowful, appalling, but appealing, sacred, and sweet.
     Who can capture the where, the how, the wherefore of a train of fancy? Was it because I thought of Guenever that I heard the story? Or because I heard the story that I thought of Guenever? My washwoman told it, coming in the bitter day at twilight and sitting by the open fire, as I had bidden her, for rest and warmth. What should she know of the Bulfinch and Ellis and Tennyson and Dunlop, that had fallen from my lap upon the cricket at her feet, that she should sit, with hands across her draggled knees, and tell me such a story? Or were Dunlop and the rest untouched upon the library shelves till after she had told it? Whether the legend drew me to the fact, or the fact impelled me to the legend? Indeed, why should I know? It is enough that I heard the story. She told it in her way. I, for lack of her fine, realistic manner, must tell it in my own.
     
Queen Guenever had the toothache. Few people can look pretty with the toothache. The cheeks of royalty itself will swell, and princely eyelids redden, and queenly lips assume contours as unæsthetic as the kitchen-maids', beneath affliction so plebeian. But Guenever looked pretty.
     She abandoned herself to misery, to begin with, in such a royal fashion. And, by the way, we may notice that in nothing does blood "tell" more sharply than in the endurance of suffering. There is a vague monotony in the processes of wearing pleasure. Happy people are very much alike. In the great republic of joy we find tremendous and humiliating levels. When we lift our heads to bear the great crown of pain, all the "points" of the soul begin to make themselves manifest at once.
     Guenever yielded herself to this vulgar agony with a beautiful protest. She had protested, indeed, all winter, for that tooth had ached all winter; had never even told her husband of it till yesterday. She had flung herself upon the little crocheted cricket by the sitting-room fire, with her slender, tightly-sleeved arm upon the chintz-covered rocking-chair, and her erect, firm head upon her arm. Into the palm of the other hand the offending cheek crept, like a bird into its nest; with a caressing, nestling movement, as if that tiny hand of hers were the only object in the world to which Guenever did not scorn to say how sorry she was for herself. The color of her cheeks was high but fine. Her eyes--Guenever, as we all know, had brown eyes, more soft than dark--were as dry as they were iridescent. Other women might cry for the toothache! All the curves of the exhausted attitude she had chosen, had in them the bewitching defiance of a hard surrender to a power stronger than herself, with which certain women meet every alien influence, from a needle-prick to a heartbreak. She wore a white apron and a white ribbon against a dress of a soft dark brown color; and the chintz of the happy chair, whose stiff old elbows held her beautiful outline, was of black and gold, with birds of paradise in the pattern. There was a stove, with little sliding doors, in Guenever's sitting-room. Arthur thought it did not use so very much more wood to open the doors, and was far healthier. Secretly he liked to see Guenever in the bird-of-paradise chair, with the moody firelight upon her; but he had never said so--it was not Arthur's "way." Launcelot, now, for instance had said something to that effect several times.
     Launcelot, as all scholars of romantic fiction know, was the young bricklayer to whom Arthur and Guenever had rented the spare room when the hard times came on,--a good-natured, inoffensive lodger as one could ask for, and quite an addition, now and then, before the little sliding doors of the open stove, on a sober evening, when she and Arthur were dull, as Guenever had said. To tell the truth, Arthur was often dull of late, what with being out of work so much, and the foot he lamed with a rusty nail. King Arthur, it is unnecessary to add, was a master carpenter.
     King Arthur came limping in that evening, and found the beautiful, protesting, yielding, figure in the black and golden chair. The Queen did not turn as he came in. One gets so used to one's husband! And the heavy, uneven step he left upon the floor jarred upon her aching nerves. Launcelot, when he had come, about an hour since, to inquire how she was, had bounded down the stairs as merrily as a school-boy, as lightly as a hare, and turned his knightly feet a-tip-toe as he crossed the room to say how sorry he felt for her; to stand beside her in the moody light, to gaze intently down upon her, then to ask why Arthur was not yet at home; to wonder were she lonely; to say he liked her ribbon at her throat; to say he liked a hundred things; to say it quite unmanned him when he saw her suffer; to start as if he would say more to her, and turn as if the would have touched her, and fly as if he dared not, and out into the contending, mad March night. For the wind blew that night! To the last night of her life Queen Guenever will not forget the way it blew!
     "Take some Drops," said Arthur. What a tiresome manner Arthur had of putting things! Some Drops, indeed! There was nothing Guenever wanted to take. She wanted, in fact, to be taken; to be caught and gathered to her husband's safe, broad breast; to be held against his faithful heart; to be fondled and crooned over and cuddled. She would have her aching head imprisoned in his healthy hands. And if he should think to kiss the agonizing cheek, as she would kiss a woman's cheek if she loved her and she had the toothache? But Arthur never thought! Men were so dull at things. Only women knew how to take care of one another. Only women knew the infinite fine languages of love. A man was tender when he thought of it, in a blunt, broad way.
     There might be men-- One judged somewhat from voices; and a tender voice-- Heaven forgive her! Though he spoke with the tongues of all angels, and the music of all spheres, and the tenderness of all loves, what was any man's mortal voice to her--a queen, the wife of Arthur, blameless king of men?
     The wife of Arthur started from the old chair whereon the birds of paradise seemed in the uneven firelight to be fluttering to and fro. The color on her cheeks had deepened painfully, and she lifted her crowned head with a haughty motion towards her husband's face.
     "I'm sure I'd try the Drops," repeated Arthur.
     "I'll have it out!" snapped Guenever. "I don't believe a word of its being neuralgia. I'll have them all out, despite him!"
     Guenever referred to the court dentist.
     "I'll have them out and make a fright of myself once for all, and go mumbling round. I doubt if anybody would find it made any difference to anybody how anybody looked."
     It cannot be denied that there was a certain remote vagueness in this remark. King Arthur, who was of a metaphysical temperament, sighed. He was sorry for the Queen--so sorry that he went and set the supper-table, to save her from the draughts that lurked even in the royal pantry that mad March night. He loved the Queen--so much that he would have been a happy man to sit in the bird-of-paradise rocking-chair and kiss that aching, sweet cheek of hers till supper-time to-morrow, if that would help her. But he supposed, if she had the toothache, she wouldn't want to be touched. He knew he shouldn't. So, not knowing what else to do, he just limped royally about and got the supper, like a dear old dull king as he was.
     If Queen Guenever appreciated this little kingly attention, who can say? She yielded herself with a heavy sigh once more to the arms of the chintz rocking-chair, and ached in silence. Her face throbbed in time to the pulses of the wind. What a wind it was! It seemed to come from immense and awful distances, gathering slow forces as it fled, but fleeing with a compressed, rebellious roar, like quick blood chained within the tissues of a mighty artery, beating to and fro as it rushed to fill the heart of the black and lawless night.
     It throbbed so resoundingly against the palace windows that the steps of Launcelot, blending with it, did not strike the Queen's ears till he stood beside her, in the firelight. Arthur, setting the supper table, had heard the knightly knock, and bidden their friend and lodger enter (as King Arthur bade him always) with radiant, guileless eyes.
     Sir Launcelot had a little bottle in his hand. He had been to the druggist's. There was a druggist to the king just around the corner from the palace.
     "It's laudanum," said Launcelot. "I got it for your tooth. I wish you'd try it. I couldn't bear to see you suffer."
     "I'm half afraid to have Guenever take laudanum," said Arthur, coming up. "It takes such a mite of anything to influence my wife. The doctor says it is her nerves. I know he wouldn't give her laudanum when her arm was hurt. But it's just as good in you, Sir Launcelot."
     Guenever thought it very good in him. She lifted her flushed and throbbing face to tell him so; but, in point of fact, she told him nothing. For something in Sir Launcelot's eyes, the wife of Arthur could not speak.
     She motioned him to put the bottle on the shelf, and signified by a slight gesture peculiar to herself--a little motion of the shoulders, as tender as it was imperious--her will that he should leave her.
     Now Launcelot, we see, was plainly sorry for Guenever. Was it then a flitting tenderer than sorrow that she had seen within his knightly eyes? Only Guenever will ever know; for Arthur, on his knees upon the crocheted cricket before the palace fire, was toasting graham bread.
     Guenever, on her knees before the rocking-chair, sat very still. Her soft brown eyes, wide open, almost touched the cool, smooth chintz where the birds of paradise were flying on a pall-black sky. It seemed to her strained vision, sitting so, that the birds flew from her as she looked at them, and vanished; and that the black sky alone was left. The eyes that watched the golden birds departing were fair and still, like the eyes of children just awake. It was a child's mouth, as innocent and fair, that Guenever lifted just that minute suddenly to Arthur, with a quick, unqueenly, appealing smile.
     "Kiss me, dear?" said Guenever, somewhat disconnectedly.
     "Why, yes!" said Arthur.
     He was n't able to follow the train of thought exactly. It was never clear to him why Guenever should want to be kissed precisely in the middle of a slice of toast. And the graham bread was burned. But he kissed the Queen, and they had supper; and he eat the burnt slice himself, and said nothing about it. That, too, was one of Arthur's "ways."
     "Only," said Guenever, as the King contentedly finished the last black crust, "I wish the wind would stop."
     "What's the trouble with the wind?" asked Arthur. "I thought it was well enough."
     "It must be well enough," said the Queen, and she shook her little white fist at the window. "It shall be well enough!"
     For the pulse of the wind ran wildly against the palace and Guenever was speaking, and throbbed and bounded and beat, as if the heart of the March night would break.
     All this was long, long, long ago. How long Guenever can never tell. Days, weeks, months,--few or many, swift or slow,--of that she cannot answer. Passion takes no count of time; peril marks no hours or minutes; wrong makes its own calendar; and misery has solar systems peculiar to itself. It seemed to her years, it seemed to her days, according to her tossed, tormented mood.
     It is in the nature of all passionate and uncontrolled emotion to prey upon and weaken the forces of reflective power, as much as it is in the nature of controlled emotion to strengthen them. Guenever found in herself a marked instance of this law. It seemed to her sometimes that she knew as little of her own story as she did of that of any erring soul at the world's width from her. It seemed to her that her very memory had yielded in the living of it, like the memory of a person in whose brain insidious disease had begun to fasten itself. So subtle and so sure had been the disease which gnawed at the Queen's heart, that she discovered with a helpless terror--not unlike that one might feel in whom a cancerous process had been long and undetected working--that her whole nature was lowering its tone in sympathy with her special weakness. She seemed suddenly to have become, or to feel herself become, a poisoned thing.
     We may wonder, does not the sense of guilt--not the sensitiveness to, but the sense of guilt--come often as a sharp and sudden experience? Queen Guenever, at least, felt stunned by it. Distinctly, as if it and she were alone in the universe, she could mark the awful moment when it came to her. Vivid as a blood-red rocket shot against her stormy sky, that moment whirred and glared before her.
     It was a fierce and windy night, like that in which she had the toothache, when she and the King had eaten such a happy supper of burnt toast (for hers was burnt, too, although she wouldn't have said so for the world, since the King had got so tired and warm about it). How happy they had been that night! Sir Launcelot did not come again after supper, dimly feeling, despite the laudanum, that the Queen had dismissed him for the evening. She and Arthur had the evening to themselves. It was the first evening they had been alone together for a long time. Arthur sat in the chintz rocking-chair. He held her in his lap. He comforted her poor cheek with his huge, warm hand. His shining, kingly eyes looked down on her like stars from Heaven. He said:--
     "If it wasn't for your tooth, little woman, how happy we would be."
     And Guenever had laughed and said: "What's a toothache? I'm content, if you are." And then they laughed together, and the golden birds upon the old chair had seemed to flit and sing before her; and brighter and sweeter, as they watched her, glimmered Arthur's guileless eyes.
     The stars were fallen now; the heavens were black; the birds of paradise had flown; the wind was abroad mightily and cold; there was snow upon the ground; and she and Launcelot were fleeing through it and weeping as they fled.
     Guenever, at least, was weeping. All the confusion of the miserable states and processes which had led her to this hour had cleared away, murky clouds from a lurid sky. Suddenly, by a revelation awful as some that might shock a soul upon the day of doom, she knew that she was no longer a bewildered or a pitiable, but an evil creature.
     A gossip in the street, an old neighbor who used to borrow eggs of her, had spoken in her hearing, as she and Launcelot passed swiftly through the dark, unrecognized, at the corner of the Palace Court, and had said:--
     "Guenever has fled with Launcelot. The Queen has left the King. All the world will know it by to-morrow."
     These words fell upon the Queen's ear distinctly. They tolled after her through the bitter air. She fled a few steps, and stopped.
     "Launcelot!" she cried, "what have we done? Why are we here? Let me go home! Oh! what have I done?"
     She threw out her arms with that tender, imperious gesture of hers--more imperious than tender now--which Launcelot knew so well.
     Strange! Oh! strange and horrible! How came it to be thus with her? How came she to be alone with Launcelot in the blinding night? The Queen fled from the King? Guenever false to Arthur?
     Guenever, pausing in the cruel storm, looked backward at her footsteps in the falling snow. Her look was fixed and frightened as a child's. Her memory seemed to her like snow of all that must have led her to this hour.
     She knew not what had brought her hither, nor the way by which she came. She was a creature awakened from a moral catalepsy. With the blessed impulse of the Prodigal, old as Earth's error, sweet as Heaven's forgiveness, she turned and cried: "I repent! I repent! I will go home to my husband, before it is too late!"
     "It is too late!" said a bitter voice beside her. "It is too late already for repentance, Guenever."
     Was it Launcelot who spoke, or the deadly wind that shrieked in passing her? Guenever could never say. A sickening terror took possession of her. She felt her very heart grow cold, as she stood and watched her foot-prints, on which the snow was falling wild and fast.
     It was a desolate spot in which she and Launcelot stood. They had left the safe, sweet signs of holy human lives and loves behind them. They were quite alone. A wide and windy moor stretched from them to a forest, on which a horror of great darkness seemed to hang. Behind them, in the deserted distance, gleamed the palace lights. Within these the Queen saw, or fancied that she saw, the shadow of the King, moving sadly to and fro, against the drawn curtain, from behind which the birds of paradise had fled forever.
     From palace to wilderness her footsteps lay black in the falling snow. As she gazed, the increasing storm drifted, and here and there they blurred and whitened over and were lost to sight.
     So she, too, would whiten over her erring way. Man was not more merciless than Nature.
     "I will retrace them all!" cried Guenever.
     "You can never retrace the first of them," said again bitterly beside her Launcelot or the deathly wind. "Man is more merciless than Nature. There is no way back for you to the palace steps. In all the kingdom, there is no soul to bid you welcome, should you dare return. The Queen can never come to her throne again."
     "I seek no throne!" wailed Guenever. "I ask for no crown! All I want is to go back and to be clean. I'll crawl on my knees to the palace, if I may be clean."
     But again said sneeringly to her that voice, which was either of Launcelot or of the wind:--
     "Too late! too late! too late! You can never be clean! You can never be clean!"
     "Launcelot," said Guenever, rallying sharply and making as it seemed, a mighty effort to collect control over the emotion which was mastering her, "Launcelot, there is some mistake about this. I never meant to do wrong. I never said I would leave the King. There is some mistake. Perhaps I have been dreaming or have been ill. Let me go home at once to the King!"
     "There is no mistake," said once more the voice, which seemed neither of Launcelot nor of the wind, but yet akin to both; "and you are not dreaming and you can never return to the King. The thing that is done is done. Sorrow and longing are dead to help you. Agony and repentance are feeble friends. Neither man nor Nature can wash away a stain."
     "God is more merciful!" cried Guenever, in the tense, shrill voice of agony, stung beyond endurance. It seemed to her that nature could bear no more. It seemed to her that she had never before this moment received so much as an intellectual perception of the guiltiness of guilt. Now mind and heart, soul and body throbbed with the throes of it. She quivered, she struggled, she rebelled with the accumulated fervors and horrors of years of innocence. But it seemed to her as if the soil of sin eat into her like caustic, before whose effects the most compassionate or skillful surgeon is powerless. She writhed with her recoil from it. She shrank from it with terror proportioned to her sense of helplessness and stain.
     "They who are only afflicted know nothing of misery!" moaned Guenever. "There is no misery but guilt!"
     She flung herself down in the storm upon the snow.
     "God loves!" cried Guenever. "Christ died! I will be clean!"
     It seemed then suddenly to the kneeling woman, that He whose body and blood were broken for tempted souls appeared to seek her out across the desolated moor. The Man whose stainless lips were first to touch the cup of the Holy Grael, which all poor souls should after Him go seeking up and down upon the earth, stood in the pure white snow, and, smiling, spoke to her.
      "Though your sins," he said, "are scarlet, they shall be white."
     He pointed, as he spoke, across the distance; past the safe, sweet homes of men and women, toward the palace gates. It seemed to Guenever that he spoke again and said:--
     "Return!"
     "Through those black footsteps?" sobbed the Queen.
     But when she looked again, behold! each black and bitter trace was gone. Smooth across them all, fair, pure, still, reposed the stainless snow. She could not find them, though she would. They were blotted out by Nature, as they were forgiven of God. Alas! alas! if man were but half as compassionate or kind. If Arthur--
     She groveled on the ground where the sacred Feet had stood, which now were vanished from her. Wretched woman that she was! Who should deliver her from this bondage to her life's great holy love? If Arthur would but open the door for her in the fair distance, where the palace window shone; if he would take a single step toward her where she kneeled within the wilderness; if he would but loiter toward her where that Other had run swiftly, and speak one word of quiet to her where He had sung her songs of joy! But the palace door was shut. The King took no step toward the wilderness. The King was mute as death and cold as his own white soul. On Arthur's throne was never more a place for Guenever.
     Guenever, in the desert, stretched her arms out blindly across the blotted footprints to the palace lights.
     Oh! Arthur. Oh! Arthur, Arthur, Arthur . . .

     "Why, Pussy!" said Arthur. "What's the matter?"
     However unqueenly, Pussy was one of the royal pet names.
     "My little woman! Guenever! My darling! Why do you call me so?"
     Why did she call him indeed? Why call for anything?
     Why ask or need or long? In his great arms he held her. To his true breast he folded her. Safe in his love he sheltered her. From heaven the stars of his eyes looked down on her. As those may look who wake in heaven, whose anguished soul had thought to wake in hell, looked Guenever. She was his honored wife. There was no Launcelot, no wilderness. The soul which the King had crowned with his royal love was clean, was clean, was clean!
     She hid her scarlet face upon his honest heart and seemed to mutter something about "dreams." It was all that she could say. There are dreams that are epochs in life.
     "But it wasn't a dream, you see," said Arthur. "We've had a scare over you, Guenever. You took the laudanum, after all."
     "Launcelot's laudanum! Indeed, no! I took the drops, as I told you, Arthur."
     "The bottles stood together on the shelf, and you made the blunder," said Arthur, anxiously. "We think you must have taken a tremendous dose. I've sent Launcelot for the Doctor. And Nabby Jones, she was in to borrow eggs, and she said a little camphire would be good for you. She just went home to get it. But I've been frightened about you, Guenever," said Arthur. Arthur spoke in his own grave and repressed manner. But he was very pale. His lips, as the Queen crept, sobbing, up to touch them, trembled.
     "Well, well," he said, "we won't talk about it now." Guenever did not want to talk. She wished Nabby Jones would stay away, with her camphire. She wished Launcelot would never come. Upon her husband's heart she lay. Within her husband's eyes the safe, home fire-light shone. Across the old chintz chair the birds of paradise were fluttering like birds gone wild with joy.
     Without, the wind had lulled, the storm had ceased, and through the crevices in the windows had sifted tiny drifts of cool, clean snow.
     And this, know all men henceforth by these presents, is the true story of Guenever the Queen.

---

Legends/Sagas

---

---

THE TERRIBLE TEST

by

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

Separate, upon the folded page
     Of myth or marvel, sad or glad,
The test that gave the Lord to thee,
     And thee to us, O Galahad!

"Found pure in deed, and word, and thought,"
     The creature of our dream and guess,
The vision of the brain thou art,
     The eidolon of holiness.

Man with the power of the God,
     Man with the weaknesses of men,
Whose lips the Sangreal leaned to feed,
     "Whose strength was the strength of ten."

We read--and smile; no man thou wast;
     No human pulses thine could be;
With downcast eyes we read--and sigh;
     So terrible is purity!

O fairest legend of the years,
     With folded wings, go, silently!
O flower of knighthood, yield your place
     To One who comes from Galilee!
                    ---
To wounded feet that shrink and bleed,
     But press and climb the narrow way,--
The same old way our own must step,
     Forever, yesterday, to-day.

For soul can be what soul hath been,
     And feet can tread where feet have trod.
Enough, to know that once the clay
     Hath worn the features of the God.

---

---

GUINEVERE

by

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

Of Guinevere from Arthur separate,
And separate from Launcelot and the world,
And shielded in the convent with her sin,
As one draws fast a veil upon a face
That 's marred, but only holds the scar more close
Against the burning brain--I read to-day
This legend; and if other yet than I
Have read, or said, how know I? for the text
Was written in the story we have learned,
Between the ashen lines, invisible,
In hieroglyphs that blazed and leaped like light
Unto the eyes. A thousand times we read;
A thousand turn the page and understand,
And think we know the record of a life,
When lo! if we will open once again
The awful volume, hid, mysterious,
Intent, there lies the unseen alphabet--
Re-reads the tale from breath to death, and spells
A living language that we never knew.

This that I read was one short song of hers,
A fragment, I interpret, or a lost
Faint prelude to another--missing too.
She sang it (says the text) one summer night,
After the vespers, when the Abbess passed
And blessed her; when the nuns were gone, and when
She, kneeling in her drowsy cell, had said
Her prayers (poor soul!), her sorrowful prayers, in which
She had besought the Lord, for His dear sake,
And love and pity of His Only Son,
To wash her of her stain, and make her fit
On summer nights, behind the convent bars
And on stone floors, with bruisèd lips, to pray
Away all vision but repentance from
Her soul.

   When, kneeling as she was, her limbs
Refused to bear her, and she fell afaint
From weariness and striving to become
A holy woman, all her splendid length
Upon the ground, and groveled there, aghast
That buried nature was not dead in her,
But lived, a rebel through her fair, fierce youth;
Aghast to find that claspèd hands would clench;
Aghast to feel that praying lips refused
Like saints to murmur on, but shrank
And quivered dumb. "Alas! I cannot pray!"
Cried Guinevere. "I cannot pray! I will
Not lie! God is an honest God, and I
Will be an honest sinner to his face.
Will it be wicked if I sing? Oh! let
Me sing a little, of I know not what;
Let me just sing, I know not why. For lips
Grow stiff with praying all the night.
Let me believe that I am happy, too.
A blessèd blessèd woman, who is fit
To sing because she did not sin; or else
That God forgot it for a little while
And does not mind me very much.
            Dear Lord,"
(Said Guinevere), "wilt thou not listen while
I sing, as well as while I pray? I shall
Feel safer so. For I have naught to say
God should not hear. The song comes as the prayer
Doth come. Thou listenest. I sing." . . .

Purple the night, and high were the skies, and higher
   The eyes that leaned like the stars of my soul, to me.
Whom loveth the Queen? Him who hath right to crown her.
      Who but the King is he?

Sultry the day, and gold was the hair, and golden
   The mist that blinded my soul away from me.
Dethroned for a dream, for a gleam, for a glance, for a color,
      How could the crownèd be?

Life goeth by like a deed, nor returneth forever.
   Death cometh on, fleet-footed as pity should be.
Hush! When she waketh at last and looketh about her,
      Whom will a woman see?

         Thus in her cell,
Deep in the summer night, sang Guinevere--
A little, broken, blind, sweet melody--
And then she kneeled upon the convent floor,
And, peaceful, finished all her prayer and slept;
For she had naught to say God might not hear.

---

---

ELAINE AND ELAINE

by

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

I.
Dead, she drifted to his feet.
Tell us, Love, is Death so sweet?

Oh! the river floweth deep.
Fathoms deeper is her sleep.

Oh! the current driveth strong.
Wilder tides drive souls along.

Drifting, though he loved her not,
To the heart of Launcelot,

Let her pass; it is her place.
Death hath given her this grace.

Let her pass; she resteth well.
What her dreams are, who can tell?

Mute the steersman; why, if he
Speaketh not a word, should we?

II.
Dead, she drifteth to his feet.
Close, her eyes keep secrets sweet.

Living, he had loved her well.
High as Heaven and deep as Hell.

Yet that voyage she stayeth not.
Wait you for her, Launcelot?

Oh! the river floweth fast.
Who is justified at last?

Locked her lips are. Hush! If she
Sayeth nothing, how should we?

---

---

OF JOYOUS GARD

by

ÆLIAN PRINCE
(pseudonym of Frank Carr)

Preface
   In the Volume OF PALOMIDE, the author has chosen Bamborough Castle, Northumberland, as the best authenticated site of the Keep of Joyous Gard and the country up to the Cheviots as its Province. To this he had adhered in the following pages.
   Upon the arrival in Logris, from Cornwall, of La Belle Isonde and Sir Tristram (after King Mark's flight to France) they were led to Joyous Gard by Sir Launcelot of the Lake, and the present portion of Arthurian story opens with the return of La Belle Isonde, Sir Tristram and Palomide, after the jousts of Lonazep.

                         PROEM.
Named of a star, sweet Esther! take thy seat,
   There, as last eve, beneath these showers of gold,
Laburnum's bloom, and, midst thy vernal court,
Command conclusion of the knightly tale.
The spear-thrust, and the sword-light, and the storm
Of onset--dash, and clang of arms, and death,
Known in our song. But, patience, gentles, all.
Sweet gentles of our grove, keep patience still!
For scenes of gentle joyaunce shall beguile,
When entered Joyous Gard, once clothed with hues
As of a dream of poësy--a dream
Of peaceful beauteousness--and listening leave
Mistrust and cares to colder minds, or learn
Your own in other hearts, the tread of fate
Sounding through lives divine; for these, of truth,
Are notes preluding, all too sadly near,
The swan-song of the Table Round.
                                                         Rejoice!
In all your patience, entering Joyous Gard.
Rejoice! The blissful hours--midst those of gloom
And mingled miseries, few as we know
And disproportioned to the events of life--
Rejoice! when known their kindred anywhere;
But now, sequestrate in lone Joyous Gard,
Rejoice, more largely.--Yes, I now begin.--
Yet, in our story, judging from yourselves
Of any weakness, on it be bestowed
Approval from the soul of charity;
Forgiving, purifying, with intent
To yield the myrrh and frankincense where due,
With happier circumstance of light. Rejoice!
In patience, gentles, ere song claims the tear.

                         I.
Proud Lonazep's high feast-days following tourney,
   Its royal week fulfilled, and Joyous Gard
Found of Sir Tristram and Isonde, with them
Associate, curious each to learn the Gard's
Dominions,--Ector, Gareth, Bleoberis,
Dinadin--mirthful Censor of the Ring;
And he, King Arthur's friend, war-proof; and he,
Sir Gareth, fresh from glory of his quest
For skittish, brown Lynette; with Ector fair
Of fancy, face, and soul, his clear device
One star of gold, with words, "For Happiness,
One star is all we need:" and in their rear,
Ever rode Palomide, unasked, unlured,
But captive of Sir Tristram's kindness, felt
The Gard could not reject him.

                                               Pity, give;
Great pity, yield we, errant Palomide,
Woe-worn and unregenerate knight, distraught
By love, enmeshed in wiles:--Ah, yet, no more
Distraught than shields which bore the Rood, as knew,
Crossed, chastened, haggard in Tintagel times,
The Lion-knight himself.

                                     Brave, ringing days
Of chase and disport, as their knightly wits
Could best in lusty idleness devise,
Disordered keep, dominions, town--and then,
Sweet quietude. Which, said of Joyous Gard,
Sir Launcelot's fair possession, given this while
To these our lovers flown from Cornwall's lands,
Is to name quietude unknown to haunt
By river set, or midst the heathy hills,
Or valley green where blooms the asphodel,
Now that those fiery spirits, warrior-guests,
Withdrawn to Camelot.

                                     Nay, only four.
The Knight of Odin here remains, unasked
And unbeguiled, except through Love's own guile
Through which we all are self-beguiled, and caught,
Or, confident in Tristram's kindly heart.
Forsooth, of kindliest heart, Belle Isonde's peer;
For when she chode the pagan for his shame--
That stain of honour, done at Lonazep--
Tristram so loveably forgave all wrong
Done or designed, his Queen declined her head,
Nor answered. "Hardest matters," said he, "these
To lovers, since fidelity belongs
But to the angels unfallen. We hold but this,
Our chivalry imbound by faith in Christ,
Contrition cancels sin!" Indeed, no knight
Sorrowed more greatly, in a hapless love
More grievously enthralled, more madly toiled;
None, in such utter ghastliness of soul
Through fell remorse, as he their guest. And, now,
When come the morrow he must leave the bounds
Of Joyous Gard, delirious partings ne'er
Shook the soul's temple, as with Palomide.
For, now, in silence on the sea he looks,
With inquisition of each several isle:
And, now, with moans half-stilled, he eyes the land
As questing for the rills and mossy ways
Known of their later roamings, fixed at length
Far up those shadowy mountain-heights, whereby
Lay mystic Zeemerwater, which bestowed
Last eve's delights: and, now, his lady's hand
He kissed, and wetted with his bright, warm tears:
And, now, it was Sir Tristram he embraced
With thick heart-throbs his corslet might not hide.
Thus parted he, for once and aye. Nay, noon
Finds him returning--next morn, he would go.
Morn waited for the noon, noon for its eve,
Eve, spring of day. Tarrying, he vowed to part,--
Departing, rode a circle of green lanes
Which led him back: noon's greeting came as sure
As "farewell" at the dawn: he vowed, re-vowed,
Promised, undid, as wont of love debarred.
It was great joy to stay. "My heart doth sing:"
Said he, new-vowed, departure new-postponed,
"Sings sweet as saga in a marriage room:"
Yet was there deadliest dolour in his joy.

   Thus wayward weeks passed by, till none gave heed
His meek inconstancy; all, heedless seemed,
Considerate of his travail. But, within,
Were ceaseless fightings, and the mastery lay
With grief, whereby his soul grew sere, his frame
Despoiled of manhood's graces. Thus, to go
Worked torment, and to stay none less, as known
When in a silver-bright, brake-girdled spring,
His startled eyes beheld a countenance
Wasted and wan--the former Palomide
Had vanished. Hereupon, with wailing tone
He sang his ruthful pains to this sad worst.
His plainings hovered over Isonde's name,
As autumn's bee above the heather bloom.
The heart she brake, pronounced her virtues, grace,
Beauty, compassion. Loving-kind, was she
Who so forbore the presence of this worn,
Gaunt, tearful, smileless pagan. Hard thereby,
Sir Tristram riding near the river's marge,
Seeking fresh sport, across the brake was ware
This weeping song: drew near: and angered learnt
The purport of those sorrowings by the spring.
Impetuously he burst the thicket-screen,
Laid hands of fury on their guest, with words
Fierce as the stroke of swords; whereon, he gat
Answer as Love can give, when speak it must,
Although such speech be death. "Fair Knight, I shall
Acquit me in the way ye least desire.
La Belle Isonde, once wife of Mark, and Queen
Of Cornwall, nor long since: divorced from Mark
May be, by law, by spiritual powers, but ne'er
Divorced from Love's respect. By grace of Love,
That star of Erin's royal maidenhood
Shines ever golden in my Knighthood's heart,
Which she makes Joyous Gard for me. I love
La Belle Isonde! I love her, as ye wit,
Above all other ladies of the world;
Love her, though it befall me through such love--
That hap of many knights--to die for her.
Yet her sweet grace, well is it worth my life,
Since it hath been best life in life to me.
Isonde, the fountain, centre, hope, and rest
Of all my worship, as best life in life
May claim my life. Without her, I had been
The simplest squire that ever strove for spurs;
But she in my remembrance--well, ye know
The frequent times my spear hath given her name
To victory--chief, in those heroic lists
Of Lonazep's first day, when never knight
Withstood my onset.

                               "Have respect of one
Whose manhood's years, as by a snap of frost
Smitten, decline--through love. I lack no faith.
Hope may, resurgent, bring fresh hours of green;
St. Brita's summer in my heart may bring
Season more precious than the month of rose.
But wrinkles of despondency, now mine.
No bounty have I had, naught of reward
From Belle Isonde: nor have I in these days.
No treason lies in this my love, ye wit,
Since love is free to all. First known, last know--
Your lady I have loved: do love: whereby,
She is my lady, even as she is thine.
Then, have I not, my brother, wrong of you?
For you rejoice her: such grace never mine,
Nor never like to be. Yet neither scorn,
Nor weariness, nor waters, wastes, nor time
Remove me from La Belle Isonde. My fate
To love her--love her to the uttermost,
And to my end of days, as well as ye."

   But Palomide departed, gave no gain;
Nay, took the gain of pleasure in the land
From Tristram's mind. Unconquered soul of love,
A glory in his ruin, Palomide,
Was errant, faithful in that enterprise,
Keen-questing after wrong; whilst, Tristram here,
Love-bound from Honour's strife.

                                        Then, marvel none,
War's passion warm, though languid in his blood,
Rebelled, when now the spring gave birth to hopes,
Desires, love-fancies, as it haps the man,
Or, woman's leaning. In Sir Tristram's arm,
Tumultuous yearnings,--none to be assuaged
But by the blood of evil, riotous then
Within some vineyard, where God's righteous rule
Late thriving. Thus, the gloomed Knight has no ear
For Isonde's pretty heart-conceits: apart,
Walks restless--no regard in eye or speech.
Leading to haunts, endeared by times of mirth,
She hoped some scene, some incident, perchance,
Or impulse, might the pains of phantasy
Hasten to utterance, and, that travail past,
She could dispute the birthright of his thought.

   Vainly. In shade, or sun, or bower, still gloomed
His temper in the shadows of evil cast
From southern homes. Then Isonde, grown heart-strong
For such event--one eve, with merriest voice
She blithely, brightly, swiftly sped. O, she,
Now empress of herself--hard thing to do,
Made gay of "Go, my Love!" and sped him forth.
"You must begone, sweet lord. No tarrying, Haste!
Thy purpose as the night--calm, clear--fulfilled;
Then, haste thee back. These shining, peopled heavens
Wait on thy quest. Ah, me, but one lone star
Is mine. But that one star, Love's very own,
Ascending now. Note it each eve, my soul!
Not tarrying here: no tarrying, whilst farewell
Sits sorrowing waiting welcome--not until
That star of Hesper on the edge of morn
Change nature with departure. Faithful heart!
Faithful, unto that token come again."
"Heart of my heart!" he answered, "Now, I know
All conquest is for thee. My Honour's theme,
Art thou; and in my apprehension, single,
Pure and chivalrous, Isonde's love, my quest--
However named that be, in challenged fields,
Or gossip of the halls."

                                   Straightway he left.
When day called from the deep, his silver arms
Glistened upon the hill remote which slopes
To Logris. In these arms, by Belle Isonde
Arrayed, in memory of the olden times
Of Erin, he subdued by marsh and weald,
In murderous ways and forests, beasts and men
Monstrous in kind: within the homely dales
Gave counsel from the Holy Word: gave boon
Of song which sweetened toils and death: abroad,
Spread law for highroad and the household: those
Known of the Table Round, he holped in need
Spear-stricken of the pagans--e'er, for those
Changed darkened fortunes into bright--then, turned
Towards Joyous Gard, star-timed, to seek her bowers.

   Here saddens Isonde for her absent Knight:
Yet, hither, wends the Knight of Love, the Light
Of Honour; he whose lone lamenting harp
Companion of her love whene'er her mood
Is loneliest. Now, in this her loneliness
Awaiting--fluttering, sweet, strange, varying notes
Glide through the strings, as kindling to the breeze,
Whereon, she hums the ballad-- "O, he comes,
He comes! His step is near." He, over hill,
By scaur, thick woods, by ford and valley, rides
Carolling to his armour's clink that strain
Of golden-tongued Lolod, the roundelay
Sung at high feast in Carduel's lily halls
Ever at Pentecost, of early wars
When Arthur won his empire. Now he reached
The ragged coast, approached the glittering hold,
Yet knew not of its place; so bright the force
Of day-dream to obscure the natural sight.
Sharp turning on the pebbly frith, a way
Well known, his steed awoke him--he beheld
That massy growth of rocks, their breadths of wall,
Their unassailable, resplendent towers,--
"O, magical, O, blessed Gard," he cried:
"The beauteous marvel of an evil world!"
Then was his heart ensnared by other thoughts.
Along the secret sea-path wending,--lo,
The white flower at yon lofty lattice waves;
Waves wildly in the higher breeze. No flower,
No flower! The kerchief of La Belle Isonde
Shines welcome. Well he knows it: lifts his helm:
And, now, the cavern-portals of the Gard
Receive him, welcome.

                                   Often thus it happed.
When felt the fang of hunger for the war:
Whene'er his spirit heard dark places call,
Cheerily for the south he brake away;
Varying in venture of his chivalry,
He failed not, leaving songs of gospel-peace
Which held in roughest homes the hearts for truth
And loving-kindness in melodious leash--
And cheerily came back. For him, delight
In search, in trial, and return--return,
Advised within the music of the harp.
When seen by him the curtseying branches, heard
Approaching welcomes faring on the breeze
From children's voices, instruments between,
And notes above the gleemen's sylvan tones
Resounding from proud martial tongues, for him
Then finest joy. And yet, 'twere hard to say,
Which dearest--wounding or the healing--which,
The passionate rapture of the assailing spear,
Or Joyous Gard's affectionate repose.

                         *****

O Joyous Gard! once more thy flowery lands
Are ours: and would that we could linger here,
Now here returned. Fair Keep of Joyous Gard!
Thy battlements as built of gems and gold
Sparkling, with double joy we hail, returned.

                         II.

Patience, each gentle of our grove, for here
   Be scenes of gentle joyaunce. Gentles, more!
Give the heart's rarest sweetness to a tale,
Too near that full-voiced strain, which must be sung,
The last of glory for the Sacred Ring.
Hither, shall hide another royal love,
But with beleaguering hosts: and with the hosts
Consuming suffering; so, the cordial Keep
Be Dolorous Gard, again. Revolt on ruin,
Roaring, with storms of fire, and sword, and blood,
Follow from here to Camlan's tristful field.

But, now, Isonde, and Tristram, in this Keep,--
Mysterious in its beauty and dark powers,
A dazzling glory, and a hold of might,
This Joyous Gard, queen of the northern seas,
Girdled by emerald waters, clear and calm,
With realm of golden isles, and liberties
Inland, far-stretching to safe-guarding hills--
Herein, our lovers,--blissful terms are theirs.
The distant reefs, with flying clouds of foam
Radiant at day-dawn, are unknown of eyes
Emparadised, where softer fragrance falls,
And fairer lights illume than at this prime,
So deep, so sweet, so long its slumber won
From yester-joys: and noon-tide hath its groves,
Its woodlands, sought when morning's sylvan sports
Close with the ardent hours: cool, silver eve,
Delight dwells in her name, and lovers love
Her silence and her sweetness--O, then, here
Fivefold delight environs this meek time:
And night--the azure and the passionate night--
Hath stars, which gaze to learn if lovers hold
The ecstasies ordained--all of Isonde
And Tristram found, with raptures duly told,
As on the glowing rosary of love,
When came the sacred night. O, Gard! apart
The mischief-making, mischief-shaken world,
The brattling, sore, heart-breaking world: O, Gard!
O, Joyous Gard! sequestered shrine of love:
Thou flowery guerdon for a knightly life;
O, Joyous Gard! love and the valiant heart
Are thine: O, love, sequestrate in thy bowers
Well knows its valiance!--Might this last their lives,
Life far too brief, with gift of patriarch years
And all life's fires enkindled.

                                        Yet, ere long,
Sir Tristram yearned to largely breathe again
Sharp air inspiriting of knightlihood,
And back he fared. The wildness of farewell,
Which whelmed Isonde, and left her as a corse
Whose resurrection bided his return,
Presaged strange doom: but, conscience in his spear,
Christ in his heart, and strenuous in his hope
To find where fraudful, violent evil raged,
Or hid in ambush off the royal roads,
Repress it, cleanse the dens and shades, make straight
The ways of righteous law, establish peace--
Right forth he fared.

                              But when the moon made good
The circle of her radiance, Joyous Gard
Was ware a knight had crossed the sea-way crowned
With field-flowers, with his brand ensheathed in green,
Its hilt enlaced with briony, his lance
Wreathed with ambrosial leaves and topaz blooms.
To Belle Isonde, quick questioning, his reply,
Gentle, melodious as a river-fall
At time of evensong, thus to her heart.
"Thy Tristram went to conquer: he returns
The conquered one. Of Joyous Gard, no coast
But he hath ranged, and longer as he ranged
More fast-bound he. Isonde! all thou shalt know.
This must be Love's inheritance, its first
And fairest, or, may be, its holiest, last,
Secured retreat: which shall be known of us
By hill and stream, forests and lawns, or hid,
In yonder glittering isles: and, still more fair,
The pious innocence of those who breathe
Beneath our skies,--but thou shalt know, my Love!
Know every whit." Then, Isonde took these robes
Of azure blue, worn when his magic harp
Allured the princess to his couch of pain;
That argent drapery, he,--which once attired
His knightliness within her father's halls--
But bade his squire remain to cleanse his arms,
Dew-stained on his late journeys. Isonde, then,
With wondering accents, "I shall forth with thee.
Ask not, I go. Forbid, yet go I will,
For thou hast said. But this uncertain quest
Requires thy spear: quick dangers lurk in smiles;
Worst hurts are hidden near the quiet way."--
"My spear shall rest amongst its leaves and flowers.
The trust begotten shall not fail in me."
But Isonde, spirit-darkened, as her lord
Bewrayed by sorcery worse than that which won
Dishonoured doom amidst Armida's groves,
Wept long. Last, born in brightness from her tears,
One thought, and, spirit-lightened--"Then, thy harp!
Than its dominion, none of lance or sword
So absolute." He answered. "And my harp
Shall sing within thy casement to the wind--
Tuneful, apprising dwellers here, how we
Amidst our pleasant pathways fare.--My harp!
The goodness dwelling in the evilest soul
Oft gave thee worship, when we two alone
Fought fiery dangers. In her casement rest,
Who best hath loved thee; while with her I search
Where goodness of the good and evilest soul
Lives permanent--as yonder mountain peaks
Enduring clouds and vapours, rain and snow,
Yea, storms of thunder, yet abide the same,
Glorious in intercourse with sun and stars,
Unswerving in their purple blooms what time
The harvest-songs arise--faithful and fair,
Beyond the reach of wrath and tears.--But forth,
And know it of thyself, my soul! There wait
More marvels than of Zeemerwater's lake
Throughout our progress."

                                        As they roved by thorp,
Field, glade, or forest, folk beheld in them
Angels of day, of England's sweetest heaven,
Calm blue and clouds of silver. Everywhere,
Surprised they found expectant faces greet them.
Before the welcome, voices bade them tarry.
And they were no man's charge. Each hamlet's heart,
A central lodge, which in the nearer spring
Greened round with shrubs, within the summer time
Glowing with rose, and named the Stranger's Home,
Stood ready on their ways. This was, in sooth,
The high court of each village: only here,
Plain varlets of the cot gave note of sense
Of beauteous luxury. The golden ewer
With milk fresh brought: the consecrated loaves
On jewelled dish; the varied, rich repast,
Were instant, without question of their faith,
Their people, or intent. Thus, on their paths,
With sunset this wayfarer's harbourage
Failed never, nor its hospitalities;
And often musical in welcome joy
Its bowers--with rushes green already strewn--
Later, for needful rest to be o'erlaid
With satin as of primrose gold. Even thus,
Or as they rode, or tarried, nights and days,
All prospered.

                     It was on their earliest rest,
Our Knight, alone, soft-pacing near a lea,
Beheld a hind, and strong within him rose
Fresh cravings for the hunt. Waiting a spear,
He gazed, and deemed the creature beautiful
Above all creatures he had seen. It shone
White as the spurging of the sea; her neck
A chaplet circled, woven of blooms and leaves
And beaded jewels: and the chaplet-blooms
Faded and flowered--renewed again, they fell,
Reviving brighter, and her jewels gleamed
With driving splendours. When his lance was brought
He marked the varlet gave it with a smile--
He knew not which--of scorn or doubtfulness;
Therefore, he laid it down, and towards the hind,
Stole with a fowler's step; the grazing hind
Nor nearer seemed for his approach; he ran,
The hind leaped gently as to seek its herd--
No further, and no nearer, was the hind,
For Tristram's fleetness or its gentle pace.
The swiftest horse was called: she patient cropped
The closest knot of grass; the Lion-knight
Used the spur hotly,--she with sportive speed
Sprang as to reach her layer: in fleet pursuit,
Amazed, the rider followed--last, a chasm
Received the hind, nor was she seen again.
When told his tale next day with pictured phrase
For village wonder, good folk shook the head,
"Ah, that sweet hind is EARTH'S FELICITY.
When sought she flies, and comes when undesired."
Nor Tristram well had ended, ere the hind
Drew near most suddenly. She laid her head
Close on his bosom, and the chaplet's leaves
Murmuring threw odours o'er his countenance,
And on it, from the jewels all the lights
Seen ever shrined in gems, a dazzling gleam,
So he an angel seemed. Then, Tristram felt
A painful rapture of strange joyfulness,
And lifted hand to stroke the hind in joy,
When it withdrew: and as he rose, the hind
Entered a thicket: so was lost: and folk
Turned from Sir Tristram: shook their heads again,
Mournfully whispering: "Thus it ever is
With EARTH'S FELICITY!"

                                             The roving pair
Dwelt as within appointed residence
Where'er their place, nor ever failed the view
Of social weal, and faith wherein reposed
The land's habitual peace.

                                        The kindly soul
Of these dominions held the dues of life
Common to all: knew not of change in spirit
By separation on, or under, earth.
The wanderers noted, never any fane
But one appointed green recess lay close,
For those asleep in Christ. A palpable haunt
Of living unity. Some came alone,--
As to a sacred assignation, when
No questioning eyes were near; but sunset's hour
Witnessed the household groups, reclining there
On new-strewn rushes, mingling in their talk
Past, future, present, with a joy serene.
And in each Trysting Place of Life were shewn
The treasuries of memories and hope,
Flowering in beauty--bright on every grave.
May we be so beloved when we are gone.

   Flowers had their other intimations, too,
Midst Joyous Gard's amenities. Distinct
Their language as of written characters.
The maiden pinned them on her kirtle--then,
Her saucy spirit spoke,-- "None sick am I,
For love or lover!" But, within her tress
Place one spray blossom, thereby guessed the thorp
Where her heart's hope was placed: if on her breast
White flowers of favour, then the nuptial day
Drew near. When come, O, white, O, rapturous dawn!
A second morn of life, by them revered:
Huts, meadows, hills, and streams, the heavens themselves
Rejoiced upon it.

                                        But day and every day
Was musical, as duty had been joy;
The pastoral labours led the dwellers forth
With choral songs: song charmed the industrious hours,
And evening's homeward march resounded glee,
Answering the sky-lark's airy vesper hymn.
Before were faintly seen the timorous stars,
Through eve's last veil of light, oft were beheld
The folding clouds above the western peaks
Uprisen, and interspace of sky; these drew
Their gaze, who breathed the calm Arcadian air,
Towards this disclosure of a glittering realm
Within heaven's empires; whereupon, they looked,
O, with such eyes, such mirth of heart, such tongues
Of happy wonder. Clearly were descried
Empyrean hills, towns, groves of golden palms
Waving by jasper seas--high over all,
Cope of effulgence, as were earth's mid-day
By sun sixfold the summer strength of ours
Illumed. Thus gazing, frequent sudden phrase
Snapt evening's stillness: with their upward looks
Upon that radiant scene, the uplifted soul,
Bright in the eye, would burn upon the lips
Brightly long-lingering. Was there, now, not seen
The very Kingdom where their father's bode,
And their inheritance? Thus, one would point
Where clustering palaces hung over plains
Verdant as spring-time meads, and rulers name,
Feared or renowned, residing there: and some,
Claimed hamlets, scattered and recluse in vales,
Loaden with shining harvests; other some,
By silver winding waters found a cot,
The home of household loves late lost to earth.
So, till the high celestial pageant vanished.
Then to those homes their own, with softened song,
They turned, nor failed within their dreams to find
The habitations of the just, wherein
With greatest, best beloved, or best desired,
Known by report or known within their lives,
Sojourning until morn. The sight, the dreams
Inwoven with their days, made joy of hope
Their daily food, as wayside talk would show.

                         *****

When sought, four weeks o'erpast, their sea-girt towers,
If change was there, no loss was there by change.
The garland-daisies, large, foam-white, still culled
For bridal-chaplets--this no change: if change,
As when their steeds, being fetlock-deep in brine
Paced heavily from the shore, the roaming Knight
To Belle Isonde, "What be those flowery rays
New-blooming o'er our rocky doors?" With smile
She answering, "Stars of Bethlehem, my heart!"--
Such change were gain. As felt her Lion-knight
When murmuring, "Ever this fair province barred
From the four judgments of the Lord. More grace
Than grace of Love it owns, since everywhere
Symbols of gospel peace, to soothe the soul
With due remembrance." Spirit-bound in peace
Through summer's months of light he strayed and strayed
In old loved ways, for ever new, with her
His Beautiful, with her his perfect own:
Together strayed, with old love ever new,
Isonde and Tristram. Needs, then, no surprise,
When seen the Rose of Sharon starred the steeps
Beneath the castle's crystal walls, Isonde
With pleading, hopeful eyes, "Here shall we live
Ne'er to remove. Within these pleasant bounds
No strife calls on thee; Love around us, Love
Alone asks service. Tristram! Rove no more;"
He might not answer, for he felt within
These words were good; words not to be gainsaid
By martial phrases, nor hot-brained desires
For noisy fame, mastery in arms, or sway
Of kingship. Thus, he gladly tarried still,
Love-lured, in wandering bliss at Joyous Gard.

   The winter came. Then, on the breezy brows
Of distant hills, as for their sole delight,
The mists would gambol: sprites of ether, coy
At near approach of man, and still transformed
Persistently lest they be too well known;
The snow, the frost, showed on the lofty ridge,
In branches, intertwined of dazzling bowers,
In wreaths o'ertopping trees--the silenced rill,
Glistening in moonshine--in the frozen meres
For winter sports--the beauty that has care
For darkest season, and, sublimest sight,
They saw, with feelings as unseen before,
That punctual constellation on his march,
Orion. Ocean-risen, he strode the deeps
Eternal; on the frosty night so near,
In starry mail so terrible, nor less
Appeared than monarch of the innumerous hosts
Reviewed thus nightly.
                                   Tristram tarried still.
The long night of the year--St. Thomas'--past,
The days with lengthening light shone o'er the earth
Exulting. But mid-Lent saw winter's months
Wax wearisome. Whereon, he spake with one,
The patriarch of the church, a hoary man,
Blue-eyed, fair-skinned as youth, and soft of speech,
The father of whose grandsire had report
From one far-travelled who had seen the Christ,
Yea, seen the Christ. And, as the sight had been
Miraculous, it was held from sire to son
A holy thing, which made them holy men,
Lineage of one acquaint, in very truth,
With one whose eyes had seen the Christ. To him,
Sullen Sir Tristram, "Father, you should know
The monthly signs. May these chill barren days
Not soon have end?" "I wot the signs, my son,
Now fourscore years and five. Then, I was young,
But those young times still mine, when first I wot
The signs now wot of. I have felt the breath
Over the sea this morn, sweet, mellow and sweet.
And on our inland waters, since an hour,
One little hour, and I beheld the pearl.
And clouds which sought our Cheviot when the night
O' th' year was darkest, and at Christ-mass tide
Went, but crept back, the mellow-breathing sea
Melted them. Look! They are not. Nay, not flown,
But melted by the breathing o' the sea.
Its breathing brought the pearl upon the mere,
Dissolved the clouds. See! where that form of light,
The mountain rill, descends with silver step;
Long hidden--now, full clear, and musical.
Good signs be these. Wait, gentle Knight, but wait
To-morrow's morn. These five-and-eighty year,
The purposes divine have never erred,
Nor can they now. That is thy token sure.
All eyes may read. Sour days come, yet--but few.
Wait, wait! thyself shalt read it plain. Of flowers
The golden star, the first joy of the year,
Which shines before our winter-days are gone,
Or e'er the crocus breaks its pale green sheath,
Primrose or daffodil in sheltered dene,
Or skylark brings its music for thy love;
That flower of grace abounds with us, and brings
Her message with to-morrow's morn. My son
Shall see it, and his heart have peace."

                                                As told,
So was fulfilled the promise; open bank,
Hedge-rows, and mountain-rifts with living gold,
And base of the great Keep, this firstling flower
Made gorgeous.

          Thus, that hopeful sight appeased,
Subjected, laid in calm his feverous heart.
But what, when tedious wind-cold times by-past?
Winter is gone. Spring follows. On the white
Succeeds the green. What, in these springing hours?
Grass of the field: leaves in the woodlands; light
Between grey silver clouds; the warbling becks
From mountain-ways, and runnels in the meads,
Springing, ever, everywhere. Spur to all hopes,
This spring! What of aspiring thought? Isonde
Has burden of love-fancies; Tristram's arm,
Tumultuous yearnings--none to be assuaged
But by the blood of evil, riotous now
Within some vineyard of the Lord, where rule
Of righteousness and peace had thriven of yore.

                         *****

By Zeemerwater, be ye sure, they sate
Upon the first auspicious eve,--the hills
Distinct within the crystal atmosphere,
And tranquil as upon mid-day of June.
This bright tranquillity, disturbed alone
By plaining of the plover on the moors,
Now and again, entranced, and even their mood
Deepened the natural stillness. Tristram's harp,
And he, alike, were silent: silent both,
Master and harp: and silent, Belle Isonde:
In silence near a verdant hillock sate
Intent both lord and lady on a stir
But new-begun by shore and o'er the mere.
Good time had brought the swallows, and this eve,
Their first upon their blithe return. They flew
In their home-coming glee, from marge to marge,
Thither and back, thither and back again,
Close to the lucid, motionless wave--above,
Incessant flight of glossy blue-black wings,--
Beneath, incessant flight of silver breasts.
"Happy the swallows, seeking this our lodge."
The soft eve's stillness undisturbed, so soft
Her low-breathed accents: but the Lion-knight
Loud answered,-- "Ay, the birds of heaven, wot well
Their mission. They leave ocean-severed shores,
Prescient to find. Ah, me! yet man, proud soul,
Divinity of dust, tricks his best sense,
Juggles with reason, as fastidious
The best to know from better--enterprise,
Such while, being guerdon unto weakly arms,
Honour gilds other names." The fretful words,
For Isonde had a bodeful tone. Each left
The mere in silence. Ever, as was heard
The plaining of the plover on the moors,
It seemed the voice of her lost hopes to her
The Beautiful. Yet with his words she strove
To reckon hourly; took him to his sport,
Roused riotous cheer within the forest, brought
Its rarest prey within his range. In vain.
The falcon dozed unheeded on his wrist;
The music of the hounds unheard--past dame
And knight, and squire, and flight of wings, his eye
Made search for something far from Joyous Gard.
He listened ghostly sounds from fields remote,
Loud calling for retributory knight
To quell the raging wrongs; his spirit burned
For meed of honour midst conflicting spears.
Thenceforth, a strong imagination held
Possession of his soul, imperative,
Insufferable, as message of the spring.
Spring's strengthening sun, was as the royal eye
Of his great Dragon King, watching the land,
Finding him derelict: each vernal morn,
Earlier uprising with more angered hues,
Each noon grown fiercer. His forsaken Queen,
Heart-sorrowing, one more sleepless night o'er past,
Felt her dark way to climb the circling stairs
Which reached the castle's eastward tower--and, here
As carved in stone, his garment in the wind
Of morning blown unheeded, Tristram stood
Wide-staring at the opening of the day.
She touched him, yet he moved not; then she spake,
Nor gat reply. Wide-staring, not to her,
But suddenly, as to a form in air
Or other self within him, half remorse
And half despair, with husky, shattered voice
Not heard before. "God's witness risen again!
Faithful to restoration of the earth,
Once more his radiant spear of ministry
Hath struck the heart of darkness. Night is dead.
But night within me holds my spear from night
Investing Arthur's long-forgotten lands."
His Queen held bitter ruth without a tear,
And wreathed around his neck her shining arms,
Whispering, "Away!" Then, silver clear, "Away,
My heart's lord! lord of Honour! ever liege
To noblest thoughts. Go quickly. When Love bids
Seek Joyous Gard again. I have but Love
Which lives in thee." "The angel of my doom,"
Cried Tristram, "now hath given me grace." Whereon,
He bent his head, upon her lips bestowed
Long exiled kisses, with a smile more bright
To Isonde than the day-spring, or all flowers
New-wakened to its blessing. Ere came noon,
She saw him dash along the common way
Adventurous to the south, hastening his horse,
Nor with one backward glance. "Woe me," she sighed,
"The heart of man is not as woman's heart.
The frays of life his need, as his desire.
Hope, action, then repose, o'er which the star
Of hope beams welcoming to fair new fields.
Action--repose--the star--'tis triumph all--
The varied life--but what our life and hope,
Unless our boon the pleasure of our lords?"

   Seeking her bower, that day she waited there
In woman's patience, as for some event
Of promise. Twilight's fragrant hour being come,
She called for Tristram's harp. This, Brengwain brought:
Placed it within her lattice, chance the breeze
As from the master's subtle touch, might bring
Past loving thought to her remembrance. Yea,
The softest strings were moved,--thoughts came--and tears--
Which drowned the parting kisses on her lips,
Living in sweetness there till then. Sweet tears,
Made doubly sweet; the lonely spirit drank
Deep comfort from these tears. La Belle Isonde
Was comforted; for hers, a faithful lord:
Foremost in valiance; valiant, faithful, he
Would come again, or glory in his plume,
Or borne within his shield--or hurt, or whole,
Would bring his glory and his harm, her hands,
Her voice, might soothe or praise. "My second soul,
Brengwain!" she cried; "how sinful in our griefs
We lovers." Hearkening, Isonde paused as notes
Changed in the wires: from sailing fancies these
Wafted her thoughts to harbour of an old
Tintagel evening-time: fire from her lips
In passionate flashing phrase burned in the ears
Of Brengwain. Catching hard her maiden's hand,
   "This sweet perdition, I were loth to lose
Though now I lost my love. Brave times were ours
Joy-blossoming to the full: o'erflown with light
From the new moon, until the large begat
Love-day of night: the volume of the year,
Leaves of its minutes, every whit inscribed
With Love's dear scriptures. In our grief we sin
Most deeply; for, 'tis clear, the blossoming times
Begat this term of Joyous Gard--these times,
Even in their radiant blessed flight, evince
Love's immortality. We have been here
With loves undulled by absence, or defame,
Or harsh opposing fortune. Mother of Christ!
Be praised, for this forgiveness of our sin
In grieving. Yet, methinks, Brengwain, the grief
Of love hath never with its fire or smoke
Seared or smirched thee." Quick-answering with a smile,
Brengwain, "Dear Queen! Communion of sweet love,
Thorough or liberal, never has been mine.
Only the houselling cloth to catch the crumbs
And sacred fragments of love's joys, of which,
In better favour, those like thee, know well
The fulness and the ecstasy." "My maid,
I say thee, nay: for I have proved, ere now,
Thy knowledge of love's ways." "Of that, too much:
I have had lovers three, and all are gone;
And each of them through love of me, some say.
Yes, I can name the place, and squire. The first,
Guerinus, in thy father's hall: he loved,
He said, me: an folk say, he died. The time?
The very hour, Sir Tristram's harp had oped
The postern door, and drew thee to his lodge.
Thou may'st recall it; from our sleep that night,
A bird awoke us with wild storms of song.
Alway, for years, 'twas with me, so that folk
Called it my bird. Then, Knight of Peril's boy,
The gentliest spirit in Tintagel--but,--
Arthur has said it, Love may not be bound.
I have known most of straits that chasten love;
Pains, trials, tears--but, somehow, all passed by
Unharming. Passable, this love, methought:
But, somehow, Urian died: an, then, there came
Two birds: of richest plumage, as we see
Glancing within the tourmaline, its hues.
Last, Camelot. Bedveer was a winsome squire;
But Dinadin had there my fantasy.
He crossed my peace of heart, but gave it back
With sickness at his games, when Lonazep
Clothed honour with its glories; for a man
Shall be a pretty fool, but not a fool
Too much, or he fools fancy from his grace.
With all the ladies' laughter, I too, laughed,
To know him fallen from my bosom's throne
Sheer, irredeemable, to those dark depths
Of scorn, which, close beneath the throne of love,
Lie for a woman's safety. But enough
Of that old pain. One dashed my peace, awhile,
An, so, a trouble at my heart, awhile.
If Bedveer felt it--why, 'tis nature's way;
No fault of mine. He passed; there came," she raised
A boastful finger towards the sky--"three birds!
To haunt my life, with rarest voice. You think,
Spirits of lovers be these birds: so said,
By most. I care not guess. An for a fault,
Fault none of mine. It was thy Tristram's harp
Slew these my lovers, since each heard in it,
Parleying with thee, some dearer lover's voice,--
So sank--so rose--and in these spirit-birds,
Thy harp's voice sang. But neither one, nor all,
When lovers were alive, gave me of Love
Its full communion, like thy happy lot.
I have the jest, the flying kiss, the gift,
The promise--'tis gay to promise--these are crumbs,
Poor crumbs, which fall at thy high feast of love."
"I have no queenship o'er thy tongue, pert maid.
Thou, aye, art merriest when I sorrow most.
Where are thy birds?" "There's my just sorrow, Queen.
For since we entered bounds of Joyous Gard
Never one heard or seen." "An this thy tale?
Not worth its words: my mood is still unchanged."
"But though my birds be gone, note that thy words,
Assume no darkening queenship o'er my thoughts.
Never hath grief set crow's-feet by mine eyes;
Nor hast thou known in me, for any loss
The shadow of black samite thrown o'erthwart
My speech or visage." "Thine, indeed, the dower
Of pure and simple happiness, not high
Nor low, but equable as May-dawn's light
Fraught with a daily blessing. Mine the extremes.
Even now my heavenly hope and strong, feels tears,
Hours of still patience."

                                   Nor of less than truth,
Her words. No loved one then, her knight away,
But treasured with a fine idolatry
The helm, or spear, of her beloved, or shield,
Or tabard, or his shoon with golden clasps.
Isonde had Tristram's harp. This she arrayed
In colours manifold as she might see
Flash round the islets, midst the shallows sleep,
Or glancing through the waters: and her eye
Watched it, as one will watch the face adored.
Thus, during day. With eve, her trembling hands,
As touching something to her lonely heart
Too precious, in her casement placed the harp.
Throughout the dusking hours, and far within
The star-lit night, whene'er the cold sea-breeze
Was busied in the strings, with listening ear
And soul she would divine its noise. Perchance,
To harbinger home-coming, spake that strain,
Or ring his welfare--anyhow, it died
And left paled beauty with her patient tears.

                         *****
   Her Knight of the inviolate spear, wrought out
Three worthy quests, of which their fame still rings
An undertone in household stories; quaint,
Disguised, distorted, stretched beyond belief--
For ages have their jealousies, and never
In hot inventions wanting--fateful strength,
Their pride and poverty. The doughty deeds
Ancestral, much too true to be gainsaid,
Transmuted into fables of the hearth,
Extravagant flourish to plain history,
Magnify recent greatness. Give to lies
The majesties of dread antiquity!
Make heroes, marvels! for not worth it, now,
Disturb the glozings of the later times.
Ne'erless, these quests of Tristram, know ye well,
In all the glorious cycle of the deeds
Of Arthur and his Knights, worthiest were these.

   Whatever won by spear, a mournful time
Wore slowly by in Joyous Gard. Isonde,
He midst war's labours, sorrowed by his harp,
Closed in her bower, nor of the night or day
Took any counsel. Three weeks, morning winds
Scouring the shores of Jutland, over-sea
Brought mists and fretting rains, which dull and chill,
Saddened the heart forsaken: now a morn,
Morning of light, brake from the unveiled heavens;
Joy of the heart aroused the silent land.
But Isonde, what time Brengwain on her couch
Combed her long golden hair, and song-voiced said,
"My Queen, has cheer of heart to-day; her hair
Springs to my fingers, and gay, glancing lights
Flirt through the shadows," Isonde no reply
Vouchsafed her maiden. Widowed of her Love
She kept its vigils, and, high noon being come,
Heavily leaning upon Brengwain's arm,
The eastward farewell-tower she sought: nor yet
Spake she her maid, but sighed in bitterness.
When Brengwain, sighing too, "O, lack-a-day!
Sharp, sobbing winds again. Methinks, 'tis plain,
That lovers' eyes and lovers' sighs make more
Love, than the rhyme tells. O, contrarious world.
Love pines, yet grows." "So once 'twas whispered me:
An I wit where, an when, by whom. Ay, ay,
Love's simplest words--heart's gospel of a truth--
O'er faith and passions keep the golden seat
Within the halls of memory. Brengwain, list.
Again, to my soul's longing--list, the lark
Above yon field. Of all the birds be mine
The homely, heavenly lark. He sings by love,
Or singeth not: love gives him wing and song,
To which spring flowrets open. I was called
The Beautiful, when one there was who sang
And soared above me. Beauty! 'tis a plume:
But lacks of song. Ah me, he singing soared
High in heaven's light, and as a crimson flower
My heart would open, and as silver rain
Drink his full music. O, what joy divine
Held those old hours, for me! What his--the bird's,
On singing wings of love, nearing the sun--
What joys were his! And yet his myrtle breath
Told me in language sweeter than his song,
His joy of joys to nestle by my side.
Ah, sighing fancies, Brengwain, trouble still,
But I'll no more." "Angling again, sweet Queen!
But will, or no will: say you not, or say:
Love's instant comes to all. Whatever hues
Or shapes in the embroidery of your talk,
Little things please, and sudden give delight--
And o'er them all the primacy of love,
To keep, or sparsely give, or yield entire.
So, thou art not thyself: nor is this mood
Thine own. And when Love orders otherwise,
Thou wilt be very that; the instant's child:
Its very child of Love. So Love ordains."

   Upon the hour of Angelus--the sea,
Whose shining noon of sleep the mountain breeze
Shook into diamond dimples, now the sun,
Descending on the hills, effulgent calm
Poured over steep and lands, so, now the sea
Clear mirror for the evening star--Isonde
Gazed from her lattice, in her breast no calm,
Nor strife of hopeful thoughts; her spirit's grief,
Within her heavy, dull, encumbering hair,
Declined from all its prime and life of morn,
Too surely shown.

                              A watery tract, due south,
Owned of a high-cliffed cove, the Dolphin's Nest
Well named--since there oft seen at close of day,
As now were seen, their natural gambollings
In sparkling foam-breaks blent with iris hues.
These watched she mournful, with the magic harp
Close by her side; not speaking peace to her,
Although its soft, slow, Lydian harmonies
For her content, had made all others gay
On hearing them. But note! there comes no breeze--
Rigid as sculptured image Belle Isonde,
Her dew-cold cheek upon her hand--but stir
Is in her tresses: from their fillet slipped,
And fluctuating in the evening light
Long-lingering--golden now, then dark--in change,
Shadowing and gleaming, troubles they foretell
Of pleasures in approach: quick, she intent
On varying warble in the strings. A voice
High sounding martial carols: clink of steel:
The charger's nimble thunder-steps, pursued,
Distraught the even music. "Praise to thee,
Meek Mother of our Christ! Now yield my soul
Strength in these weakest moments. Duly kept
Great Love's canonical hours," wept Belle Isonde:
"Prayers, lauds, humility and tears, found me
Thy child obedient. Mother! hold my heart,
Now that the sanctus-chimes of ecstasy
Abrupt o'ertake thy child. Brengwain!" she cried,
"My lord! your lord! my peerless knight! my own!
Next to my God, divinity and love--
He comes."
                  And never presage from that harp
Misled. Before his radiance in the shades
Augmented, and from eastern deeps his lamp
Led forth the large round moon, bright Hesperus
Sparkled on Tristram's casque beneath the towers
Of Joyous Gard.                   *****

                         III.

A month storm struck, the city of the King,
Compassed with clouds, lit by their lightnings, shook
By intermittent thunders, Camelot,
Felt night of fate on Logris. Arthur held
Daily his council with the Table Round:
But oracles of spear and hope sate there,
Silent upon the gathering doom. Last, cried
That dragon-voice, known not in earth or sky
Save from the King in his extremity,
Whereon, till these days of storm and gloom,
Lions, became his sinking knights, and swift
Fury from faintness, victory from dismay,
"Launcelot hath fled in sickness: half my Ring
Be questing after echo of a name;
Our every siege is desolate, save some,
And these be knights of court, of song, of love,
Not of the steadfast war; the Pagan rides
Full-fed with blood and rapine through our lands,
And my own hurt, deep, where the heart receives
All of its earthly strength, and that betrayed,--
Woe, to us men, that our divinity
Suffers upon such visitations--quick,
As from the godhead we descend to dust.
My single valour fails. Be there not one
Inheritor in soul of my best days,
To tell the throne, the good of past still lives,
To thwart the Pagan, of rebellion stay
Its treasonous tide; that this, the land of Christ,
Christ his own trust, shall still support my choice,
And shake the gates of hell. Ye, hear my voice,
Answer!" But answer none, save from each siege
Vacant, his voice gave answer of his words,
Like a weird echo from the mountain caves
Of Cumbria, when the autumn day is dim,
Air still, streams hushed, and dwellers in the dales
Depressed from lack of light, and burdening mists.
This was the time, when Launcelot soul-perplexed,
Eclipsed in mid-most noon of his wild love
For Guinevere, sharp-stricken into dark,
Fled from the court and strayed a savage man.
Wrath was in Arthur's words. The Ring disturbed,
Dissolved, to wait seven days before despair
Usurped their patience. God might send, perchance,
Auxiliar to the sunshine which must come
Favour of armed help.

                                   That day was peace--
Brightest above the Ocean Pleasaunce: then,
Tristram partook his largest rest. His harp,
Long while, within the casement, as they sate,
Our lovers in repose in Isonde's bower,
Rejoiced their hearts; and Tristram, thick in voice,
Had spoken, ending thus, "In all my pains
Each thorn has had its rose; but this the day,
Flower of the times of Joyous Gard, which springs
Surely from perils manifold, and foul,
Unspeakable, on my late quest; such root
In suffering have our joys: and, now, methinks,
This day-flower blown and withered, we must hold
Fast to our pleasure's life, thy hand with mine
Love-leagued, intent on gentliest ways, so thwart
Opposing fate." A marvellous stillness fell
On the harp's seven-fold strings, still tremulous
To the low-breathing breeze. Anon, they hear
Miraculous carol, winging over-sea;
Far, far away, yet sounding as beneath
The lattice eaves; now high in heaven, yet clear
As on the lattice ledge; a song of bird
All of all song of birds that on the spray
Warble at eve and morn, or in the bush,
When summer-fragrant, through the darkness sing,
Or hovering o'er the grassy field. They knew
The harp was mute, and heard the song. Brengwain
Was ware, in bower beneath, the harp was mute,
And knew the song, and cried in joy, "My bird!
O Lover-birds, which of your spirits now,
From Ireland comes, or Camelot, who loved
My younger year? But welcome any one.
O, faëry bird! O, wingèd soul of Love!
O, hither to me, hither; let me hear
The parable within thy wings. Woe, me,
In dread of hurt, my bird of love comes not."
Advised by Brengwain's accents, Tristram rose
And strook his harp. As unto music, strings
Of instrument will answer music, came
Unto the harper's song the bird and perched--
A feathered flame of flickering hues, as tame
To hand and tongue--on the harp's golden crest,
To make the bower a shrine of song and fire
Impetuous, delirious. Eye and ear
O'erwrought, Isonde sank, as from ecstasy
Of love or sorrow. Towards the friendly bird
The Knight stretched forth his hand--two eagle's wings,
Outspread--two plumes of flame--one shrilling note,
Dread as the heart of battle--and no bird,
No flame, no song. Upon the floor there lay
A missive, as of thunder born, which claimed
The Lion-knight.

                          Seven days, thereafter, sate
For last resolve, in clouded pomp, the King
With Table Round in council. Arthur's heart
Resigned in his despair, cried, "My one speech!
Launcelot fled in his sickness: no help comes:
Go find me Tristram! He wots well a man
Must make himself a bridge, to make him chief."
A proud voice smote the silence of the hall:
In every empty siege rang clashing swords,
And every knight leaped up as newly dubbed
Christ's warrior: Tristram answers! "Here be I.
The ancient oracle of Lyonesse
Finds me, her Knight, as ever, spear and bridge."
Then, Arthur questioned, "Wilt thou aid our throne,
Our faith, our throne's estate?" "'Neath sun and stars,
In watches on the weald, by shore, on sea,
With arms, or prayers, or song, until returns
My brother Launcelot, or unto the death.
Behold!" And Tristram held his hand aloft;
And Arthur cried aloud, "He gives his oath!"
Then Tristram led forth knights, and squires, with bands
Of yeomen--eagles, lions, serpents--strong,
Swift, subtle--virtues fresh-imbreathed, and clad
Gaily as if for love-quest; and the day,
As fortune-changed, victorious golden showers
Dispensed, of light descending bountiful.
Two years, from eastern to the western coast,
Up through the length of Logris, he the main
Held of the Table Round, of valiance, light,
Honour, each splendour won for it afore
By Launcelot and the Dragon King. Such deeds
Adventurous, dreadless, desperate from the spear
Of aid-in-need, and sword of Pagan-dread,
Clanged through these years, they were of highest fame
In the Pendragon era; all bygone,
But ushered, like to shades of heathen feats,
The morning of this virtuous valiance.
Never wide Logris, ere those years, or since,
In cleanliness of law and peace so shone.
This was the very halcyon time, foretold
When Arthur's golden baby-fingers played
Within the hoar of Merlin's locks, when one,
A diademed maiden, paced from Camelot
Companionless, by outlying loneliest ways,
Through city and by thorp, at dusk and dawn
Unto her northern island-halls--there came
Unharmed, unquestioned, unreproached, alone.

Our chronicles in England's ancient tongue
Set forth, that Tristram on Midsummer's day
In this his final, royallest Logrian quest,
Encountered one of lean and sinewy frame,
Strong-jointed, one whose visage told he fared
In soul more hardly than in three-score fights--
The frenzied Palomide; who, lance in rest,
Or e'er he charged, cried, "Tristram of the Gard
Joyous! best joy be thine. I, from my soul,
Bless thee, although I strike. Since last thy hand
Gave hospitable grace to mine--whereon
Odin reproved me--gracious Hand of Light
Hath overshadowed me from Breidalblick--
Balder's--from whose fair faith was drawn thy Christ's.
And silver May, and roses of thy June,
In thicket and in by-ways of the woods,
For me have blown their fragrance, and my spear
Hath sped on quests of love alone--such grace
Balder bestows, though I none less forlorn;
Which makes me bless thee, Tristram. This day mine;
Thine, too. I shall go back to Joyous Gard,
Its chambers in lament for loss of thee,
But more rejoicing in the sun-god's knight,
Who brings its pleasures to the flower from tears--
From tears and dust of dolour. Both are blest:
Since thou shalt be my conquest, and, thereby,
Death shall approve thee perfect knight. Isonde!
Isonde! Isonde!" That word; then, their career.
Each gave attaint, naming the Beautiful!
Isonde!--What powers of air now countervail
That name, its influent virtues? Both demeaned
Their course so ill, not any knight of youth
In Logris had achieved such meed of shame.
Their steeds from errant bridles swerved, each spear
Struck wide, and had not war-horned hands been theirs
Defiled in dust had lain as well as foiled.
Each at the other gazed aghast, nor spake.
Some moments. Then, the pagan, spear in rest,
Voice charged with madness,--
                                                  "By great Balder's glance!
Whence women beautiful, and cowards brave;
By his bright shining voice! heard in my soul,
To hasten doom; by his divinity!
Who highest stands to-day on Himmelberg,
Heaven's hill of endless summer; by his glance,
And utterance! this his own career approved,
Shall, quickly, have his own victorious meed.
Divinity in arms as well as peace!
He subjects thee, and Christian, to his faith."
The Knight of Upsal's golden dome drave hard,
Met by Sir Tristram in mid-course; the attaint,
Well-given, direct, full-forced, both men of proof
Were swept from horse. Mounting, dark Palomide
Breathed heavily, as of the heat o'erborne,
Or thoughts of awe and wonder. "Now, my god!
Patron-prophetic of new light to come,
Thyself earth's Greatest Light, O help thy son,
Thou Greatest Light for men! unless appears
The Light Divine, indeed--the Light no veil
Of flesh could bear. But no, first, fairest god!
None may usurp thy beauteous powers: no more,
Than in mid-winter--when thyself wast slain,
Balder! to rise beyond the verge of spring--
One Light, in dead mid-winter, should appear
Refulgent beyond spring, or summer's prime,
Summer within the soul, high summer more
Than summer of heaven's hills. No, God of smiles!
Of sanctity, and might! in thee, by things
Immutable, I swear, to make this course
Thine own. Death to that other faith. Now, aid
Thy son! Thine inspiration in mine arm
Unto the zeal of hate, quick in my spear,
Quickly responds."

                              On this attaint his lance,
As in the noontide shone a shaft of gold;
Its point shot arrowy beams, which backward sprang,
Clothing his helm with radiance of seven suns.
And Tristram's lance nor failed, struck home; but fierce,
So fierce the glory and the fury, both
Unhorsed, lay earth on earth. Sir Tristram kept
That spear-sleep two long hours: awakening, then
The pagan where he fell, lay earth on earth,
Still, as deep-drunken of the draught of death.
And through that night, that soft midsummer's night,
Sorrowing he sate, for solace of his woes
Harping beside the spear-struck Palomide;
Sorrowing unto his harp to lose one lost
In love. And, lo! as rose the sun, the eyes
Of Palomide opened, and amazed he spake:--
"Large comfort in the house of death, my soul
Gained to attend thy music. Now, new light
Making new day, I see! and likewise know
My sun-god entered now the road of Night
Leading to Death in deep mid-winter. List,
There, as before! methought, as, then, thine harp
Played, that its music sprang, or music woke
In heaven. Ah, such soul-healing harmonies:
Earth's voices silent, she, transported heard
Angels in their ethereal choirs, and song
Wherein a name divine--that of thy Christ!--
Spake the soul's everlasting peace."

                                                       To this,
Tristram astound, as hearing dead lips speak,
Could make no answer; and to charm those tears,
Which knightly hearts must yield to knightly woe,
He bade the pagan rise and prove his sword:
So, forthwith, end their valour's play. But this,
Refused with high, majestic voice, restored
Palomide, as again avowed his love
For Belle Isonde, and what the worship he
Had gotten by her. "Now, since death may come,
As from her hands, through thee her favoured peer,
I take the doom. Blest be thy stroke which brings
Deep night to me: for day without her grace
Is worse than dark, and death's dark with its peace
Most gracious gift, from thy hand as from hers.
Strike, noblest brother of hall or tourney, strike!
There--I unlace my corslet--strike!--And why
This gentleness? that tear? Nay, by thy faith!
Thou conquerest better than with arms of steel.
Upon my waking sense now comes my dream--
Frost, and bright snow, the constellated spheres;
In them, the music, and the angel-song
Which smites earth's serpent-sorrow. Now, no more
Her children lack their comfort: now, no more
Our souls know winter-death: but winter deep
Contains of heavenly joy the living spring.
Thy gentleness!--O, thou of sweetest voice
And sentence, with the utterance of thy harp
Making one music, magical as notes
Blown from the vernal heights when broke the east
Through Asgard's bowers, thy Queen disclaims my love;
Make it thine own! And, now, the sacrifice,
The victory, and the dedication, here
Shall be complete. I have foregone my hope:
My hope but not my love; on that, no more;
I here renounce my heathen heart: from hence,
That of the Cross be mine."

                                          When nine days spent,
Recovering from the ardours of the fight,
Together for King Arthur's court they rode.
Upon their way, so high the pagan felt
The new ascension of his spirit, that nought
Might now delay such sacred rites required
To enclose him in Christ's fold. Thus, Palomide
Bowed at the feet of Cardoyle's suffragan,
The solemn blessing of the water heard,
And known the sprinkling of the holy dew,
Upon his soul arose the Light Divine
From sacrament of baptism, and the man
Became of Christ, and evermore was Christ's.

   Mighty the noise of joy at Camelot,
To learn the gain of Faith. Once more, had bloomed
The rose of chivalry--to win the soul
For Christ. Here, seen one of those iron hearts,
Whereby upheld the ritual and the shrines,
Golden on Upsal's plain, arrayed in weeds
Novitiate. Noise of sportive joys rang round
The halls and homes and fields of Camelot,
Mightily, on this gain of Christ's white Faith.
Here, four calm weeks knight-royal Tristram stayed,
Until accomplished in their order due,
Within the quarters of the moon, those rites,
The church's discipline and secret cell,
By Palomide: who, then, at morn received--
Bathed all the chancel with the virgin light
New-risen in east--so, purely he received
The housell from Dubricius' holy hands;
Now, of the church of Christ made one--as one,
Evermore, of his Christ, was Palomide.

   Then, to his service Tristram; leaving there,
Detained till next year's jousts at Pentecost,
The convert knight, who, such time, made acquaint
Of court, of courtly ways, and of that bond,
Kept in the Table Round, to keep the flame
Divine of purpose in the spirit quick,
Bright, serviceable for all needs. His heart
Marvelled to learn the cycle of the year
Was consecrate through every month and day:
Noted with various mood and various rite,
The church, upon the numbers of man's life
Its own emblazoned clear. Most at Christ's-mass,
His marvel; in the deep dead-winter set
The living lamp of fervent righteousness,
Unto whose season looked the festival
Dedicate to St. Michael and his host
The angels: with a heart elate he hailed
Felicitous Epiphany: but shared
The spiritual gloom which overcame the Court
Through saddened Lent, till, with rejoicing lauds,
Sunday of Golden Palms rose bright to greet
The church triumphant--sorrowing thence, awhile,
Till agony divine made Golgotha
Dark in the day-shine; sorrowing but this while,
For soon the psalms of victory ascend,
The Grave destroyed, Death quelled, and made the spring
Of Life Eternal--thence, the fair time led
To Pentecost.

                    This, now drawn nigh; from hall--
Where held in talk with Guinevere, her friend
Vivien, the sparkle of whose eye bewrayed
The flock of love she leagued with; Mordred--he,
Rarely within the Court or sun's light seen,
But lurking in outlying bowers, or slunk
In council-chamber shadows--Palomide,
Called thence by mandate of the King, first saw
Accomplished every apostolic seat
Of Arthur's Table Round: and rising tiers,
Wherein sat kings, earls, princes, barons and knights,
Seven score and ten, and in the Dragon-throne
Arthur himself, august, supreme in peace;
Within our bosoms still a light and hope;
And over him his shield emblazed with powers
And glories, thirteen golden crowns, with words,
"More crowns, more virtues."

                                             Gentleness and power,
Such ne'er so crowned before in east or west,
Nor since, wherever risen or fallen the state,
Or stands the empire: as o'er Brimham's heights,
Where, like some city's skeleton, the rocks
Lie ranged, upon their central eminence
One proudly peers, of balance all so fine
A babe's hand stirs it, but ten mailed men
Of no more strength to move, so is he moved
By kindness, unremoved by fear or force.
Painfully breathed the faith's new Knight to view
The sight magnifical, beyond desire
Or dreams for earth, or for his warrior's heaven,
Foregone. And as he gazed deep silence lay
On all the sieges of the Table Round,
Attending Arthur's voice, which closed a strain
Of stately, heart-strong, slow, religious speech,
Filling the previous hour.

                                        "We fight the fight
We may not hope to win. Hope, not less ours:
For with our hallowed arms we may deter
Invading evil, nay, decrease the bands
Co-operate against our Lord the Christ.
Honour enough in heathen times to be
Preparers of the way." As Arthur spake,
In chastened tones these humble words and strong,
A murmurous wonder sprang throughout the Ring--
For, lo, with crown celestial, Arthur crowned.
They saw the rarest of all holy sights;
In mid-air, o'er his head, of crimson hues
The thrice-woven mystic sign, presenting seven
Rays silver-tipt, o'er each a silver star
Hovering.

               The lustrous miracle dissolved,
Thick-beat the Christian heart of Palomide,
When he regarded one of angel-face,
Upright, within the siege called Perilous.
The light upon that face, as when the priest
Bestows his benediction, and the fane
Grows luminous on assurance to the soul
Of Holy Life there breathed, nor pausing there
But passing o'er Death's deepest deeps to make
The sepulchre a court of light. "And say,
Who may that be?" he asked. "And who the dame
That gives him sunny countenance and cheer
Beyond our brethren of the Table Round?"
Said Launcelot, sighing, "Galahad, my son;
Knight of the Lord! To be the knightly saint
First in our calendar. Our best beloved.
More than our grace is his."

                                         Then, in his voice
Thick trouble, Launcelot spake in undertones:--
"No man hath guided him unto his quest,--
No man. Alone, eye-witness hath he been
Of God his excellent glory. Ministries
From heaven have counselled him--may be, in dreams--
Certes, within the brightness of the east
At dawn, when best he loves to rise for prayer.
Beholding him at matins, glorified
By presences invisible, divine,
The effulgence of his purposed, pious quest
Gleams on his visage, and we bow the head
In worship of it. But five hours agone,
The oracular presences have been: he goes
With morrow's morn to find the Holy Grail,
And others go to seek."

                                     The large tears rose,
The first-born Christian tears of Palomide,
With this report, which simply, briefly told
The spiritual mission of that radiant youth,
Whom rival ne'er dispraised, nor slander soiled,
Snow-white unto this hour. The large tears fell.
He wept for very gratefulness: but, soon,
At his exclusion from pursuit, where faith
Should sanction valour. "Woeful knight, am I.
Galahad gains the glory: none is mine;
Evil my heritage. Then, my resolve
Shall seek its direst shape; by it, win fame,
Which glory shall approve!" Pain at his heart
Bound further utterance: silent, he beheld
Wondering, that sight magnifical, first time--
Last time for him, for all men. Nevermore,
In scarlet richly furred--those robes of peace--
Each in his siege: no more, shall be convoked,
In their ascending circles and degrees,
Knights, barons, princes, earls and royalties,
The noble fellowship of the Table Round.

   Galahad gone, the belts of brave and strong
Dissevered, most to search lands west and east,
And some by stoutness, some by patience, some
By pious, penitential labours, some
By perilous adventure,--Palomide,
Consecrate for his famous quest, set forth
For that strange creature, spawned of Night, sin-scarred,
The Questing Beast, abhorred of men, whose tongue
Is as a sword, its breath as of hell-fire,
And which may not be slain: but, he it caught
Bound it in bands, preserved man from its hurt.
Since then, broke loose, it rangeth everywhere,
Preying upon man's name, and body, and soul:
Yet, praise to him, that for some while he kept
That shameful scourge of Scandal from our land.

                         IV.

Sir Launcelot healed in spirit, restored to court,
   Tristram, the peerless of the Table Round,
Retired, and Launcelot, now its Dragon-knight,
Resumed his place, his powers. Thence, free to north,
Hastened the knight-of-help, to her, Isonde,
Of love and soul his star, that as herself,
And far beyond herself, loved him.

                                                       But ne'er
Came whole from fray a knight with cloven helm:
And many broils are grievous howe'er won:
And blows abate at length the pride of war:
And Tristram, spent in spirit and frame, drew home,
Though gems and praise his guerdon. "Faith, my sweet!
This latest month, forsaking halls and cot,
I took chance wayside Cross for nightly host.
Brave cheer, but icy, when the ruddy lips
Of bleeding wounds crave for a care like thine."
Long was his healing, and his chastened soul
Would get fresh hurt at tidings from without:
But drank with grateful joyousness, as from
The four fair springs of Paradise, the love,
The peace, the trust, the beauty, living here
Within the heavenly homes of Joyous Gard.

                         *****
                         *****        But no sad thought,
Whilst Joyous Gard is ours--ours,--as 'tis theirs,
Our lovers'. Hasten not, then, as ye hear,
Gentles! With Tristram's growing strength, his all
Was all love might desire; seclusion far
From wranglings of the world; health, waiting still
On action: every season of the day
Diverse in aspect of delight.

                                          Most sweet,
The sharp and quickening odours of the sea:
Most beautiful, in languid hours to watch
The folding, fleecy, foam-clouds o'er the reefs,
Rising and wreathing, floating, falling--still
To climb and swirl, and heave and sink, and rise,
For ever; dear, to stray where every step
Woke fragrance; seeking tangled forest-paths,
With bird and rill harmonious; thorough fields,
Which lacked the frequent step, to silent heights
Unreached aforetime; or, awearied, learn
Love's rest was claimed by yonder shy green shade.
And then, the eager stir, when woodland ways
Rang merry as of old with Tristram's horn.
Like to his spear, his eye and voice were powers
For judgment; oft, between, there came the chase
In airy fields; his pride might not abate
Its wings; he crowned past glory as the lord
Of sport; he won the eagle to his lure,
And made it tractable as falcon-gentle--
Kingliest of sports.

                              No wonder, here the Knight
Desired to linger: rather, wonder why
Depart? The peaceable humanities
Of this dominion, silently and strong
Wove those invisible gossamer threads which bind
Man's spirit to his home, his friends, his fields,
Fast to the uttermost, and unto death.
Touched was his heart, to witness all that war
Boasted as glorious boon, accomplished here
In tenderness, simplicity, and trust.
The choral voices of the bands of toil
Gladdened each morning; in their homes, their lives
Defrauded by no rueful memories
Had cloudless cheer: hope rested confident
Upon the change called death--made present, past
With future, one--one placid whole--the gift
Angelic of the Father of our prayers.
Thus every simple heart became a room
For beautiful and pious thoughts.

                                                  Said they,
"All we behold leads unto Life. This seen;
By night, by day, on every side, this seen--
And where we cannot see, Christ is our trust."
And these humanities, and hopes well told
Each Stranger's Home, lawn-girdled, at this time
Roofed with its jasmin, glittering with its stars,
The hermitage for all way-worn; of peace,
The flowery shrine. Whenever they would near
God's acre, now rose-hedged, some new surprise,
As Love had mysteries there, awaited them;
And if they missed revisiting, some man,
Or woman, or child, would beckoning lead them there--
"For, wherefore to your servants were ye sent
But, as of old, angels, to re-assure?
And here the holiest ground whereon to stand
For this."
                Nay, but themselves were re-assured
In happiest faith. With spring, the primrose spread
Moonlight of memories o'er every grave;
In autumn, central there one letter bloomed
Delectable in gold--the father priest,
Last gone from every household, his earth's dust
Spake to them brightly, then. The live-long day,
The fields of duty were in song; at eve,
Garlanded labourers homeward-bound with pomp
And noisy joys excelling those of war,
The Sanctuary of Remembrance reached, their notes
Rang gentler cadence with soft canticles,
Or circumfluent sounds of murmured psalms.
Bound, then, themselves for home, La Belle Isonde,
And he, her other heart, the Hesper Rose
Within the pensive shadows of the eve
Along their path, to them displayed its prime;
That bloom of gold withdrawn from gold of day,
Shone in the hour of hope's nativity
To lovers dearest, as they hand in hand
Through devious ways, with gentle pace, and speech
Softer than the communion of the leaves,
Once more, enraptured sought their ocean-bowers.
In Isonde's eyes, this while, the noon of love
Was cloudless, clear, and full. Throughout these days,
It were as time had shed his plumes and passed
All unrecorded by the living sense;
And none of Isonde's fears but perished then,
Light-slain, flower-shrouded, sepulchred in song.

   In this the closing restful time, came one
Who told it, Mark back to his Christ-less throne
Had crept: but there, sore-wearying, missing knight,
Defence and glory: missing wife of grace
And charms of gentleness. But then the churl,
Abashed in loss of welcome, nerveless spoke
In short his errand, like to one who sings
His verse with all the words of all its thoughts,
Yet lacks the master-key of melody,
Foliage at once and flower of human voice.
Thus, aught of Mark or Mark's estate, were but
Dead-birth of news, its swaddling-clothes its shroud:
Silence on its nativity, no tears,
No sigh of sympathy, no smile of hope,
Buried, forgotten, soon as known--the Gard
Untroubled kept its golden, deep repose,
Cornwall its craven sorrows.

                                             Later, brought
Upon a sobbing eve, which wept the loss
Another love-day gone, far other news,
By one sea-travelled, haggard, soiled and weak.
A requiem wail of many grieving hearts,
Was in that stranger's voice, and of the tomb
Its stillness, coldness, when his homely word
Disburdened.--Isonde of the Lily Hands,
The virgin-wife, in Brittanie long left,
Was taken of the Christ she served. There went
To Tristram's heart a venomed arrow home,
His own the sharpening and its dolorous wound.
Green Brittanie now mourned its vestal gone;
One never much unhappy: for to miss
The love of one who loved not her, sustained
Her faith in love more perfect. Any hope
Was, he might love more throughly, and, thereby,
Be finer Knight of Honour and of Love.
One never much unhappy: hers, the gift
Unconscious, to enjoy the flowers which spring
Within the present: these, avert the sense
From past--flowers of the best grow now, the flowers
Fairer from by-gone winds and rains--nor she
Took usury of the future which despoils
These flowers. Minds modern wisely have foregone
This boon.

                  A very woman she, whose time
Was filled with mild and beautiful devoirs,
Whereby, redemption of our kind from coarse
Mad revels of man's passionate strengths. But, then;
She was a king's daughter! Ay, ay, but saints
Can clothe in satin, be saints still, though oft
In satin sinners lost, and of desire,
Wanting the satin, thereby, born some sin.
Yet, saints are saintly still. Midst courtly blooms
First-placed, she as a violet reserved,
Its place best known from hidden perfumes. She,
Nun of the shade: a virtue clothed in robes
And sheen of cheerfulness; sun-ray of home,
Brightening its rooms with labours of its grace;
A sportive angel chasing tediousness
From household hours: midst trials, holding still
The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,
Of greatest price within the sight of heaven.
Those fragrant fingers done their courteous toils,
The spirit's duties ended, farewell said,
For good and all her gentle sleep she took,
Handmaiden of her Christ unto the end.
The greenest grass in Brittanie, to-day
Grows o'er the dust of Lily Hands. But, brief.
Tongues light have mocked her--named her, a slight flower,
Crushed by the martial foot of life--some, less--
A weed. There is a plant, most known as weed,
Beneath the cruellest step sends forth a breath--
The incense of a sacrifice--say that
Of Lily Hands, and higher laud we ask not.

   This vestal wife, her Lion-spouse long mourned
Within the sadness of a cave, still shown
Beneath a headland's yellow cliff. He kept
Vigils of sorrow, smart with tears, and scourged
With worse than serpent-thongs, remorseful thoughts.
Nor after--as in midnight of his woe--
But he, in awe and reverence of a love
That veered not on his own transgression, bent
His head on mention of her name.

                                                  But, Love,
Heard once from Palomide, is free. Yes, free,
In bondage to Love's will; for Palomide
Free, had to yield the worship of his soul
To Belle Isonde. Lamenting, Launcelot owned
Thraldom in liberty of love. For truth,
For right, law's righteousness, the foremost spear
Launcelot's; he mourned the flower of Astolat,
Consumed by passion of his fame; he mourned,
Yet, clave to Guinevere. And as these things
Accorded with the counsel of the King
To Launcelot, "Love is free within himself,
Nor ever will be bound: for when 'tis bound
Then loseth Love itself, and is no Love!"
So, I may say no more, who am Love's liege,
Than that it has been writ, and not gainsaid,
These things were done, were spoke, in unison
With times and passion; and his anguish laid
By lengthened, sorrowing showers, he sought the sun,
Tristram--forsook his cavern-hermitage--
His one-love faith, his first, one, only, kept
Rigorous, as vowed, unto his death.

                                                      Three years,
Nothing of death or glooms of doubt, decay
Or change, his spirit less and less required
The melancholy, busy ways of men--
But life of joyaunce, as of summer leaves
Dancing within the prodigal sunshine, vowed
To liberties of mirth. In Joyous Gard
These three years passed. Then came a change, indeed.
Not now, as in past time, may Cornwall's head
Plead and be scorned, its recreant woes despised.

   Regal Carduel--there, the Dragon King
Held loud unwonted festival: convened
The beauty and the valour of his realms
For tournament, with minstrels from Norroy,
From Cumbria's hills; but famousest from Wales,
Led by Taliessen's carol of the joy
Launcelot returned from honoured quest--such joy,
As though no Tristram missed, nor wanted more:
As though, some long-lost planet rode again
Brighter, with rarer fortune-gifted beams
Within the Table's firmament of fame.
Deep in these pastimes, Arthur's hand received
A hurried missive.

                           Mark would holpen be;
Craved grace in his old craven way. "My throne,
Besieged: my good lands everywhere burnt up
With pagan hoofs of fire: doubly down-borne:
Forsaken: O, friend-royal! in my need,
'Neath punishment for sins, I say not how,
Nor when--but thou--forgetting thy past wrongs
From Cornwall, best will know--let thy large love
Be strength unto me." And the gentle King
Felt ruth within him for the dole of Mark:
Led to his chamber, with his counselling Knights.
   Thence Arthur, after long debate, retired
With those three, chief in wisdom: hoar Lywarch
Who winnowed purpose from the husk of words
And moved in safety, or so stood, prepared
In watch and arms: the ruddy Cynon--fierce
To charge, pursue and slay: and dark Aron
Matured in guile for backward march, whene'er
The storms and lightnings of his charge had failed
To foil the pagan. All concurred: from heart
And hard advisings, answer there was one,
None other--and one name--none other choice:
Answer and name were--Tristram. Thereupon,
Arthur a loving treaty made with Mark,
Arch-villain-royal. And, since by Table Round
Tristram won safety in his Logrian home,
So now, its will, clothed with word paramount--
The Dragon King's--his Lion-knight was called
To Camelot, with lady of his heart,
La Belle Isonde.

                         "News-bringer, friend!" quoth he,
"Ruin rings in thy voice: yet, we shall go:
Soon be in readiness." With coldness spake
Sir Tristram, but a tear in either eye,
More truly than nine prayers at nocturns thrice
Repeated, told, within his soul, the deeps
Of sorrow opened. "How my spirits yearn
For Palomide, Knight of the Faith. Methinks,
His great renunciation and his quest
Were good for me: his new-tuned voice, perchance,
Might comfort me. But, friend, I take my barge
For yonder fane, whose worship, oftentimes,
More rapture hath bestowed than may belong
To earth's delight: my spear has done its last
War-service, and those holy hours demand
The dedication of what best hath served
The wantonness of valour. O, good spear!
I may not reckon our companionship
In field, by wayside, midst the hosts, alone,
In tumult of the lists: the past is woe
To measure: but the future hath its hope.
On the high-altar, placed by priestly hands,
We separate, seeking peace by diverse ways.
On my return.--But Brengwain, tend our lady.
Nay, best beloved, loosen thine arms: two hours,
And I am here again, a truer knight
Than thou hast found me yet. Nay, thou, Isonde,
Angel that ever sanctified my strength--
In this contention of thy passion, be
Thy better self. Forsake me not. Again,
My mission is but thine. Sustain her, friends,
On my short absence."

                                   Looking in her eyes
He saw Love's day-star darkening. "Now, with speed,
For my last rites at Joyous Gard." His lance,
By this, was in his hand. Failing in voice,
Isonde, with silent signal to her grooms,
Waved their attendance. Tristram saw the sign.
"Bring me my harp!" he cried. "Naught more my need."

   His barge unmoored; within the stem was laid
His battle-spear, ere this enwreathed with flowers
As it had budded, blossomed with a growth
Sweeter than any summer, when it lived,
And birds had hiding in its leaves, amidst
The groves of Ferniehurst. Close by the helm
He sate and strook his harp: the barge moved off:
Thridding the verdant islets towards the fane
Where surpliced priests were waiting. Here, with prayers
He brought his lance, and with it spoils of war,
Jewels and wedge of gold. Then, to the Gard
As music-drawn, his boat sped swiftly back,
Whilst Tristram strook his harp--the sharp-cut wave
Singing beneath her prow to hear his song.

   Belle Isonde, when her lord approached, restored
From that heart-faintness which attends the smart
Of unexpected trouble, had woven her hair
In fine new fancies, one broad plait around
Her argent brow, whereon composure slept,
Whilst o'er her face a pensive smile, as light
On moving water, came and went; not glad,
But grateful, and in golden patience held
To undergo what must be. No less he;
Sustained by spiritual solace from the lips
Of holy pastors lately left. None word,
Of fear, or doubt, sad child, spake Tristram, none;
But solemn-sweet his voice: "Heart's queen! Mine own!
We go from Joyous Gard. My spear has turned
From noise and stroke of war: by priestly hand
Received, 'neath yonder fane it lies, shall lie,
In consecrated peace: henceforth, my sword
Suffices for my travails, and my harp
Conjoined for praise. The bedesman, we away
On all our mornings lighted by this sun,
Across these waters of the Joyous Gard,
Will sound his orisons for our twain souls
To keep the peace begotten here, till peace
Heavenliest strikes through the nights of death. My heart!
The stream of earthly happiness, which glides
With never-ending curves, from us departs
Surely--but none less sure, its waters flow;
Whereon, let us have heart's content and cheer.
Their shining feet are hurrying shining hours,
Surely, to lovers everywhere. Our love,
Our own,--sufficient solace that for us:
Since none hath given, no one can take away;
And in its strength divine let us remain
Submissive: trusting in the God of Love,
Abide His will."

                       Within the dark they sped
Which followed that same day. Morn's windy light
Rose on them far beyond the hills. Their throngs
Of dame and knight were grieved they could not hail
Once, if for ever, dazzling in the dawn
All diamond and gold, the Joyous Keep,
And, green from shore to hills, and silver-laced
With ringing becks, Love's principality.
But they not long forlorn--so soon the sun
Breathed warmly on their way, and woke the flowers.
Love's-liking takes to flowers: these, be at once
Colour, remembrance, and a music heard
Within the spirit, melodies more sweet
Than voice or instrument: thus, hills and seas
Unseen upon their travel, faithful flowers
Attended, in their shining ministries;
By road and leafy copse, by dales and fells,
The month known by their blazonries--as told
Daffodils spreading sunshine by the brooks--
That air from lily-o'-the-valley's bells,
Within their early summer shrines of green
All silver-hung, blown wide abroad--nor less,
By golden salvers of marsh-marigold
Prepared for elfin tribes, high feast and dance
Now near with genial airs--these, kept the life
Of Joyous Gard still rich in every heart
By all their travels.

                            Arthur, still in north,
Received them in Carduel's palace-hall,
With royal, simple courteousness. His throne
Stood empty: central on the floor, rush-clad,
On velvet carpet placed the golden chair
Wherein sate Arthur: with him, Table Round--
Scant in its company--and courtly suite
Reclined on cushions, those of saffron-hue
These, bloom of rose--when all with voice to each
Of Joyous Gard's fresh-exiled lovers here,
"Welcome of heaven to thee!"

                                            A jocund week,
With joust for morning, sports and minstrelsy
From noon till midnight, nocturns then forgot,
Matins displaced by madrigals, till noon
Was hot again on their carousals,--aye,
Mad merriment, as when midsummer's sun
Keeps all the heavens from night--and not as though
The sun of Love, midst shades, now made descent
Into life's winter. Yet, one might have seen,
That to Isonde or Tristram, none the sports
Made of their happiness: that oft the light,
Which tells the soul, went out from Tristram's face:
And that within her eyes, new-queened Isonde,
For Love's bright day-spring, or the full of noon,
Its evening star shone dim.

                                        The gay time closed,
Arthur unto his Table Round, "This while,
A brother sorrows, prison-bound--nought less,
In castle close-beset: and there be griefs
More sore, of which his clouded hints portend,
More than were kind to name. Whene'er the weak
Beseech us in their needs, 'tis ours to learn
How they may be upheld." Few spake thereon,
And these, in reverence to their King, resigned
Will and suggestion: sought for his command,
His own good-will. The issue was abrupt,
And without words. Their King spake not: nor moved:
His loving, large, and wondrous eyes were laid
On Tristram: noting which, the Table Round
Arose in silence, and in silence bowed
Before the Dragon King: then, turning, bowed
In silence before Tristram, as he sate
Within his siege, so noble in his port,
Such lofty purpose luminous in his eyes,
He scarce seemed second to the kindly King.
Sir Tristram, answering,--"I have read your minds,
Most worthy fellowship! Our will as one,
Hath ever been and must remain. Your will,
My own, I follow to the end."

                                             Next morn,
Submissive, he at matin-song, what time
Caerleon's prelate-lord, who ever placed
The land's sin on the Court, the doubled sin
Of Court on King: sonorous, merciless,
"Thy sin shall find thee out!" of Homily
His burden:--"Keep Thy sheep from wolves!" of Prayer
His burden,--Light of Christ's Church dawning then
On Britain, he repealed the doom so dark
O'er Cornwall's throne: Mark's bridal sacrament
Received original powers, and Tristram's might
Was pledged.

                    But not from either realm withdrawn
The spiritual voices in their tears and prayers:
Nor secret ministers within the hours
Stayed in their swift fulfilment. Belle Isonde
Brought to Tintagel's ribald towers a heart
Void of desire for those delights of Mark
Which filled his days, 'midst idle, sportive dames,
Knights of the drinking horn, and squires of worth
In wantonness. With him the Lion-sword
Brought, self-enjoined, a charge, eftsoons proclaimed,
Accepted and pursued: four years its edge,
As to amend its aught of wrong, should serve
Even as King Mark might ask.

                                             That merriest month,
Flower-crowned, which laughed above their southward march,
Died not before the warm rose-breath of June,
Ere Tristram sped to danger-haunted fields.
He fought; subdued; returned. Sent forth again,
Again his sword, sole comrade of his quest,
From peril's womb brought forth the babe of peace,
Purged evil darkness till its tracks and dens
Gave home and passage, as in lands of light
O'erlooked by Camelot. From time to time,
Arm-wearied grown, or weak from dolorous wounds,
Still to Tintagel he would turn. These times,
Resting, awaiting healing of his hurt,
His harp oft in his hand would sing the tale
Of enterprise and hope, of late complete,
With tones of flame and flashing melodies
To the court's pleasure. Ah, but to the Queen,
Raptures and pride. His valorous deeds o'er-rode
Her loving fearfulness, now dangers gone
And gladness prospers. But with healing, flight--
Whither, in Mark's deranged seven-cornered realm,
Outrage and rapine wildest: given to sleep
The strings of music--splendours of new dawn
Flared from his brand, upon the lawless night
Enkindling righteousness: and, then, his harp,
And that majestic voice of melody,
Exulting, gave the conquest to Christ's faith,
Never to be undone: heart-taught by him
Homes shone with gospel-light, and food divine
He placed on humblest lips for daily use,
Fair golden sentence of the Mountain set
In silver song.

                    These plighted years fulfilled,
His last return bestowed his chiefest joy
Next to his joy in love. Swart Palomide,
Drawn to Tintagel suddenly, as found
Trail of the Questing Beast anear the throne,
Met him beneath the portal, in his arms
Bound him, with speech of praise and prophecy,--
That, in this mission, better were performed,
Than if seven thunders spake, the great intent
Of chivalry--its dedicated fire,
Impassioned heart, and sacrifice: he told,
What meed his gracious Honour should secure,
Then in his fame flown wide, even as the wind
Searching each quarter, and thereafter known,
When claimed of the divine deliverer Death,
In tongues unborn, and in the leagues of love
First champion: and, as love begetteth love,
His name should never fail, for hearts would burn
To hear the purport of his life, whereon
Love's birth would be assured--in which he erred not.

   Palomide's fervency of loving speech,
O'ercame Mark's knight, who slowly spake, held hard
The hand that clasped his own; gazed on the earth--
Beginning and the end--as in his thought--
Thus gently told: "Dear brother-knight, my heart
Hath its desire. Thy words have more content
Than tourney-trophies, and the light of smiles
From ladies when the fresh wound wins the fight.
But, here, no more. The longing of my soul
Shall now be satisfied. Something remains.
Unto the sun-rise limits of Mark's land
I have made clean its ways--and now, myself,
Blameful, unworthy, weakest child of sin,
Heedless of faith whene'er my spear most strong;
Frailest in times of strength; most foul, whene'er
Virtuous in practice,--I must go, be cleansed,
Renounce the way and instruments of war--
Of which," he touched his sword, "this last remains--
And in a fit humility acquire
Initiation to the paths of peace."

   The promise of his penitence was kept
At Caerleon's altar. Hallowing of the sword,
That sword whose lightnings seemed to smite more quick
Than either edge, was done with crowded rites
Of prayer, and praise, and song. Good Bedwin's hand,
Chief priest of blessing, who had Arthur's trust
And conscience in his keeping, took the blade,
And midst triumphant psalms, dense fragrant wreaths
From silver censers, nine times murmured vows,
Laid it within a shrine, where sacred light
Fell fullest through the chancel panes, resigned
To peace. The arch-priest's hand upraised, thereon,
Was benediction; soft as Hermon's dew,
His language over the deliverer's head,
Left Tristram consecrate to peace,--its powers,
Benignities, its patience, hope; his arms,
His rest and spiritual sustenance evermore.

   In this our tale, we must confess its truth,
As speaks the heart unto itself when heard
The sacring bell. Erring, some pens have told
The sorrowful end of this puissant love,
Most sorrowful at best report. From wounds,--
Erring, they say it,--laid in Brittanie
Was Tristram in the care of Lily Hands,
(As she outlived her lord): the maiden-wife,
He bade forthlook upon the sea and say
Came there from westward, any ship in sail?
And when espied--the sail or black or white?
If white!--wot Lily Hands--the freight she brings
Is Belle Isonde, who comes to cure the wounds
Defeating other skill.--The sail was white.--
That moment's hate o'ermastered love. Isonde
Of Lily Hands recked not the healing craft,
Her lord's one need. As she beheld it shine,
A star upon the sea, she cried--"A sail!
The sail, be black!" Whereon, the knight as struck
By treacherous glaive, groaned, and the draught of death
Took instantly. La Belle Isonde arrived--
They fable--when were told the news, she sank,
And seeing her dead lover, died. Ah, well!
In truth, we know, Isonde of Britannie
Close by her home, kept sweetest sleep and last
Beneath the still green billows of life's haven--
Would we were there, sigh some--and we must speak
By our antique report, when Launcelot spake
As brother of Sir Tristram in his faith
And chivalry, best knowing--and the worst
Stricken when Tristram passed.

                                               There came a day,
Recognisant of Tristram--shadows lie
Deepest upon that day--though glories gild,
As those of love must ever do, death's dark,
The dark of death remains. There came a day,
Recognisant of Tristram. Cornwall's scath
Flown from before his saviour-sword, remote,
Sea-banished, now, unheard: his valourous deeds
Had worship from the realm. War's iron cries
Were tuned to festal-songs; the battle spear
Clanged in the merry tourney: found of grace,
Sorrow put on the garments of delight
And ruin wreathed itself in smiles and flowers:
And foremost in the fire of revelry
And storm of lauds, Tintagel on that day.

   Proudest was Palomide. His brother-knight
To praise, was his best glory. But, behold,
Caerleon's consecrated sword he wears,
Sought by his hand unconscious, when his mood
Lost light of the day's joy. He had to speak
To the enquiring wonder of Mark's eye,--
"This sword, you see, once thy arch-knight's, now mine,
Redeemed with golden booty earned in wars
With godless spoilers of Christ's land, best serves
To hasten me, may best serve on my quest."

   As yet unsaid, and best unsaid; if said,
Then briefest.--Mordred during these last days
Came to Tintagel with adulterous news
From Camelot, with greetings no less vile
From temptress Vivien: unction to Mark's spirit,
Dearest through evilness. This northern snake
Crept into covert corners of the bowers
Whispering the Caiaphas prophecy--"One man
Should die for all men's good!" 'Tis said, this while,
Arthur was chilled even at high noon; his halls
Were filled with bodeful murmurs--but men talk
Of travail of the event, when the event
Comes to the birth, and, more its marvel, more
Certain the signs of travail. All must wot
This whispering serpent's tale: if so, why then
Must Palomide! And Mark bade Mordred mark
His sword, and spoke its tale, which stopped the hiss,
And woke the dread. Thence, Mordred's secret eyes--
And Mark had mirth of Mordred for his fear--
Held to the sword, as if foreboding ill.
So works the Will Divine: the evil thought
Near to an ending, lives: the good secure,
Or seeming, perishes: the evil lives,
Acts ruin far from present place or time,
Until,--until,--the perfect end doth come,
Whereby the Will Divine is justified.

   Within the pleasaunce of La Belle Isonde,
Eve's light found Tristram harp in hand. He sang,
Of spirit purified, known by his theme,
And singing softly smote the mystic strings:
His instrument was as a second voice
True daughter of his spirit: voice, spirit, harp,
Were blended in exalted song. He sang;
In full assembly of the dames and knights,
Sang to Isonde alone. But each ear won,
All needs must hearken: or, in silent groups,
Laid on the grass: or, gathered midst the trees
For silence of the shadows: or, on flowers
With hushed and perfumed footsteps moved. Isonde,
Though hers the lay, the ears of all being won
They needs must hearken.--Palomide alone
Stood solitary, dull in vision,--entranced
Most woefully,--for, woe, when evil charm
Flies not from music--and his battle-spear
All unremembered, slanting 'gainst a yew,
Within the failing light grew black. Not so,
King Mark. Nor, as his guests beguiled: nor, still,
Bound by a sorcerous spell, like Palomide,
But in a neighbouring aisle obscure of elms,
Hearing the harmonies, the furies rose
Tormenting thought and sense: and as he paced
Delirious, wilder still the furies raged;
Such force hath sweetest song on evil minds.

   Before La Belle Isonde, the king's knight sang,
Sang like to one whose earthly love foregone,
A holier hath arisen. War's perils past,
Fled from his tongue: the present held him not,
Nor with its loves, or glories. Now, his eye,
Held by the evening star, his voice had ranged
From Belle Isonde: his spirit's wing sustained
On the still rapture of imagination
Sailed to far times, and unto these he sang,
Clear to his inner vision as to hope.
"Those times all splendour-clad, and sweet, and sure
As is yon star: that retinue, I see,
Radiant in its approach, when with their powers
A gentle hand shall rule: that Queenly rule,
Odour of peace on all its functions, spreads
A morning sweetness through these realms: that power
Ascends to undreamed heights of glory!" Heard
That rising note, Mark heard no more, but heard
A whispering as of Mordred's serpent-tongue:--
"More hath he been than King: much more, than King.
Thrice, hath he purged my lands: thrice, kept my crown
Firm on my forehead. Happy are my homes:
My burghs and thorpes increase--and through his might.
So easy, then, for him to be the King,
Displacing Mark--Mark, the anointed King!
Is he, forsooth, not prophesying now
Of his great self? Ay, truly, let one churl
Cry 'King' of him, and all breaths would conspire
To puff the purple from me, and himself
Make King! Or she, my wife, sole sovereign Queen,
Make her, awhile, till he soon found to be
Sole King!--And I, King Mark, think thus!"--And one
Needs die! And I think thus!" Blind, murder-drunk,
Cornwall, from out the darkened aisle of elms,
Reeled: stretched his arms abroad, as if to find
Support in failing strength, and seeking, grasped
The spear of Palomide. A crimson light
Broke o'er Mark's maddened brain; and as his thought
He heard and saw--no more--that instant fell
Tristram, the Light of Honour, by the king
Spear-stricken through the heart.

                                                  La Belle Isonde
Beheld that face--which as the morning shone--
Bloodless and disinherited of light:
Those clear, large eyes--whose purest life was drawn
Ever from her, and were to her as life--
Dead-staring at the sky. Nor on the king
She looked, nor any dame, nor any knight,
But from her height of life and joy at once
Sank into the irrevocable dark.
The starless night possessed those eyes of love--
And stooping, sinking, gently, like to one
Grown suddenly weary, silently her lips
Partook from his the sacrament of death.
As all must die, the question is--how best
It were to die?--Methinks, hers no ill speed.

   Above all mourners, one, that other heart
Of Tristram in his chivalry, was struck
Once and for ever--Launcelot. Not for him
The sparkling sorrow, and its cloud is gone.
Death to his spirit's valiance was the news,
To every hope the night of death, a night
Without a morning. And unchanged, or changed
To finer knightly true-love in his heart,
This season of his woe unto the last.
The voices and the silences which haunt
Man's closing years, now with him, left him not,
Immediate, dread companions of his time
Till time was none for him. His trembling heart
Shook paradise from Joyous Gard, those months
He sought our lovers' joys with Guinevere,
The swerving Queen. Sir Tristram's way of love,
Was twin unto his own; he might not gain,
Nor did he gain the rarer ecstasies,
But his to walk the self-same road, and end
In rarer bitterness. His silent pain,
Showed outward to his fellowship how keen
Its edge. His majesty was dimmed--the form,
The power, and the informing soul--though long
Puissance of his nobleness maintained
Within his voice. He asked, and Arthur gave,
His choicest troop of barons, harnessed black,
With black recognisances, helm and shield,
For honour of the burial; as required,
So gave the Dragon King. But Mark was known
Unchastened by remorse. Acquainted naught
With knightly temper, he the peaceful dead
Held stronger in his hate: a hardened soul
Unto its own perdition Mark's, nor feared
Launcelot's dismay, nor sorrowing wrath of those
Within his own Tintagel. Mark deferred
The natural obsequies. Let them be named--
And the cold, contumelious sneer replied
In language of his heart: he fain had laid
Their bodies within ground unconsecrate:
Naught, in his wild despite by word or deed,
Too baleful in effect. When Launcelot asked
He might attend death's fitting rites, and praised
The dead, Mark's wan lips twitched. "Like as they played,
Play you with fancies in thy love. By tale,
Your flattering thoughts, which please yourselves, I know;
Fine loves, I know them well. Now, barter these--
'Love's foliage in the hyacinth tress; its rose
'Upon the cheek, and violet in the eye!'
Love's passion-flowers like these, pray, barter me
For boorish truth. I have a chosen love
Which clips, and hurts, and cries with pain's delight
Plain, lusty love is mine. Yet, in thy phrase,
Take these death's lilies, and their virtuous dust
Through which the worm glides noiseless--his high feast
Asks for no minstrel-jangle, for his grace
The abbot's lips are mouldering 'neath the shroud,
And wassail waits him in the warrior's heart
Whose wonted throbs, the thunders of the tilt
Once answered--to the royal worm yield these
Thy lovers with all proper pomp." The knight,
Palsied by shame, so near his hallowed dead,
His not the hand to slay the crowned shame.
Silent, some seconds' space: wherein, his mind
Weighed this dark hate of Mark, and therefrom drew
A purpose late beyond his hope. "Fair king,
My love is apt to parley with thy hurt.
Say, in thy graciousness, with these my knights,
May I provide a burial for the twain
Beyond Tintagel's bounds?" Sharp, hissing came
With curl o' the lip this answer. "Ay, my halls
Are purer for that speech. But, speedily.
The charnel vapours reached my bower this morn:
Let them not taint the merry morrow here."
And turning sharp on heel, that was the last
Amazed Sir Launcelot saw of Mark, or Mark
Spake of his bright Queen dead, and Tristram dead.

   A weeping haste of preparation lacked
Help of Tintagel's court, loth to offend
The tarnished crown they loathed; but, more of strange,
Lacked help of Palomide. He paced the bowers
Astonied, as it seemed: dull in his sense
To all the current trouble; yet, alert,
Listening half-bent, his head aside, to hear
Of footsteps, as with Clustfain's ear which heard
The dew-drop falling from the grass in June
Throughout the region of high summer's reign;
Listening, as for a sound within a sound,
A spirit listening, in foot-steps to hear
The spirit-step, as of the thing itself.

   And when the sun in large cloud-glories robed
Descended for his rest in ocean's halls,
Out from Tintagel, with funereal hymns,
And pageant clad in sable samite, went,
To seek their rest, the still forms of Isonde
And Tristram, on the bier; as in their lives
Nearest and best beloved, in white of death
Upon one bier.

                         Across the eastward plain
The pageant, with its pace of woe and tears
Wound slowly. Mark upon his topmost tower
Beholding, regal-robed and diademed--
A sight of horror--hate within the sun--
Glory within its glories, passion-struck,
In the mid-tempest of his mood, his face
Worked fiercely, with a pall of crimson glooms--
His face and flickering splendour of his robes
Wore horrors of the radiance of hell:
But paled that face, one moment, ere he lost
Those lovers, until passion in his soul
Rose higher, the pageant nearing Cadon's woods:
Now, reached; now, entered; and now, hid--and, then,
The hate found voice. "For Vivien, now, my soul!
For Vivien!" Last words these for him. A cry
Behind, "Whelp of the Questing Beast!" One flash,
White-circling, and the royal miscreant head,
And bulk of frame into the stagnant fosse
Fell heavily. A sable form erect,
With eyes of fire, stood in the place of Mark.
Lifting on high a dripping sword, it waved--
Caerleon's consecrated sword it was
That waved adieus towards the hidden train
Winding through Cadon's groves. All night was heard
In Isonde's bower a piteous, pleading cry,
Broken with shriek for Mordred. But, as doom
Expected least had come, the doom most feared
Escaped. Sleuth-hound of empire, Mordred, sped
Those hours to Camelot.

                                    With rising morn,
Rode forth a knight distraught, on whom no man
Dared lay his hands. A furlong from the keep,
He sharp drew rein, turned in his selle, upraised
His mailed fist and cried: "I've slain the whelp!
Now for the sire!" Then, frenzied Palomide,
With haste of hope, dashed on his Perilous Quest.

---

---

THE PROPHECY OF MERLIN

by

JOHN READE

Sir Bedivere, in silence, watched the barge
That bore away King Arthur to the vale
Of Avalon, till it was seen no more.
Then, on the beach, alone amid the dead,
He lifted up his voice and sorely wept.
"Alas!" he cried, "gone are the pleasant days
At Camelot, and the sweet fellowship
Of noble knights and true, and beauteous dames
Who have no peers in all the living world,
Is quite dissolved for ever, and the King
Has gone and left none like him among men.
O happy, thrice and fourfold, ye who rest,
Both friends and foemen, in one peaceful bed,
While I am sick at soul and cannot die!
Oh! That the battle might be fought again!
Then would I surely seek the way to death,
And bleed and sleep like you, and be at peace.
But now, ah! whither, whither can I go,
Since he is gone who was my light of life,
And whom to see was bliss? What can I do
Without the voice that gave my arm its strength?
Or wherefore bear a sword, since now no more
Excalibur points forth to noble deeds?"

     And then he drew his blade, and threw it far
Into the Lake, and as he saw it sink,
"Would God," said he, "that so I followed him."

     But with the strain his wounds began to bleed,
And he grew weak, and sank upon the ground,
And swooned.
     And when he woke, he was aware
Of Merlin, who stood watching by his side.
Then cried Sir Bedivere: "O good and wise,
I bid thee welcome, for, in all the world,
There is none other I would fainer see.
Yet am I sad to see thee, for the King
Is gone, and none is left of all his Knights
Save me, and I am weary of my life."
     But Merlin, ere he answered, staunched his wound,
And gave him wine out of a golden flask,
And, by the healing art which he possessed,
Restored him sound and whole. And then he spake:
"There is no need to tell me, for I know
All thou would'st say, and knew ere thou wast born
That all these things should be. But weep no more,
Sir Bedivere. The past no man can change,
Nor make what has been other than it is.
As in the forest of Broceliande,
The leaves fall year by year, and give the oaks
All bare to wintry blasts, so, swept apace
Before the breath of Time, the race of men
Passes away, and may be seen no more.
And yet the breeze of Spring is no less sweet,
Which plays around the tender budding leaves,
And calls to life their beauty, that it is
As well a requiem as baby-song.
So weep not for the days that are no more,
But pray, as the King bade thee, for his soul,
That to his far-off home no sigh may come
From this, his orphan and unhappy realm,
To mar the melody of Avalon."
     Then said Sir Bedivere: "O good and wise,
Will he return again to Camelot,
After his wound is healed, and Guinevere
Has healed that other wound that vexed his soul,
By purging her own soul of all offence?
And will he not assemble round his board
The best and bravest knights of Christendom,
And all the fairest ladies of the land,
And reign as erst he reigned in Camelot?"

     Then Merlin: "Hid from eyes of common men
Is that which is to be in after days;
And only those can see it in whose souls
A heavenly brightness has dissolved the mist
That darkens mortal sight. And even these
Can see but dimly, as a far-off hill
Appears at even when the stars surprise
The lingering kisses of the parting sun.
But I, thou knowest well, Sir Bedivere,
Am not of mortal race, nor was I born
Of human mother nor of human sire.
Mine is the blazonry of prophet souls
Whose lineage finds in God its kingly head.
To me what was and that which is to come
Are ever present, and I grow not old
With time, but have the gift of endless youth.
As one who stands beside a placid stream,
Watching the white sails passing slowly down,
And knows a fatal whirlpool waits them all,
And yet, the while, is powerless to save,--
So watch I all the ages passing by
Adown the stream of time into the gulf
From which is no return. Alas! Alas!
How oft have I, who ever love the good,
The pure, the brave and wise, wept bitter tears,
As they have passed me, joyous in their course,
And we have held sweet converse, as I thought
How soon their faces would be seen no more!
Sad, sad, Sir Bedivere, the prophet's gift,
Who sees the evil which he cannot heal!"

     And then a gloom o'ershadowed Merlin's face,
That caused Sir Bedivere to pity him;
And they both wept, as one, amid the dead,
Thinking of all the sorrows of the world.
But Merlin, when his face grew calm again,
Began: "Come, hearken now, Sir Bedivere,
and I will give an answer to thy quest:
King Arthur sleeps in Avalon, and many a change
Must over-pass this land before he wake.
The great White Dragon of the stormy North,
Rearing his crest above the foaming waves,
Shall shake the ground, and level all the hills,--
And war shall follow war,--and blood shall flow
In every vale,--and smoke of burning towns
Shall reach the sky,--and men shall cry for aid
Unto the sea, to hide them from the foe--
And still shall Arthur sleep in Avalon.

And when the Dragon, sated with the blood
Of Christian men and women, yields at length
To a mild victor, Tigers of the Sea
Shall come, from cragy homes, to rend and tear,
And brave men's hearts shall quail before their eyes--
Yet still shall Arthur sleep in Avalon.

The Tigers' wrath appeased, another foe
Shall wave a foreign banner o'er the land,
And trample down beneath his horses' hoofs
Briton, and Dane, and Saxon, till the ground
Is rank with blood, as when upon the slopes
Of Badon Arthur charged the heathen host--
Yet still the King shall sleep in Avalon.

But as the ages pass, these foes shall join
In friendship, and a nation shall arise,
Like a strong oak amid the forest trees,
Which, growing slowly, ceases not to grow,
But fastens firmly, as it aims aloft,
And spreads its branches far on every side,
A shelter to the stranger of all lands--
While Arthur still sleeps on in Avalon.

And many Kings shall rule and win renown
For this now saddened and distracted realm;
And Britain shall be great by land and sea,
And stretch her conquering arms around the world,
And gather treasures from all climes, and teach
Her tongues to distant nations, and her name
Shall be a word of praise to all the earth--
While Arthur still sleeps on in Avalon.
But though he sleep, he still shall wear the crown
As rightful lord of Britain, for on him,--
The image of a noble Christian King,
The image of a ruler sent of God,--
The people still shall look in whoso reigns.
And if there be a King of soul impure--
Or if there be a King of hand unjust--
Or if there be a King who weighs himself
Against the nation's weal (such Kings there are
And ever shall be until Arthur wake),--
It is the real King the people serve,
The Blameless Prince that never can do wrong,
And not the false usurper of his name."

     Then, wondering much, broke in Sir Bedivere:
"O Merlin, thou art far too wise for me,
Though well I love thy speech. But, in good sooth,
And plainly, as we speak of common things,
Answer me: Will the King come back again
In his own fleshly guise, the very same
As when he feasted erst in Camelot
With all the Table Round? And will he wear
The crown, and gird him with Excalibur,
And conquer heathen foes, and rid the land
Of all that speaketh lies or doeth wrong?--
Or, must he sleep for ever, and his face
Be hid away from those that love him well?
For, if I thought that it were so to be,
I never could have comfort in my life."

     Then answered Merlin: "Let me tell my tale
In my own way, and hearken till the close.
All these things happen not as we desire,
But as the ages need. Such men as he
Come not without great travail and sore pain;
They are the ripe fruit of the centuries,
Who nourish noble thoughts and noble deeds,
Give health and vigour to the sickly times,
And stir the gross blood of the sleepy world;
And when they pass away, their names, endued
With life, still head the van of truth and right:
So shall the name and spirit of the King,
Who ruled in Camelot the Table Round,
Guide Britain into ever-growing fame;
And all her Kings that reign shall reign in him,
The golden type of kingly chivalry.
And those three Queens thou sawest, three fair Queens,
So sweet and womanly, who, in the barge,
Bore, tenderly, away the wounded King,
Shall reign in Britain in the after-time,--
As, in the old time, Carismandua
And brave Bonduca whom the Romans feared
Held a firm sceptre in a gentle hand.
Of best and purest Queenhood, they, the type,
As Arthur is the type of Blameless Kings.
And as by three sweet names of holy kin
They shall be known, so shall they also shew
A triple sisterhood beneath one crown--
Britain, and Albyn, and green Innisfail.

Now, when the last of three Queens has slept
For many years, there shall arise a Fourth--
Fair, good and wise, and loved by all the land
Of Britain, and by many lands on every sea.
And in her days the world shall have much changed
From that which now we live in. Mysteries,
Save unto me in vision, now unknown,
Shall then be clear as day. The earth and air
Shall yield strange secrets for the use of men,--
The planets, in their courses, shall draw near,
And men shall see their marvels, as the flowers
That grace the meads of Summer,--time and space
Shall know new laws, and history shall walk
Abreast with fact o'er all the peopled world:--
For words shall flash like light from shore to shore,
And light itself shall chronicle men's deeds.
Great ships shall plough the ocean without sail,
And steedless chariots shoot with arrowy speed
O'er hill and dale and river, and beneath
The solid floor we tread,--the silent rocks
Shall tell the story of the infant world,--
The falling leaf shall shew the cause of things
Sages have sought in vain--and the whole vast
Of sight and sound shall be to men a school
Where they may learn strange lessons; and great truths
That long have slept in the deep heart of God
Shall waken and come forth and dwell with men,
As in the elder days the tented lord
Of countless herds was taught by angel-guests.
And this fair land of Britain then shall be
Engrailed with stately cities,--and by streams
Where now the greedy wolf roams shall be heard
The multitudinous voice of Industry,--
And Labour, incense-crowned, shall hold her court
Where now the sun scarce touches with his beams
The scattered seeds of future argosies,
That to the furthest limit of the world
Shall bear the glory of the British name.
And where a Grecian victor never trod,
And where a Roman banner never waved,
East, West, and North, and South, and to those Isles,
Happy and rich, of which the poets dreamed
But never saw, set far in Western seas,
Beyond the pillars of the heathen god--
Shall Arthur's realm extend, and dusky Kings
Shall yield obeisance to his conquering fame.

     And she, the fourth fair tenant of the throne,
Heir to the ripe fruit of long centuries,
Shall reign o'er such an empire, and her name,
Clasping the trophies of all ages, won
By knightly deeds in every land and sea,
Shall be VICTORIA.
          Then shall come a Prince
From o'er the sea, of goodly mien and fair,
And, winning her, win all that she has won--
Wedded to her, be good as she is pure--
Reigning with her, be wise as she is great--
And, loving her, be loved by all the world."

     Then spake Sir Bedivere, all eagerly:
"He, Merlin, is he not our Blameless King,
Returned from his long sleep in Avalon,
To crown the glories of the later world?"

     Then Merlin: "Wait a while, Sir Bedivere,
And I will tell thee all.
          In deeds of war,--
The rage of battle, and the clangorous charge
Of mailéd knights, and flash of hostile swords,
And flying spears, and din of meeting shields,
And all the use of man-ennobling might
For Christ and for his Cross, to wrest the land
From heathen foes--did Arthur win his fame.
For this, by marvels, was he born and bred;
For this, by marvels, was he chosen King;
For this he sent his heralds to all parts
Of the divided realm, to summon forth
All bravest, truest knights of Christendom
From rude and selfish war to Camelot,
That they might be one heart around himself
To send new life-blood through the sickly land,
And purge it of the plague of heathennesse.
And had not the foul falsehood of his house
Broken athwart the true aim of his life,
And set the Table Round against itself,
Ere now the heathen Dragon had been crushed,
Never again to raise its hideous head
O'er the fair land that Christ's apostle blessed.

This was the purpose that his soul had formed--
Alas! How unaccomplished!--and he hoped
That gentle peace would be the meed of war,--
That 'neath the laurel fair and wide would bloom
The flowers of wisdom, charity and truth,--
That holy men and sages, ladies fair
And famous knights, and those that from earth's lap
Gather God's bounties, and the men whose hands
Have skilful touch, and those who tell or sing
Of Nature and her marvels, or who fill
The scroll with records of the misty past,
And others of all arts and all degrees,
Should work, each in the place that he had found,
With one pure impulse in the heart of all,--
That Britain should be called of all the world
A blameless people round a Blameless King.

This purpose Albert, in the after-time,
(So shall the Prince be named of whom I spake,)
Shall take from the dim shrine where it has lain,
Scarce touched by dreamy reverence, many an age,
And hold it in the daylight of his life.
But not alone. She whom his heart has won,
With loving aid, shall ever at his side
(Till death them part) sustain him in his thought.
And these two, nobly mated, each to each
The sweet and ripe completion, shall be named
With loyal love and tenderest respect
By knight and lady, poet, sage and priest,
In mart and camp, in palace and in cot,
By babbling gray-beard and by lisping child,
Wherever Britain's banner is unfurled.
So shall the land grow strong with bonds of peace,
Till men believe that wars have ceased to drench
The earth with bloody rain;--and Art shall smile
On myriad shapes of beauty and of use,--
And Wisdom shall have freer scope, and push
The boulders of old folly from her field,--
And men shall walk with larger minds across
The limits of the superstitious past,
And cull the gold out of the dross of things,
Flinging the dross aside,--and then shall be
New hopes of better changes yet to be,
When harmony shall reign through all the world,
And interchange of good for common weal
Be only law.
     A palace shall arise
Beneath the guidance of the Blameless Prince,
The crystal image of his ample mind,
The home of what is best in every clime;
And thither, from all lands beneath the sun,
Shall crowd the patient workers in all arts,
Bringing the treasures of their skill. The hands
Of many nations with a brother's clasp
Shall join together; and the Babel tongues
Of Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern lands
Shall strive no more in discord, but, as one,
Shall make harmonious music, as of yore
The sound of four great rivers rose and fell
Through fragrant splendours in the Eden-world.

And men shall say: 'Now is the reign of peace,
Foretold by sacred sages, come at last.
And cries of war shall never more be heard
Through the fair world, but men shall take their swords
And beat them into ploughshares, and their spears
And lances they shall turn to pruning-hooks,--
Nation with nation shall contend no more,
Save as to who may reach the goal of best
Before the other, for the common good,--
And men shall only vie in virtue, skill
And beauty, fruits of hand and head and heart,--
And strength shall be in knowledge and its use,--
And right, not might, shall guide men in their acts,--
And small and great shall have one common law,--
And he, alone, shall be considered just
Who, in a doubtful matter, puts himself
In his friend's place. So all men shall be friends:
For each shall see in other but himself,
And love him as himself. This is Christ's rule,
Which the base world so long has set at nought,
But now restored by our All-blameless Prince,
And preached by gentle act to all the world.'

So shall men say, rejoicing; but, alas!
While yet the words rise from their gladdened hearts,
The olive garland shall begin to fade
On the sweet brows of peace; and Avarice,
Like a gaunt wolf, ever unsatisfied
As long as one lamb bleats within the fold,
Shall raise the harsh cry that awakens war.

In those far lands beyond the Southern Sea,
Traversed by knights who seek the Holy Grail,
The mountains belch forth fire, and flood the slopes
And valleys with the sulphurous tide of hell,
Till man and all his works are whelmed beneath.
Then, wearied with his rage, the demon sleeps,
And o'er the frozen graves of the long dead
The hopeful vine grows and the flowers bloom,
And children's voices and the song of birds
Bid hush the awful memory of the past.
But on some doomful night an ominous roar
Startles the dreaming villager, who, looking
Forth through his shivering casement, sees the sky
Alive with fearful forms. The spirits of fire,
Unchained from their long bondage, with fierce joy
Dance onward, bearing death, while smoky palls
Waver around them. With their ghostly hands
From wrathful vials they pour blazing streams
That lick the earth, from which is no escape
But death--and death comes soon. So after peace,
Which men had thought eternal, shall come war,
And chase, with rumbling horror, the sweet dreams
Of gentle harmony throughout the world.

Then shall the spirit of the Table Round
Enter men's hearts and make their right arms strong
For deeds of war,--deeds that shall make the eyes
Of those who come thereafter flash with pride.

By many a far-off height and river-side
Shall fall such men as fought at Badon-hill
Warring with heathen foes; and lonely hearths
Shall sorrow for the dead who come no more.
And, one war over, others shall succeed,
And others; and the blaze of burning towns
Shall blot the moon out of the midnight sky.

And some will say: 'Now is the end at hand
Of all things, and the whole fair world is doomed
To sink in ashy nothingness. The wrath
Of God is kindled for the sins of men.'

But when the fiery wave of war has washed
The world, as gold from which the dross is burned,
The nations shall rise purer, and men's hearts
Shall fear the touch of wrong; the slave ashamed
And angry once to see the pitiless sun
Smile on his chains, shall leap and sing for joy.
Free thought shall take the ancient shield of Truth
And make it bright, showing the Artist's work,
Long hid by stains and rust from longing eyes;
And hoary ills shall die, and o'er their graves
Shall bloom fair flowers, and trees of goodly fruit
To gladden and make strong the heart of man."

     Then said Sir Bedivere: "O, good and wise,
My heart is full of wonder, and I doubt
Whether or not I listen in a dream
Wrought by thy wizard spells around my soul.
But tell me further of the Blameless Prince,
The image of King Arthur,--or himself,
Albeit thou sayst it not, come back again
From his long sleep in Avalon. Shall he die,
Or shall he live and teach men how to live
Until the coming of our Master, Christ?"

     Then Merlin, with a cloud upon his face,
As thinking of the sorrow that must be,
Yet with a silver smile about the cloud,
Answered Sir Bedivere: "O, loving well
And loyal to the last, the Blameless Prince,
The God-sent promise of a better time
When all men shall be like him, good and wise,
Shall, when his work is finished, pass away;
And the dark shade of sorrow's wings shall blot
The sky, and all the widowed land shall mourn;
And chiefly she, his other self, the Queen,
Shall weep long years in lonely palace-halls,
Missing the music of a silent voice.
But, though his voice be silent, in men's hearts
Shall sink the fruitful memory of his life,
And take deep root, and grow to glorious deeds.
And she will write the story of his life
Who loved him, and though tears may blot the page,
Even as they fall, the rainbow hues of hope
Shall bless them with Christ's promise of the time
When they that sow in tears shall reap in joy."

     Then, sad and sore amazed, Sir Bedivere:
"O, Merlin, Merlin, truly didst thou say
That hid from eyes of common men like me
Is that which is to be in after days;
For even now I scarce can comprehend
What thou hast spoken with prophetic lips.
These things are very far beyond my reach.
This only do I know, that I am now
An orphan knight, reft of the royal sire
That made me knight, giving my soul new birth
And heirdom to the Christian fellowship
Of the Round Table. Gladly would I give
All glory ever won by knightly deed,
All honour in the ranks of my compeers,
All gentle blandishments of ladies fair,
All that I am, or have, or prize the most,
And sink into the meanness of the churl
That feeds the Saxon's swine, for but one glimpse
Of my loved lord, King Arthur. But I know
That he will never more to Camelot
Bring back the glory of his vanished face,
Nor call me his 'true knight, Sir Bedivere.'
So I will pray, even as thou badst me pray,
And as King Arthur bade me, for his soul,
That to his far-off home no sigh may come,
From this his orphan and unhappy realm,
To mar the melody of Avalon.
And though he may not hither come to me,
May I not hope that I may go to him,
And see him face to face, in that fair land,
Whose beauty mortal eye has never seen,
Whose music mortal ear has never heard,
Whose glory mortal heart has not conceived.

But, Merlin, I would ask thee one thing more,
If thou have patience with my blunter sense
(For I am but a knight, and thou, a sage,
And knowest all things)--prithee, tell me, Merlin,
If, in the far-off after-time, shall come
A Prince who shall be known by Arthur's name,
And bear it blamelessly as he did his."

     Then, Merlin, with a wise smile on his face,
Such as a mother wears who gently tries
To answer the hard question of her child,
Answered Sir Bedivere: "Thou askest well,
And fain am I to answer. That good Prince
Of whom I spake -- Albert, the Blameless Prince--
Shall be the head of many dynasties.
His blood, in after years, shall wear the crown
Of many kingdoms. She who loved him well
Shall reign for many years when he is gone,
And round her widowed diadem shall gleam
The richer halo of a nation's love,
For her own sake and for the sainted dead.
And she will shed the brightness of her soul
On Britain's future Kings, and they shall learn,
Not only from her lips, but from her life,
That who rules well must make Christ's law his rule.
And of the Good Queen and the Blameless Prince
One son shall be named Arthur. Like the King
For whom thy heart is sad, Sir Bedivere,
He shall be true, and brave, and generous
In speech and act to all of all degrees,
And win the unsought guerdon of men's love.

In a far land beneath the setting sun,
Now and long hence undreamed of (save by me
Who, in my soul's eyes, see the great round world
Whirled by the lightning touches of the sun
Through time and space),--a land of stately woods,
Of swift broad rivers, and of ocean lakes,--
The name of Arthur,--him that is to be,--
(Son of the Good Queen and the Blameless Prince),
Shall shed new glories upon him we loved."

     Then, by the memories of his lord, the King,
Sir Bedivere was quickened into tears,
But, like a boy ashamed to shew wet eyes
Before a boy, he passed his mailéd hand
Athwart his face, and frightened back his grief.
And seeing Merlin made no sign to speak
More of the Arthur of the after-time,
He took the word: 'Thanks, Merlin, thou art kind
Beyond the limit of my gratitude,
I fear me. Sorrow is a selfish thing,
And much exacts from friendship. Still, I thank thee
That thou hast not gainsayed my utmost quest.
And, now, I pray God bless him when he comes,
That other Arthur. May he keep his name
As pure as his who ruled in Camelot;
May he, in every wise, be like to him,
Save in the pain that comes of love deceived
And trampled faith; and may his far-off land
Be great by noble deeds of noble men."

     Then came a sound of music from the Lake,
     Like the soft sighing of the summer winds
     Among the pine-trees, and Sir Bedivere
     Turned toward the sound. But as he turned again
     To ask of Merlin what the music meant,
     Merlin was gone, and he was all alone--
     Alone upon the beach amid the dead!

---

---

GERAINT OF DEVON

by

MARION LEE REYNOLDS

                   Foreword

Gentles, I will to tell you a fair tale,
Echoing from the Lands of Long Ago,
Resonant to the Towers of Brave Romance--
Romance, that stately region of old time,
Wherein were truths in grand simplicities,
Valiance and gentleness and constancy,
And Beauty with a radiance on her brow,
And Love, a spiritual lord through earthly life,
Source of ideals past all attainment, high.

Luminous yet within a dreamer's dream
Those lands endure; and if, as folk will say,
They never were save in a dreamer's dream,
What matter, when their light is glamour still,
Their songs, a living music in the heart,
Their visions, our own visions, glorified?
And when, as to a refuge, to their halls,
From deserts of world-weariness and pain,
Fleeing, the dreamer enters and finds peace?

So do you put the shadows from your souls,
Coming within the gates of Brave Romance.

       THE WINNING OF ENID

                         I

Once it befell, upon a Whitsuntide,
Arthur, the lord puissant, held his court
At old Caerlleon, whose innumerous towers
And labyrinthine palaces that still
Renewed then in the broadening stream of Usk
(Two cities, whereof either well might seem
The more unreal, so near to Faerie, both),
Were ancient even then. For alien hands
Upreared them long ago, and alien tongues
Spake through their silences, and alien loves
Hallowed them with their presence; till the doom
Down-hurtling from the wildness of the north,
Drave all in rout and ruin from the land,
And once again, the princes of the isle
Held sovereignty within Caerlleon's halls,
True sons of Britain, conquerors at the last.

Great was the court of Arthur, which he held
In that young month of May. The noblest knights
Of all the baronage, with their fair wives
And daughters, were assembled; and nine kings
Were thither come, from nine wide-spreading realms
Throughout the Island of the Mighty--each
In his demesne was paramount; yet they all
Had homage done to Arthur, King of kings.

It was Whit-Tuesday night. The spacious hall
Of banquet was ablaze with streaming flames
Of torches in tall cressets wrought from gold,
Of swinging golden lamps, the burning oils
Whereof exhaled a cloud of spicery,
Drifting like gossamer. And sweet the scent
Of rushes and bruised blossoms on the floor,
And bright the silver vessels and the gold,
And the jewel-heavy hanaps, with the wine
Darkling and glowing ruddily like a jewel.
For Arthur and that fellowship which formed
A symbol of the roundness of the world,
A symbol of the circling wheel of time,
A symbol of the ringed eternities--
The Knighthood of the mystic Table Round--
Held joyous festival; their revelry
Rang to the shadowy rafters, so the flags,
Suspended thence, rustled with silken swish,--
Some, new, unstainéd, colourful and gay,
Some, torn and tattered, maculate with blood;
Some, Arthur's and his princes', but the most,
Wrested from ruined kings on days of blood.

Presently from the daïs, satin-spread,
Where sat Pendragon's son and Guenevere,
His Queen of regal loveliness, on thrones
Carven of cypress-wood, arose the sound
Of harp-strings touched to music. And a youth,
Slender, dark-eyed, was he who smote the strings,
Alarin named, of whom strange rumors were.
For some men whispered he was elfin-born,
Child of a faery mother, though earthly man,
A good knight and a famous, fathered him.
And folk told ever that the harp he played
Was Taliessin's own, that he had sipped
The cauldron of Caridwen,--ay, had heard
Rhiannon's singing-birds. They said he knew
What songs the willow whispers to the stream
When, in the eastern dark, the red moon hangs;
What chant the veiléd spirits of the storm
Lift in the hollow intervals of wind;
What dirge the daughters of the towering wave
Intone for drowned men when the sullen surge
Booms loudest on the cliffs of Britain's shore.
Tales, foolish tales, perchance; but this is sure:
Well could he harp, well could he make the lay,
And sitting on the step to Arthur's throne,
He sang the love of Astrild and Locryn,
And their love-dolour, with a little song
He called The King's Farewell, and it was this:

"Before me is a gathering of spears,
   Before me is the frothing flood of Stour,--
Behind me is delight through seven years.

  "Dear, on this day in battle I shall die;
  What will they do to thee when I am slain?
What will they say to thee when mute I lie?

  "If they cry, 'Sin,' ,remember Love is great;
  If they jeer, 'Shame' remember Love is lord;
To live in him is no dishonoured state.

  "And if they bring thee to the two-edged sword,
   Be not quite comfortless amidst their hate,--
  'We loved so very well' be thy last word.

  "O face, for love of me so grey with pain
   To see thee but once more how glad were I!
The haven of thy smile but once to gain!--

  "Dear, it is come! The trumpets shrill the hour!
   Behind me is delight through seven years,--
Before me is the frothing flood of Stour."

Then they who held such joyance in the hall,
When he had sung, were silent a brief space,
Thinking of those two lovers of old time.
And in the heart of Guenevere was a woe.
For never could word or song be made of love,
But she must think of Lancelot, and the days
To be, or waste and rasure--menacing days,
Certain past all prevention.
                                     But behold,
The dragon-sculptured doors at the hall's end
Opening with a rush of cool night air,
Scented with May, a youth in hunting-green,
Entered, and bent the knee at Arthur's throne,
And told how in the royal Wood of Dean,
Wherein was he a forester, had appeared
A wonderful white stag, than one night's snow
On yesterday's green field, whiter by far.
And Arthur bade a hunting be proclaimed
Even for the morrow's dawning, and when the Queen
Sought his permission to attend the chase,
Accorded it willingly.

                                       So when the dawn
Glimmered through court and hall, Arthur arose,
And all his nobles, and young pages deft
Arrayed them for the hunt; and joyously,
While yet the Severn-mists lay in the south,
With tuneful winding of gay hunting-horns,
With deep-voiced baying of lithe, leashéd hounds,
Champing of coursers, ring of golden spurs,
They galloped forth unto the Wood of Dean.

But in her silken chamber, Guenevere
Slept still, rapt deep in dreams. So grew the day,
And through the painted casements of the room,
The sunlight filtered, coloured violet,
Green, vermeil, azure; and one slender shaft,
Slantingly golden, streaming on the bed's
Fine ivory and white cypress, crept upon
The purple counterpane, whose broidered kings
Glinted to life. And higher stole the beam
Among the golden arabesques and flowers --
Wrought by sweet ladies, fair and long since dead--
Until it lay like something magical
On the sleeping Queen's white throat,--a touch so soft
And warm that in her dream the sleeper smiled;
And gliding even higher, fell at last
Full on her eyelids. Guenevere awoke
To marvel at the lateness of the hour,
And summon her maidens. Swiftly was she robed
In folds of emerald samite, girdled close
With a broad belt of gold, mantle and hood
Of crimson, sewn with gems, and lined throughout
With sendal, white and fine. So, freshly fair
As a spring rose first blossomed with the morn,
She mounted her fleet palfrey, and in haste,
With two white-breasted greyhounds, freed from leash,
Darting like swallows to her right and left,
With but a single damsel in attend,
Rode from Caerlleon's gateway, forded Usk,
And followed the broad trail of trodden grass
Left by the huntsmen.

                                 As the Queen approached
The confines of the forest, the sharp beat
Of hoofs rang out behind her, and she turned,
And following on a hunter foal of bay,
Stately and proud, she saw a knightly youth
Who drew near swiftly, and a prince was he
In comeliness and bearing, tall and straight,
Fair-haired, grey-eyed. And gaily was he clad
In lustrous, yellow satins, deeply bright
As with a woven sunshine; at his thigh
A golden-hilted sword hung in a sheath
Of patterned cordovan; of ivory
His hunting-horn was carved and wrought with gold,
And from his shoulders floated on the breeze
A scarf of purple silk, the corners caught,
Each, with a golden apple.

                                          And the youth
Riding unto the Queen, saluted her,
Whereto she answered smilingly: "So late,
My lord Geraint, thou comest, even as I!
By this hour will the chase be well advanced,
And if we go to yonder rise of ground,
Which overlooks the forest, we shall hear,
Plainly, I think, the chime of hound and horn,
And mayhap see the passing of the hunt."
And they rode up the knoll and waited there.

But while they hearkened to the far-off shouts
Of huntsmen, and the crying of the dogs,
And the thin, distance-broken bugle-calls,
Lo, mounted on a hackney, from the wood
A frightful dwarf came riding, in one hand
Holding a knotted scourge. Behind the dwarf,
Upon a palfrey, white and spirited,
Rode a fair woman gowned in gold brocade,
And following her, upon a huge destrier,
A mail-clad knight was seen, his lance in rest,
Slung from his neck a massive, dark-red shield,
Bearing a silver griffon. And the knight
Was of so mighty a stature that few men
Could equal him in body, and his mien
Was resolute, and in his countenance
A pride illimitable was manifest;
And manifest, strong passions gratified
Too easily and too recklessly, by a force
Of character powerful but gone astray,
That so his youthfulness and comeliness
Were well-nigh devastate.

                                          Lightly the three
Approached the hillock, and Queen Guenevere
Much marveled at the great size of the knight,
And she said to Geraint, "Who is yon man?"
"I know not," he made answer. Then the Queen
Addressed her damsel, telling her to go
And of the dwarf enquire his master's name.
This did she do with all of courtesy,
Adding, "It is our gracious Queen who asks,
Speaking through me." Whereat the hideous dwarf
Twisted his wide mouth to an evil grin,
But said no word. Thereon the maiden turned
Her horse's head towards the knight himself,
Thinking to speak with him, but instantly
The dwarf struck with his scourge, and though in time
She flung her arm up to protect her face
The blow fell full upon her gloveless hand,
Making great, livid bruises, and she came
Moaning to Guenevere.

                                       Then sorrowfully
And wrathfully said Geraint: "Pity of God!
That he should strike her thus, and that the knight
Make not a move to punish him! I will go,
Myself, and ask the name." And he rode forth,
And sternly charged the dwarf discover it,
But mockingly was he answered, "My lord's name
I will not tell to one of thy degree!"
Then Geraint turned his horse towards the knight,
But the dwarf screamed, "Thou shalt not speak with him!"
And he raised high the scourge and smote Geraint
Hard on the neck that all the flesh was bruised
And striped of the scourge-lashes. And Geraint
Put hand to hilt, minded to slay the dwarf
In just avengement, but bethought him swift
It were poor vengeance but to slay the slave,
Punishing not the master; and unarmed,
How match his silken coat with the knight's mail?
So he resheathed his sword and galloped back
To take leave of the Queen.

                                       "Grieve not, my prince,"
Said Guenevere, "thine was the worthier way.
Blind rage had not been valour." But Geraint,
The slow blood oozing darkly from the wounds
And colouring the purple scarf he ware,
Responded: "Lady, I crave thy sovran leave
To follow yon knight of the griffon-shield,
Whose pride I measure by his monster's words,
Wherever he may go, until perchance,
For pledge or loan, I may procure me arms
And challenge him, and in his blood blot out
The insult he hath suffered to be placed
Upon thy dignity, thy maid and me."
"Go!" said the Queen, "But, cousin, guard thyself;
For truly there is not a goodlier knight
Than thou in all the court--ay, in the land---
Nor one more dear to Arthur. And return
In all the haste thou canst." "I shall return
When we are well avenged. Lady, farewell!"
And clapping golden spurs to his bay steed,
He flashed away down the sun-flooded road,
Where, in the farther distances, went the dwarf,
The lady, and the knight.

                                       And with one hand
Shading her eyes against the sun, the Queen
Kept watch, until a winding of the way
Hid him from view. Then, careless of the hunt,
She called her hounds, and musingly and slow,
To old Caerlleon's palace came again.

                            II

All through that day the company of three
Unrestingly rode onward, and Geraint,
Persistent as their shadows, followed still.
Often they journeyed in broad forest-lands,
Deep, cool, and very grateful; and sometimes
Across wide meadows, where the flower-starred grass
Billowed before the breeze; and yet again
By fields of tillage, where the peasant-folk
Gaped after them, awe-stricken, telling tales,
Either to other, of the wondrous court
Now at Caerlleon met, and of the King.
By broad highway, and now by bridle path,
But ever on and onward did they fare,
Till, in the falling dusk, Geraint beheld
Pale, clustered lights before him, and rejoiced,
Thinking to find a hamlet there, and arms;
But found instead a priory, nestled close
Against the foremost of a range of hills.
Thereinto passed the company of three,
And lodged them; and therein passed Prince Geraint,
And had right courteous treatment, but of arms
Were none within the house of quiet life.
And in the dawning, from the priory,
Went forth the dwarf, the lady, and the knight,
And Geraint followed them.

                                             This second day
They journeyed in the shadow of the hills,
Between whose giant folds the dust-wan road
Turned and re-turned, like a wild, hunted thing,
Twisting and winding, doubling on itself,
But fleeing ever onward. So Geraint,
Watching the sun slope down the western sky
And the hills grow in umbre, thought the quest
Had never end, and many times desired
His own green shield of eagle-blazonry,
His own good lance and hauberk. And his mind
Was filled with fancies touching on the three
Who rode before him, and he saw the dwarf
Turn once and gaze upon him and fall back
As he would speak with him, but haughtily
The master, interposing, signed him go
To his place in the forefront. But at length,
After a toilsome climb to a sharp height,
The prince saw that which gladdened him,--a vale,
Extending beyond eye-cast, fair and wide,
Of various verdancy, the eastern slope
Immersed in sunshine, while the western half
Already gloomed in shadow. A rich town
Lay in the valley, with long, glistening streets,
And red-roofed houses, gabled and matchecold;
And at the town's extermity [sic], on a crest
Commanding all the country, rose the towers
And bastions of a fortress, all agleam
With the strong sunlight splintering on the blades
And steely helmets of the men-at-arms
Who thronged the walls.

                                       Seeing all this, Geraint
Thought he had never seen a fairer town,
Richer or nobler, to whatever lord
It might belong; so thinking, took his way
Adown the rocky hill-fall, following fast
His quarry through the open city-gates,
And up the thoroughfare. Filled was the street
With a great press of people--knights in mail,
Ladies with hawk on wrist, stout serving-men,
Pages with message. Allwhere was heard
Clangor of iron, and ring of tempered steel,
Blasts of the bellows, hammering at the forge,
Hissing of red-hot metal; at every door
Horses were shod, swords burnished, armour washed,
In bustling preparation. But all ceased
Their labor or their pleasure, when the knight,
With lady and dwarf, rode up the teeming street;
And all gave place before him, and with shouts
Of greeting and adulation welcomed him--
Some with "All hail!" and some with "Welcome, lord!"
While others cried, "What knight is like to thee,
Knight of the Sparrow-hawk?" Thus he progressed,
As with a conqueror's triumph, the full length
Of that long street, and conqueror-like, his mien,
Lordly and orgulous, and passed anon
With his companions through the massive gates
Of that high fortress, whence, above the crash
Of ponderous bolts to-driven heavily,
Thundered the warders' welcome, "Hail! All hail!"

Whereat Geraint, standing a little way
Apart, with satisfaction sighed and thought:
"So! This is very well! At last I trail
Yon insolent to his hold!" Then turned to seek
Some lodgment for the night, but everywhere
Found only crowded inns, and hostelries
Already overflowing, and no one,
For charity or gold, would harbour him;
And when he asked the reason--what had drawn
The entire country-side into the town--
Men looked at him in wonder and exclaimed:
"Hear what he asks! Fair sir, what should it be
Saving the Sparrow-hawk?" Wherefore the prince,
With something of wrath for their discourtesy,
But more of scorn, and with much weariness
From his long ride, turned from the populous ways
And districts of the city, letting his horse
Choose his own way, not knowing where he went,
Not caring, where all was strange; and by a lane,
Sideling and unfrequented, chanced to come
To the deserted outskirts.

                                          There he saw
A brook in a deep gorge, whose sloping banks,
Long left attentionless, were overgrown
With coarse, luxuriant weeds; and the loose soil
Had slid in many places, so it lay
Almost athwart the channel, that the stream,
With low, complainful murmur, frothily
Poured through the cramping passage, to lose itself
Among the tufted beds of water-grass,
Sharp-bladed, rankly growing. A bridge spanned
The narrow slake; of finest marble-stone
Had it been builded, but the frost and heat
Of years had wrought a change,--seamed, cracked it was,
Dark-blotched with spongy moss.

                                                      A ruined hall
Stood on the farther side,--one great square tower
With four outflanking turrets. But of these,
Two had been crumbled in an ancient war,
And lay two heaps of mortar and of stone,
Rounded with wash of rain and drift of sand;
A third was roofless, and its parapet
Tottered in mouldering sections; and but one
Seemed serviceable still, like the main tower
Grey with grey lichens, scarred with old assaults,
And blackened with the smoke of battles done.
Yet prince Geraint, letting his gaze traverse
From sunken roof to sunken corner-stone,
Mused how a potent charm enveloped all,
Though ruinous,--yea, even thought perchance
The ruin in its ruin held the charm--
That unreal, veil-like beauty which the past
Weaves of its phantoms, with fair, phantom hands
Its monuments overspreading--a dim cloud,
Intangible and golden, tenuous
And light and subtle, with the sunset-glow,
Redly behind; as now, behind the hall,
The west was red, while, in the evening breeze,
The dark-green banners of the ivy, flung
Like pennons of proud warriors from the breached
And broken battlements, waved wide their folds
In sinuous triumph; honeysuckle-sprays,
White-yellow with new bloom, dripped from the eaves,
And from the matted, interlacing screen
Of twisted, gnarléd branches, came the soft,
Low, slumberous, half-querulous twittering
Of sleepy swallows.

                                 Dreamful was the scene,
With such a mellow restfulness suffused,
Of such a calm simplicity, that the prince,
With the dusk's fragrant fingers at his heart,
Forgot the wreckage of the fallen towers,
Forgot the waste of fire and battering-ram,
Forgot all save the swaying ivy-boughs,
The gilding of the sunset, and the small,
Sleep-quavering bird-notes. "Surely here is peace,"
Thought Prince Geraint, and that he spake aloud
Knew not, until in bitter echoing,
A voice close to him answered, "Surely, peace!
Peace red with ruin, with foul deeds defouled!
Not peace of honour and security,
But peace of ravishment and injury--
Such peace as the sword leaves and the strong hand--
The peace of desolation!"

                                       Then Geraint,
Roused from his waking dream, beheld how one
Had come the lane behind him, and now stood
Upon the bridge. A man of many years
He seemed, but something worse than flight of time
Had aged him all too quickly, brought the stoop
To his once stately figure, and the white
To his loose, heavy hair. And poorly clad
He was in an old, faded satin robe,
Much-mended. Yet, despite his mean array,
An air of gentle birth distinguished him;
Upon him was the dignity of rank,
Inbred and ineffaceable. And he looked
Now at the ruined hall, now at Geraint,
And smiled with a great bitterness, and he said:
"Behold, my lord, the earldom of an earl--
Ivy and fallen towers and tottering walls!--
And even these on sufferance!" And the prince
Was stirred with a strong pity for this man,
And knew not what to do nor what to say
To lighten his despair. But presently,
In a changed tone, the other spake again:
"And yet, fair youth, if lodging thou hast none,
Come, lodge with me to-night. If poor the cheer,
Full hearty is the welcoming, at least.
My name is Lyconal; men call me earl;
And earl I was in sooth, upon a time."
"My lord," replied Geraint, "I give thee thanks;
Most gladly will I come."

                                       Whereat the earl
Conducted him across the mouldering bridge,
Up a steep path, into a small, square court,
Between whose sunken flags the wild grass grew;
While everywhere the ancient walls of stone
Seemed soft as velvet in their tapestry
Of all-concealing ivy. Here the prince
Unsaddled his spent horse. Then suddenly,
Ere he could follow where his host would lead,
Down through the silence, from the upper hall,
A maiden sang, and marvelous her voice!
So sweet, that floating downward from above
So clearly sweet, it seemed an elfin strain
From out the coloured splendors of the west--
A music from the sunset, disembodied,
Pure melody--the full, high, soaring notes
Sprung from the fieriest auréolin
That tipped the deepening crimson of the clouds;
The low, rich tones from the slow-shadowing dusk's
Flower-scented violet. And still Geraint
Thought ever, "Is it faery? It is real?
Oh, never voice so magical were real!"
And all the wonder shone within his eyes.
Earl Lyconal, with understanding smile,
Waited in kindly patience, whispering,
"My daughter, Enid."

                              The song Enid sang
Was an old, whimsical, half-magic rhyme
Anent the Summer-fountain, and the fay
Who knelt thereby with death between her lips:

  "There is a fount in faery lands
  Where stream of summer hath its rise;
  A maiden, not with mortal eyes,
Kneels by the fountain, with both hands
Clasping a windflower-twinéd cup,
Wherewith she dips the summer up.

  "A knight spurred out of the wide wood;
   The sun glanced on his falchion bright,
   And on his surcoat, all bedight
With broidered Grails, since for the Good

  "He labored, nor must stop nor stay
   From winning ever on the Quest
   Whose sweet sign glimmered on his breast--
He saw the maiden by the way.

  "He caught the gold glint of her hair,
  He saw the white curve of her throat;
  And all her slenderness did note;
And how the summer bubbled there

  "Over her glistening finger-tips,--
  And like a spirit, died unshriven,
  Had he ten souls, he must have given
Them all, but once to touch her lips!

  "He felt the heart within him shrink
  At the ling clinging of her kiss;
  He knew that very surely this
  Was death, yet only could he think

  How, sweeter still, her mouth was sweet
  Past all belief, and none could tell
  The glamour of her face--and fell
Among the flowerets at her feet.

  "She gave him neither look nor smile,
  She gave him neither smile nor sigh;
  Nor ever paled to see him die,
Nor ever glanced at him, the while
She knelt, with windflower-twinéd cup,
Dipping the stream of summer up."

So ceased the song; yet still the music seemed
To ripple in long waves across the court,
As water ripples, when the willow drops
A leaf in the still pool. And Prince Geraint,
Half-saddened by the fancy of the lay,
Wherein Love's sum was Death, but all the more
Desirous of the sight of her who sang,
Signed to his host, who wordless, led him straight,
In the still-singing silence, through the hall's
Dark, unused, lower chamber, up a stair
Built in the thickness of the masonry,
Into the upper hall.

                                 Two women sat
Therein at broidery-frames. And like the earl's,
Their garb was ancient satin, lusterless,
Thin-worn and frayed. Of these twain, one was old,
And like the satin, faded; yet the prince,
Marking the strength, the high serenity,
The perfectness of peace on the old face,
Whereto much suffering, met with fortitude,
Had given a pale glory, like a saint's
Dim, lambent aureole, thought in her youth
She must have been the fairest woman known,
The stateliest. And one was but a maid,
Gold-haired, brown-eyed, the colour in her cheek
Soft like the sunset-colour, and her brow
And throat and fingers white as lily-flowers
Sprayed by a crystal fountain.

                                              And Geraint
Bethought him of the fair of olden days;
Those ladies, whose bright presences lend charm
And witchery all-potent to the past;
Those ladies, delicately belle and young,
Young always and belle always, in despite
Of Death's dry grasp and Time's too restless sand,
Whose beauty can not die, nor age, nor wane
Below perfection; crowned with amaranths,
Their luminous faces, shining stilly-fair
In circumambient darkness, draw for aye
Our dreaming and our longing to a time
Not in reality more grand than ours,
Perhcance, but in its semblant grander far,
For thereon lies enchantment. So he thought
Of Bronwen, the white-bosomed, for the sake
Of whose sheer whiteness many a hero spilt
The best blood of his heart, until for woe,
Her own heart brake in twain, and now she sleeps
Always on Alaw-bank; of Arianrod,
Don's silver-circled daughter, whose star-throne,
A splendor in the roof of summer nights,
Is but a hint of what her radiance was
When she was mortal; of the Flower-devised,
That magic lady of the meadow-sweet
And the oak-blossom, fragile as the blooms
Whereof she was enfashioned for a bride;
And last of all, he lingered at that maid
Of soul serene, Olwen, the pure of heart,
So whitely exquisite, her beauty passed
Into a proverb, that a man would say
In speaking of his love, "Lo, she is fair,
Graceful as Olwen, at whose every step
Four white trefoils upsprang!"

                                             But as his thought
Touched lightly on each glowing, golden name
Wherewith the eld is glowing, his heart spake
Ever to him of Enid: "Fair is she,
Past any maid of magic or romance!
Her soul is clearer than the first hour's dew,
Her face is as a flower in a waste land!"
And with a perfect knowledging he knew
He loved her with the strength of his whole life--
With all his manliness and knightliness
He loved her, and would love her to the end
And summing of his days, whatever she
Might have for him,--love or indifference
Or worse, if worse might be.

                                             But Lyconal,
Undreaming of the emotion of the prince,
Addressed his daughter gently: "Child, go thou
Into the town and quickly bring to us
The best of food and liquor thou canst find,
To make our cheer the greater." And she rose,
Slender and garbed in white, and when she came
Into the court, a honeysuckle-branch,
Low-swinging, touched her cheek, and feverishly
She pressed the cool leaves to her, in a strange,
And strangely sweet, confusion; while Geraint,
Within the hall, thought how the shadows closed
Sullenly in, how all the brightness went
With her, the source of brightness. Yet the fire
In the wide-hearthéd chimney roared and flamed,
And streamerwise the ruddy light-flood played
Upon the antique stonework of the walls,
Or gathered in patched pools upon the floor,
Of such apparent density they seemed
Splashings of amber liquid. Of all this
The prince was heedless; still, in fantasy,
He heard one strain of faery melody,
He saw one image rarely delicate;
And as sometimes the burden of a song,
Heard once, in lingering recurrences
Runs through the mind, almost unconsciously
Again repeating those same cadences,
In such refrain his heart's words sang to him--
"Her face is as a flower in a waste land!"

Seeing their guest's abstraction, Lyconal
And his good countess courteously forbare
To question him about his journeying,
But waited silently, until, ere long,
Enid returned, with her a stalwart youth,
Bearing a costrel, filled with bread and meat
And flagoned wine. And the earl bade the youth
Care for the prince's horse, and went himself
To see all done. And Enid laid the board,
And when all was prepared, they sat them down,
The sweet-faced countess at Geraint's right hand,
Earl Lyconal, at the left. And Enid stood
And served them with a graceful dignity
That made the task ennobled, and Geraint,
Watching her with a love-illumined gaze,
Knew she was fairer in the ancient vest
Of worn, white satin then ever Beale Isoud--
In whose smile Tristram had his paradise--
Ay, or Queen Guenevere, in richest robes
Of sendals and of samites stitched with jewels.

Then, the meal finished, from the room retired
Mother and daughter, and Sir Lyconal
Refilled the prince's goblet and his own;
And so they mused a space and sipped the wine
And watched the flickering fire-forms, and Geraint
Could think of Enid only; till, by chance,
With start of recollection, and a sense
Of guilt for his forgetfulness, the prince
Remembered him his quest--why he was come,
What labor lay before him--and aroused
Himself from reverie, and said, "Fair earl,
To whom belongs the fortress, by its towers
Dominating the valley?" But the earl
Tarried in answering; over his face
A visible shadow crept, that all the light
And genial warmth of hospitality
Merged in a deep despair, and when he spake,
His words were slow with pain: "To me, of right,
It does belong; I built it, it was mine,
And all the great, wide earldom." "Ah, fair sir,"
Queried Geraint in sorrow, "what befell
To strip thee of such riches?"

                                             "Hearken then,"
Said Lyconal, "if thou wouldst learn the tale.
I tell it well, seeing that I have told
It over to myself so many times--
How many times! I had a brother once,
Twin-born with me, less brother and more friend,
So one in soul we twain. And in a joust
My brother was sore wounded, that he knew
His death was near; wherefore he sent for me:
'Brother, I die, yet grieve I not for that.
This is my grief: Eddern, my stripling son,
Soon fatherless as well as motherless--
What will betide him? Therefore, Lyconal,
True brother and true friend, be thou to him
A second father, be his guardian,
Befriend him, counsel him, as thine own son
Have ward of his estate, lest in the swift,
Hot rashness of his youth, he squander all
And beggar him. Brother, to do all this
Pledge me thy word!' I pledged it, and he died.

"Thus came into my house my brother's son,
Eddern, scarce more than boy, whom well I loved
Both for his father's sake and for his own.
For he was comely--yea, and even now
Hath certain claim to fairness, though much marred
By long, most shameless license--and alert,
Quick-witted, active bodied, swift to learn,
Swifter to put in practice; yet alway
Heady, too proud, reckless of all control,
And sometimes cruel--faults which indulgently
I charged upon his youth, telling myself
Time would mend all. But time did not amend.
For, as the years sped by, his orgule waxed
And ripened into insolence; still more
He set at naught my counsel; nay, far worse,
Allied himself with wild companions,
Plunged in excesses,--he, outstripping all
In profligacy and prodigality,
Free liver and free lover. And when I,
Ruefully watching this my brother's son
Upon our name bring tarnishment, essayed
To check his imminent ruin loud he spake
Against me, saying, 'Now that I am man,
Give to me mine estate!' Whereat I told
Him all his father said before he died,
Adding, 'Reform thee, nephew, and I will
Render thee every farthing; otherwise,
I can not and be faithful to my trust.'

"Which plunged him into such a furious rage,
He stormed me like a madman, threatening
Revengement dire,--threats, which, alas, too well
He fulfilled to the utterance. Since for this,
And also that I would not pleasure him
With Enid for his bride (a child in years
She was, not yet fifteen, though had she been
A woman grown, I had not given her
To such a profligate) he raised a band
Of ruffian ne'er-do-wells, whom fast he bound
With promises of pillage and free leave
To stuff their hungry purses with the gold
Of such as, for my sake, might dare oppose
His usurpation; and one moonless night
Four years this next September, with his troop
Attacked me in the fortress thou hast seen,
Wherein I lay unguarded, with few swords
Upon my walls, since, maugre his wild threats,
I had not dreamed of such ingratitude.
So, hardly had I heard his battle-cry,
When my gates inward crashed, and all the courts
Filled with my nephew's men; my men were slain,
And I was taken prisoner, and my wife
And daughter dragged before me. Then he spake,
The son of Nudd, my brother, 'Hear me, earl:
I grant thee one last opportunity
To avert disgrace--give me the maid I love,
My cousin Enid.' Ere I could refuse,
My daughter took the answer from my lips,
With straight, white fearlessness, 'Not while I live!'
'Go, then!' he cried; 'In the old, wasted hall,
Built by our forbears in an age long past,
Take up your residence. In poverty
Abide, ye three; for though, for bond of blood,
I will not slay you, nathless, ye shall know
The heaviness of my hand! And it may be
The slowly-crawling years, lean, hard with want,
And sick with memory of other days,
Will bring me ampler vengeance than your deaths,
With Death's enfranchisement! Go now! Away!'

"And outcast went we through our castle-gates
Into the town. And knots of people stood
Along the way, weeping and sorrowful--
My friends--but impotent, silent from fear,
For Eddern's men were allwhere; and if once
An arm were raised to help us, swift and sure
The hired sword did its work. So did we come
To this old hall, and here have we abode.
And though, in my first madness, I had thought
To raise the land against him, soon I found
Such hopes were vain, for though they pitied me,
The goodmen, and some loved me, when I spake
Of armed reprise, ever they edged away
With talk of wives and daughters--how they could
Not jeopardize their safety. Others' wrongs
Are easily forgiven, and the crime
Of one in power men willingly condone.

"Moreover, with sure craft, my nephew used
Unwonted latitude in all the laws
He made for government, and privileges
Unheard-of, gave the rabble. For this cause,
And also that he is a mighty man
Of war, of reckless valiance, hard of stroke,
With scarce a match in tourney, therefore, they,
The fickle mob, with facile cómpliance,
Bowed to his will; ay, more, they gradually grew
To pride them on the prowess of their earl,
For so they came to call him, in despite
Of my still living. Likewise, as he rose
In their regard, I sank, for that is law;
And so it fortuned, in the very ones
Who owed me most, and loved me best, I thought,
Little by little I perceived a change,--
Less reverence, more of pity, and from that
To less of pity, and a faint contempt
For wrongs now wearisome--I, come to this,
I, Lyconal, once lord of a broad land!

"And thus, fair youth, well on to four slow years
Have halted by; yet still that shameful night
Burns in my brain. Never shall I forget
That night's humiliation till I die,--
Who knows, mayhap not then. And when I think
Upon my wife and daughter, all I have
To love in the wide world--what they have lost
Of comfort and of luxury, and how
They suffer here in poverty, nay, want--
Then am I like to die in my wanhope.
Although it is a truth, that they, on whom
Privation hath borne hardest, in their turn,
With some high fortitude that I have not,
Have borne it best--so uncomplainingly,
So cheerfully, with such firm bravery--
Often I shame me of my violence.

"Now I am old; my dear wife, too, is old.
For us there can not be much more of woe,
If woe outlive not life. And in that chance
Would I rejoice, but that I think again
Of my sweet daughter, Enid. I, once gone,
Mine arm, however withered, once removed,
Who then will guard her from the wolfish world?
Who then will cherish her in these dark days
Of lawlessness and many wandering lusts?
Her fineness and her fairiness--weak indeed
Must such defenses be. And knowing this,
How often have I wished I had a son
To fight his sister's battles, to protect
And foster her, the flowering of my race!
Nay, nor to stop with that; but with my blood
Singing a song of vengeance in his veins,
To give once more my banner to the wind,
To sound once more my cry before the walls
Of mine own castle, to remaster it,
To slay the traitor in the midst thereof,
To lift again my house to its estate!"

And with the final word, the good earl's voice,
Vibrant with feeling hardly held in check,
Pealed clarionwise, as if himself had been
Attacker and avenger, with the strength
And warriorhood of other days, when oft
He led his men into the thickest press,
A shatterer of the foe! And ere the light
Of visionary triumph could grow dim
Within his eyes, he saw that Prince Geraint
Was watching him intently, with a strange
And concentrated eagerness of gaze.
Earnestly asked the prince: "Then is the man
Who lords it now in yonder fortress-hall--
Yea, even he who but this afternoon,
Bearing a silver griffon on red shield,
While all men hailed him as a conqueror,
Did ride thereto with lady and with dwarf--
Is he, in truth, thy nephew, noble earl?"
"In very truth," said Lyconal, wondering,
"None other, none but Eddern." "God be thanked!"
Cried then Geraint. "So do thy wrongs and mine
Cleave to a single man, and with one stroke
Will I avenge us all!" And in the surge
Of his exultancy, he whipped his sword
Out from the figured scabbard, and it seemed
A blade of fire, so fast the streaming light
Poured from its edge. "Look! Look!" he cried again,
"The sword of thy revenge, Sir Lyconal!"

And then to the bewildered earl he spake
The purpose of his coming, in detail
Told of the outrage done unto the Queen
Through the Queen's damsel, how himself received,
From the dwarf's hand, the insult of the blow
Of which upon his neck the stripes were blue,
While Eddern, son of Nudd, permitted all.
"And since I could not punish him at the time,
These two days have I followed, and I find,
Now, that the man who hath despoiléd thee,
And the uncourteous knave whose arrogance
Dared to indignify even the Queen,
Are one man and the same; wherefore I say,
When meeting him as Guenevere's champion,
On thy cause, too, will I encounter him,
And in one battle, with one selfsame sword,
If Fortune speed me, will I vanquish him,
And from him force the reparation due
Unto our sovran Lady and unto thee.
My name I have not told thee, yet it is
Full fitting thou shouldst know; I am Geraint,
King Erbin's son of Devon, and a knight
Of Arthur's court."

                                    Which hearing, Lyconal,
Seizing the prince's hand, with hearty joy
Clasped it and said: "Do I then see Geraint?--
Geraint of Devon? Ah, fair youth, I knew
Thou wert of noble parage--manifest
Is that made by thy bearing--yet never dreamed
That thou shouldst stand so close beside the throne
As Erbin's son, the cousin of the King.
How often have I heard high things of thee!--
How, foremost ever in the tourney-fray,
No less within the fiercer shock of war,
The golden eagles of my lord Geraint
Wing to the victory! Heard have I, too,
Of thy great gentleness and courtesy,
Which are the crown of knighthood!"

                                                "Nay, fair sir,"
Answered Geraint, "do we not speak of these.
Rather devise how earliest, in just quarrel,
I may engage with Eddern."

                                          Lyconal
Pondered awhile, and at the last he spake
Slowly, as one perplexed: "Thus stands the case:
My nephew comes from Narberth, whither he went
A sennight since, for there a prince let cry
A tournament, the circlet-prize whereof
The shout goes Eddern won; he is well-made,
Large-bodied as thou dost know, of tireless strength,
Valiant to recklessness. Now he is come
Again, no whit too soon, since on the morn,
Even to-morrow morn, himself will hold
A princely tournament, which men have named
The Tourney of the Sparrow-hawk, for there,
Shining across the meadowed tilting-field,
Two forkéd shafts of silver will be set,
On them a silver rod, and thereupon,
A sparrow-hawk of gold, destined to her
Whose beauty by her champion's chivalry
Shall be proved paramount. And all the knights
That thou hast seen--it is this cause which fills
My town with folk, making the streets to sound
With clang of arms--well-harnessed and well-horsed,
Will ride into the meadow, and with each
The lady whom best he loves. There will they hold
Contention for the golden sparrow-hawk,
On one part, Eddern and his vassal-knights,
And on the other, all who from afar
Have journeyed to strive against them. Unto all
Applies one ruling: no knight may contend
Saving his love come with him.

                                             "These two years
The tourney hath been held, hath Eddern gained
The golden gree, for few enough there are
Who can endure his stroke. And if this year
He gain it once again, then will no more
Be held the tournament, and he will be
Knight of the Sparrow-hawk from that time forth
Entitled, though already some do call
Him so in compliment. He will desire
His lady to take the hawk, saying to her:
'Fairest of women art thou; wherefore, this year
The prize should long to thee, as it hath longed
These two years previous. If any will
Deny thee, let him keep him well from me!'"
"Then will I make denial!" said Geraint,
"So must he battle with me! Blade to blade,
Shield against shield--I ask no more than this!
I have my horse, and if I may have arms
As loan from thee, I will defy him straight,
And strength to strength, undo him if I may!"
"Nay," answered Lyconal, "thou dost forget
The rule of which I spake. Arms shalt thou have;
Nathless, thou mayest not joust; nor dame nor maid
Is in thy company. No knight may joust,
But if the one whom best in the wide world
He loves, be at the field."

                                       Whereat there fell
A pause that grew in silence, and Geraint
Thought of the maiden Enid, whom he loved,
Only, in all the world; and swiftly clear,
A great delight raced through him--dared he hope
That she would go with him? And yet to ask
For her thus hastily, without one word,
Even, of wooing--surely that were wrong,
Worse than discourteous; and yet again,
The tourney-law must needfully be observed,
If he would meet her foe. So Prince Geraint
Debated with himself, but rose at last,
And leaned across the table to the earl,
And spake with quiet manfulness: "My lord,
The lady whom alone in all the world
I love, is here, within these towers of thine,--
Thy daughter, Enid. Sooth, I never saw
Her brightness till this day; but this I know,
That truly never hath man loved a maid
As I love her; her gentleness, her grace,
Passing all others'--as a miracle
They seem to me, for earthly maid too fair.
Thou knowest me, who I am. Wherefore if thou
Couldst give me Enid to wife (though I must seem
In very truth presumptuous, that I ask
Thy one great treasure), fortuned it I lose
To-morrow battle and life, still would she be
Unsullied as before; and should I win,
Then would I take her unto Arthur's hall,
Make her my bride, and set mine every thought
To increase her worship and her happiness.
And I would love her to my length of days,
And care for her as no man else could care,
However worthier. I would excel
All men in my great love's true tenderness.
That may I promise thee. Yea, should I fail
Therein but once, then might high God requite
Me with deservéd punishment,--a shame
To knighthood and to manhood!"

                                                   "Be it so!"
Answered Earl Lyconal, "I could not find
A better husband for her--nay, nor ask
A better--than Erbin's son. So do I troth
To thee my daughter, Enid. I would say
Honour her with the honour that is due
Such excellence as hers, but knowing thee,
I am content. And now, my lord Geraint,
We must take counsel how we can restore
Mine ancient armour, weakened with disuse,
Broken, I fear. No time have we to lose;
For the night latens fast, and by the prime
Thou must be entered in the tilting-field."

                                  III

While yet the eastern hills were pale with dawn,
High in the breeze-swept turret where he lay,
Geraint arose, and armed him for the fight
In Lyconal's armour, and with steps that clanged
Upon the stone-hewed stair, betook himself
To the small courtyard to make ready his horse,
Stoutly, against the combat.

                                             And it chanced
That Enid, passing through the darksome hall,
Came to the court's low portal, where she saw
The young knight all in armour, saw his steed
Harnessed for war and ready to depart.
And Enid thought, "Is he so fain to fare?"
And thought again, "Why must he fare so soon?"
Thrilled with a shy, vague sorrow, though she knew
Not yet her love for him. And hesitant
She stood a space; then lightly stepped outside
Upon the old grey porch, and slowly said,
With wistfulness unpurposed in her tone,
"So soon to go, fair lord?"

                                          Whereat Geraint,
Uplooking, saw her there, and his young love
Leaped in his eyes at the sweet sight of her!
For framed she was in somber ivy-sprays,
And crowned with closed, white honeysuckle blooms!
And all the dawn seemed shining on her brow,
And all the court seemed brimming with a light
That had not been before! "Not to go far,
Sweet maid," replied the prince, and at her words
With joyance did his heart grow clamorous,
"But to the tilting-field."

                                    But Enid knew
Not what the speech betokened, and she felt
A wonderment exceeding, and she said,
"And wilt thou, O my lord, enter the fray?"
Then Geraint knew that she had not been told,
And he stood mute and saddened, and in shame
Of that which he intended.

                                    But behold,
Into the courtyard came Sir Lyconal
And saw the twain. Straightway he went to them,
And placed in Prince Geraint's his daughter's hand;
And while she blushed uncomprehendingly,
Startled, wide-eyed, her father said: "My child,
I have not yet informed thee that last night
I did betroth thee to this youth, who now
This morn, will fight with Eddern, our common foe.
Within the hour do we accompany him
Down to the meadow, where thyself shall be
In all men's sight the one whom best he loves.
And if he win the battle, Enid mine,
Then will he take thee unto Arthur's court
And wed thee with all honour. Cause indeed
Is there for naught save pride in this alliance,
For he is son of Erbin, Devon's king,
Geraint, cousin to Arthur. Thou has heard
Me speak full often of him in high praise."

Which saying, Lyconal passed within the hall.
Again they were alone. And Enid said
Never a word and drew her hand away.
Her face held a white wonder, and her eyes
Had depths no man might fathom. Straight and still,
Scarce seeming mortal, in the awakening hush
Of the new day she stood, the first long ray
Of the sun, bright on her temples. And Geraint,
Waiting in vain for but one word, one glance,
Looked forward to the emptiness of life
Which must, without her, be forever his;
And in the shadow of those sunless years,
Drearily put the hoping from his heart,
And curbed his longing, and very gently said:

"I see it is displeasing unto thee.
Forgive me that I thought--ay, truly thought--
Thou knewest all, perchance not disinclined.
Well am I ware (and was ware at the time!)
That I had in my mind a shameful thing
(Which still I would have done!)--to make thee mine,
Unwooed, unwon, to serve mine own delight
By taking thee, all loveless, as a bride,
Thy will not free, constrainéd. No excuse
Have I to offer but my love for thee;
Howbeit, Love himself can not excuse
The bound of my presumption. O my dear,
Now dearest when I shut me from thy smile,
Forgive me if thou canst! Yet must I crave
One little boon. Thou knowest the tourney-law,
And how, if I will battle with the man
Who hath so injured thee, I must comply
With that same law. Wherefore I ask thee, be
My lady for this day, and if I win--
And win I will or die--that very hour,
Out from the tilt-yard will I ride away,
Giving thee freedom to bestow thy heart
Upon some happier man of thine own choice,--
Unbidden, uncompelled. And afterwards
I shall not come again--I shall not see
Thee ever any more--not any more
Trouble thee with my presence, though alway
Mine eyes see nothing but thy golden hair,
Mine ears hear nothing but thy magic voice
Singing of Faerie. Only this I claim
Ever as mine--my memory of thee;
Thou wilt not bid me to put that away
And make me, to the utterance, desolate!"

And having said, he thought if he might once
Kiss just her finger-tips, he would not ask
More than that little heaven! But unto him
Amazed, not daring to believe what wrought
The strange, new, subtle marvel in her smile,
Enid turned slowly, and these words she spake:
"My love, my knight, true lover and true knight,
I love thee well," and kissed him on the lips!

And not within the soul of Prince Geraint
Had burned a stronger self-transforming flame,
Springing toward all high things, when in the blaze
Of altar-tapers, through the silent hours--
Silent, but were they stirred with presences?--
A candidate for knighthood, he had kept
The mystic vigil which should purify
And cleanse him to a fittingness to take
The strait, stern vows of Arthur's chivalry,
Than now this morn within his soul there burned,
When kneeling in a shrine not served of hands,
When kneeling in the priestless fane of Love,
Whose altar is the holiest in the world;
When from himself he was so lifted up
That all his homage towered to one fair height
And all intention streamed to one resolve--
By conduct ever nobler, knightlier,
To prove Love's grace was not too ill bestowed,
To prove, so far as any might deserve
Such grace, he would deserve it, by his life.

So they went forward to the tilting-field,
Lyconal and his countess, following them,
Geraint and Enid. And the ways were dense
With motley press of people--men-at-arms
And craftsmen of the guilds and serving-folk,
Granted a holiday; and burgesses,
Prosperous merchants clad in costly silks,
With their stout, comely wives and cherry-cheeked,
Beribboned daughters; and as white of throat
And slim of waist as maidens, their long hair
Perfumed and curled, young pages to the great,
Bright in their broideries and golden chains,
Vivid in purple stuffs and damassins.
Like to the sea, the ever-eddying throngs
Billowed and surged; and even as the sea
Is cleft by the sharp, spume-upcasting prow,
Cleft were the crowds, when haughtily and slow,
His squire behind him bearing lance and shield,
His lady on her palfrey at his side,
Upon a great destrier, caparisoned
In colour-flaunting silk, himself in mail
And pluméd helm, a knight adventurous
Passed to the tournament.

                                                And so, at length,
They saw a meadow jewelléd with the dew,
Besprent with tiny blooms of gold and white.
And there the lists were set, the barriers
Defined, and dazzling, at one end thereof,
Upon a silver rod, the sparrow-hawk
In its small, golden body caught the gold
Of the new sun, and like a tiny sun
Flamed with a golden glory athwart the field.
And round the meadow were pavilions gay
Of silks of various colours; and of these,
The midmost and the largest was of blue,
The brightest azure, and a banner streamed
Therefrom, wrought with a sparrow-hawk of gold.
And Lyconal said, "There does my nephew bide."
And who could tell the splendor of the knights,
In gorgeous pageantry around the lists
Riding with curvet, bound, and caracole?--
The paintures and the blazonings of their shields,
The colours of their surcoats, of their arms,
The tinctures of their favours, veils and sleeves,
The trappours of their steeds? There were employed
All marvelous hues and fair--scarlet and green,
Flame-coloured, indigo, and party-tints,
Deep-hearted crimson and clear azure-blue,
And much of silver, and even more of gold.
And how to tell the glitter and the show,
The flash of jewels, the glance of purple silks,
Whiteness of ermine, fulgor of cisclaton,
Shimmer of samite, sheen of woven gold,
And, fairer far, the sheen of golden hair,
Vermeil of lips, azure of laughing eyes,
Whiteness of throat, of bosom, and of brow--
The fairness of fair ladies, damsel, dame,
Matron and supple maid, where, from the tiers
Of silk-spread, cushioned seats, they viewed the field?
All was such colour, brilliance and estate,
All was such joyance and great merriment,
That Prince Geraint, beholding this array,
Thought he had seen no goodlier ordinance
At castle Lonazep, nor at Surluse
When Galahalt of the High Heart let cry
The seven-days tournament, whose rumor drew
Kings from afar and princes from out-isles.

But even while his admiration paid
To each detail the praise well-merited,
Still he remembered how this lavishness,
This pomp, this many-hued magnificence,
Was of an ingrate's giving, and he turned
And spake to Lyconal: "Most noble earl,
All this which in itself is admirable,
But which the treason of the usurper stains,
Is thine of right, and shall be thine again,
Saving I die."

                        Then to the barriers
Came pursuivants, and shrilly blew to field.
Forthright, by opposite ways, into the lists
Two squadrons rode, whereof in one were ranged
All errant knights, who, journeying from afar,
Sought to increase their worship and renown;
While from the other, marshalled in serried ranks,
The vassal-knights of Eddern fronted them,
Though he himself came not. Which noticing,
Lyconal said, "Prince, take no part in this;
Await my nephew's entrance." As he spake,
With mighty shock of battle the lines met
In middles of the field. There many a spear
To-shivered, many a horse plunged riderless,
And headlong many a knight was hurled to earth,
Among the broken flowers and sodden grass,
Beneath the trampling hoofs of wounded steeds.
Hither and thither flowed the battle-tide,
One party now ascendant, and again,
The other; so, with victory pendulous,
They fought unceasingly two hours and more,
Until at last, disparply, overborne,
The errant knights were driven from the field,
And Eddern's men had triumphed.

                                             And once more,
After the exultation died away,
The heralds blew to field, and instantly
Fell an expectant hush. And Prince Geraint
Leaped lightly to the saddle, and his lance
Placed in the rest. Then Enid came and stood
Beside him, and unbound the folded width
Of silk which was her wimple, and with hands
That trembled, gave it him, speaking so low
Her words he just could hear, "O knight of mine,
I have naught else to give thee; wilt thou wear
This as my favour?" Joyously the prince,
Binding about his arm the glistening silk,
Answered, and gently: "See! I wear it here
Upon my sword-arm. It will render me
Invincible, for Love empowers it;
Though my foe have the strength of twenty men,
He hath not strength to overcome me now!"

Straightway behold, forth from the azure tent
Rode Eddern, son of Nudd. Azure and gold
Were his accoutrements, his shield's device,
A golden sparrow-hawk. His greaves were light
Yet strong, and highly polished; triple steel
Was woven in the mail which covered him;
And from his burnished helm uprose a crest
Of three bright-yellow plumes.

                                          With arching neck
And all of stately slowness, his destrier,
In yellow sendal housed, bordured with blue,
Stepped through the lists, and great was the acclaim
Attending the knight's progress. Lance in rest,
He rode the meadow's length and drew in rein
Beside the shafts of silver. Then to him,
Upon her fair, white palfrey, with the dwarf
Walking close to her stirrup, came the one
Whom best he loved, and Eddern took her hand
And spake that all might hear: "The loveliest
Of women art thou; wherefore, take down the prize,
This sparrow-hawk of gold. It is the meed
Of thy surpassing beauty. If any will
Forfend thee, he must answer with his life!"

But Geraint interposed: "Not unto thee,
Lady, belongs the prize, for if it be
The meed of beauty, then must it belong
Unto this maiden fairer far than thou--
Fairer, more courteous, and lovelier!--
And that will I maintain with my heart's blood!"

And Eddern looked upon him in amaze.
He did not recognize him; for who would
Have recognized the youth of yesterday,
Clad then with satin and with purple silk,
In this tall knight in ancient, battered arms?
And in that first glance seeing but the arms--
The uncouth helm, the ventail worn and old,
The rusted hauberk, with its broken rings,
The cumbrous greaves, the antique, dinted shield
Wherefrom long since the painture had been rased,
Swiftly his wonderment passed into scorn
And scornfully a sneer formed on his lips.
But, on an afterthought, looking beyond
To see what lady this too reckless youth
Had vaunted fairer, met his cousin's eyes--
His cousin Enid's !--met Sir Lyconal's
Bitter, accusing gaze, saw Lyconal's wife,
And understood it was their champion
Who challenged him! And with a violent wave
Of anger crimsoning his face, he cried,
"Then guard thee from thy death!"

                                             Whereat they drew
Apart an acre's space, feutred their spears,
Clapped spurs unto their steeds, and with the sound
Of thunder melled together, that the lance
In each man's hand brake even to the haft.
Then Lyconal served Geraint a second spear,
And so the dwarf served Eddern, and again
In onslaught furious, with the fearful shock
Of warring winds, they met, and yet again,
Three sets of lances shivering to bits.
But for the fourth encounter, the good earl
Bare to Geraint a spear of wondrous strength,
With a great, flawless shaft and a strong point,
Well-tempered and well-sharpened: "Prince, behold
The lance I held what day I was made knight,
Many long years ago. It may endure
Where others fail; take it and strike him down!"

Aiming at Eddern's shield, Geraint spurred hard,
And countering, again his foeman's spear
To splinters flew, but Lyconal's lance held fast,
And cleft the shield in twain and brake the mail
And burst the girths, that down from his destrier,
Saddle and all, Eddern was dashed to earth.

But he rose, raging. Unto him Geraint,
Quickly dismounting, casting shield away
That he might have no vantage in the fight,
Rushed, and each drew his sword, and fiercely smote
Upon the other's helm, that sparks of fire
Sprang from the clashing of the steel on steel
In the grim rain of blows. With stroke and foyne,
Tracing, traversing, now on the right hand,
Now on the left, they fought like more than men,
And neither could prevail, so equally
Were they twain matched. Their helms were split and crushed,
Their ventails rent; their hauberks, all to-hacked,
Hung on them in long shreds; their arms grew faint
With their unceasing travail, and their sight
Dim, through a mist of blood. Then suddenly
Eddern lunged mightily, and smote Geraint
So hard upon the temple that the steel
Of his helm, sundering, a flake of steel
Was riven away, and only the thin coiffe
Protected the brain, and the descending sword
Cleft wide the mail upon the prince's side
More than a hand's breadth. Giddily then Geraint
Reeled from the blow, and Enid tried to speak
But could not for the horror, and of the shout
Of Lyconal, "O vengeance for the Queen!"
Geraint heard not a word. But while his ears
Were filled with roarings, and above his eyes
A darkness writhed, and all of life and love
Seemed slipping, slipping from him, in one glimpse
Narrowed by closing lids, upon his arm
He saw the silken favour given of love,
And all it meant to him flashed through his mind;
And for one final effort he called to him
The fullness of his strength, and raised his sword
High, high above his head and with such force
Smote on the other's helm that the sword crashed
Through helm and coiffe of steel, through skin and flesh,
And stayed not till it wounded even the bone--
And as a dead man falls, fell Eddern to earth.

Then while the knights and ladies gathered round
With sighs and exclamations, Prince Geraint
Unlaced his foeman's ventail, and the air
Drew Eddern from his swooning. And the prince
Spake to Sir Lyconal, "My lord, behold
Thy strong oppressor. Shall he live or die?
Unto thy will I give him." And the earl,
Long-looking on his brother's only son,
Made answer: "I have thought if ever came
The means to slay him, with rejoicing should
I send him down to death. Now it is come,
And lo, I can not. For a ghost is here
'Twixt me and my revengement. Seeing him,
Why must I see my brother? Let him live,
So he make reparation!"

                                       "Son of Nudd,
Eddern," said Prince Geraint, "thy life is spared
Upon thy promise to perform two things;
Refuse, thou diest." But the fallen man moaned,
"Die? Live or die? What matter?--I am shamed!"
"First, thou shalt render to Sir Lyconal,
Thine uncle, what is his--all goods and gold,
Lands and retainers. On this very field
Shalt thou thus reinstate him. Then straight-way,
With lady and with dwarf thou shalt ride forth
To Arthur's hall, before Queen Guenevere
To cast thyself, such full amends to make
As she may adjudge fitting. Marvel not!
Dost thou forget how but two days agone,
Beside the Wood of Dean, thou didst allow
Thy dwarf to strike the damsel of the Queen,
And through her, to insult the Queen herself?
Dost thou forget the knight who also had
A blow from thy slave's hand? I am that knight,
But with mine own revenge am I content.
For that outrage thou goest to Geuenevere,
Saying Geraint hath sent thee. Yea or nay?"
And Eddern, son of Nudd, in halting speech
Replied, "So be it! These will I perform;
Though why I hardly know, saving it be,
To make my shame the greater, even while shamed,
Life waxes sweet!"

                              And tottering he rose,
The red mire clinging to his golden plumes,
And swaying with the weakness of his hurt,
Made proclamation that unto the earl,
His uncle, he did render lands and goods--
All whereof he had reaved him--and ordained
That all his knights do homage to the earl
And be his vassals true; and kneeling low,
Within Sir Lyconal's hands he placed his own
Limp, bloodless hands, and sware him fealty.
Then called he for his horse and rode away,
His dwarf in sullen silence at his side,
His lady, much lamenting. And he fared
Unto Caerlleon, and the Queen was kind
And pardoned him and healed him,--ay, did more;
For seeing well that in him was a force
Of manhood truly great, though evil life
Had warped it to misusage, Guenevere,
By ever-gentle tact and courtesy,
And high ensample of fair chivalry,
Won Eddern to a hatred of the old,
Fierce lawlessness he once had revelled in;
And though the task was difficult, and the way
Fraught with discouragements, he grew at last
Into a greater Eddern, no less brave
And resolute than before, but loving truth
And right and gentleness,--a man esteemed
Both by his fellows of the Table Round,
And by the King. And Arthur stablished him
As governor in the wild, northern land--
A post full honourable and perilous--
To guard those distant marches from the swarms
Of pagans who looked longing from the wave.
And what time in an after year the King
Sailed over sea against the lord of Rome
Lucius the Evil, in that mighty host
Went Eddern, none more trusted of his Prince;
And there, upon Cotentin's bloody field
He fought, and fighting fell, and was no more.

But for that night Sir Lyconal proclaimed
Within his fortress a fair festival,
The lordliest the land had ever seen.
To this were all folk welcome, were they born
In high or low estate--in gentle's hall
Or peasant's cottage--all alike should share
In one great merry-making which the earl
Would hold to honour that young knight from whom
He had his reinstatement.

                                 And it chanced
In the slant sunshine of late afternoon,
That Prince Geraint, to whose wounds, had been laid
Soft salves and healing ointments, stood within
The shadow of the battlements and watched
The throngs of townsmen in the streets below
At every corner gathered, and well guessed
Their eager talk of what that day had seen.

Thither to him came noble Lyconal,
Attired in crimson, overwrought with gold.
Bright was his face with happiness, and it seemed
Full twenty years had from his shoulders slipped,
So blithely straight, his carriage. "My lord earl,"
Said Prince Geraint, "it does content me well
To see thee in thy properness of state.
And Enid--where is she?" Ere answering,
Lyconal smiled, "She will array herself
To do thee honour, prince." Whereat Geraint
Smiled also but said earnestly, "My lord,
I pray thee ask will she first speak with me."
Lyconal went with that request, and soon
Came Enid, and upon her arm she bare
The robe she wished to don,--a wondrous silk
Of shaded blue, with such dense broidery
Of tiny silver flowers it had the sheen
Of moonlight on deep waters; and she showed
The wonders of the dress, dwelling thereon
With a shy pride and gladness. But Geraint,
With eyes for her face only, where the play
Of rose upon the white and white on rose
Wrought beauty ever new and marvelous,
Took both her hands in his and spake to her:

"Belovéd, wouldst thou think me rude, unkind,
If I should say, 'Wear not this glittering gown,--
Not to the feast thy father holds this eve,
Neither to-morrow, going to Arthur's hall.
Wear rather this, thy satiny robe of white,
Though old it be, and worn?' Nay, do not look
So grieved, so woebegone. Though I must seem
Capricious, strangely-humoured, pleasure me,
My Enid, in this matter. I would have
The Queen, and the Queen only, of her grace
To clothe thee in arrayment sumptuous
First on that day when I may call thee bride.
Thou art my love, the Queen, a most true friend,
As she will be thy friend on knowing thee:
I trust ye twain will love each other well.
To her hands would I take thee, by her hands
To be attired full fairly. And again,
I love thee in this garb; more fair art thou
To me in this white vest than didst thou wear
A gown of woven gold. In this I saw
Thee first and knew I loved thee, and in this,
Truly it seems to me thou hast a charm--
Though what it is I find no words to tell--
Thou couldst not have in a more stately robe.
At court much must be different; but here,
Seeing thee thus, all white and rose and gold,
And thinking how I fould thee, how I heard
Thee singing in the sunset's witchery,
I sometimes think I have won not a maid
Of mortal fairness and of mortal love,
But a white fay from Faerie; for the fays,
Like thee, have hair of gold, colour as bright
And clearly delicate, lips red like thine,
Voice of the same sweet music, and they wear
White always, like to this. My wish it is
To keep thy faery whiteness while I may;
Belovéd, wilt thou pleasure me in this way?"

And willingly she put the gown away.
And by the prince's side, at that great feast
Sat, robed in ancient white, the hawk of gold
Before her, and a light within her eyes:
And all men said she was the fairest there.

                                  IV

When the next day lay bright upon the land,
Toward undorne waxing, the farewells were said--
Farewells, with smiles and tears. And then Geraint
Placed Enid on her palfrey, white as milk,
Her father's parting gift; and so, while high
Upon the parapets to watch them go
Stood Lyconal and his wife, below them grouped
The lords and ladies of the earl's household,
Waving gay scarves in lingering farewell,
They twain did ride away, and it was June,
And all the world was bathed in molten gold
Of June's young sunshine. And with golden hair
Netting the sunlight, with eyes luminous
By reason of the brightness in her soul,
In vest of white upon her milk-white steed,
Unto her lover Enid was as one
But lately come from Faerie,--far too fair
For this old world. And ever must he think
In a sheer, humble wonder, "Lo, her eyes!
Her smile, her smile! These are the totaling
Of all my life! That these should be for me!"
They went another way than that o'er which
Geraint had followed Eddern when he came.
Dividing the deep verdance of the hills,
The road ran on, so hedged with the gay broom's
Bright-blossoming gold, it might have been the path
To some land of enchantment,--even that
Which old romances say forever leads
To the far Plain of Pleasure. Larkspurs reared
Their columned purple, wilding roses trailed
Their pink blooms by the way. Never the sky
Had been of hue more wonderful--a dome
Of pale, translucent sapphire, in whose vault
Glittered those ice-white mansions which the clouds
Do build for Summer's dwelling, many-towered
And hundred-turreted, with argent, halled,
With the sun's gold, emportaled. And Geraint
Remembered him of Launfal, and the fay,
And how they rode to Faerie; and he said,
"Like Launfal and his love in olden time,
My Enid, do we ride to that far land
Of every rainbow's ending?" But her eyes
Were grave, her smile half-wistful, and she said,
"Triamour am I not, mine own Geraint."

And they came to a meadow, where a stream--
A rivulet a boy could step across--
Glinted in fluent sunfire between banks
Now darksome under drooping willow-boughs,
Now with white daisies bordured, and the frail,
Tremulous blue of harebells, swinging light
Upon thread-slender stems. The meadow-grass,
Lush, feathery, sweet-scented, bowed beneath
The pressure of the wind's invisible
But audible wings--motion so rhythmical
That all before the riders was a sea
Of undulating green, save when, at times,
Ghost-grey upon the greeness, glidingly
Floated the shadows of the summer clouds.
And so, through multiple play of light and shade
Fared Enid and Geraint, and as they passed
Across the meadow, somewhere in the blue
Above, or in the emerald at their feet,
A lark sang joyously.

                                 And when the sun
Burned in the zenith, and the slumberous noon
Weighted the world, and a fine, aureate mist
Of straightly-falling radiance, curtain-wise
Hung between earth and sky, in its deep glow
So veiled the land that all things were transformed
To a strange, bright illusion, beautiful
As that bright Isle of Summer which is seen
Sometimes on phantom wave-line, rested they
Beneath a mighty ash-tree, at the edge
Of a great forest. And of white and gold
Was woven the flower-carpet of the wood,
And white and gold was Enid; and Geraint,
Watching the sifted sunlight in her hair,
Dreamed of the Courts of Faerie, and he said,
"O Princess of the Vale of Avalon,
What splendor is upon thee?" But her smile
Was grave, and her eyes wistful, and she said,
"Splendor of Avalon would it were, my lord!"

And they rode forward through the forest-land.
Often by stately avenues they passed
To noble parks and spacious pleasaunces;
And otherwhile, by paths of bending fern,
Entered close, humid coverts, alder-screened
To a perpetual twilight, where they saw
Tall, white and graceful lilies, like young saints
Sheltered in shadowed cloisters. Thus they fared
Until in lengthening shades the undertide
Journeyed to even, and the west grew flame
With the sun's setting, when, in a fair glade,
The lovers checked their steeds, and with one thought,
Wordless before the beauty, watched the sky
Fade from its gorgeous purple and its rose,
Through pinks and amethysts, with paling gleams
Of opal lights, through pearls and lavenders,
Into dove-grey and dully-brooding blue;
While to the south, above dim barbacans
Of vapors violet, one great star shone,
A glimmer of red gold.

                                 So with the awe
Of that wide loveliness possessing them,
While all around the blossom-redolent dusk
Spread its enchantments, and a throstle's song
Was poured upon the evening in a flood
Of music almost palpable, they came
Unto a forest hermitage--a pile
Of low, grey walls, laved by a mountain rill,
And topped by ancient trees wherethrough the wind
Breathed with insistent harmonies. Therein
They parted for the night, and in her heart
Enid knew well, as knew Geraint in his,
That never would a day of such delight
Be theirs again,--never, for all their love--
That never such a day could be again.

When the next afternoon was but half-spent,
Below them to the south, they saw the line
Of vaporous blue which marked the Severn Sea;
And nearer, in the green vale of the Usk's
Broad, sinuous flood, white-shining in the sun,
Beheld Caerlleon's heaven-yearning towers.

Then they went forward gladly, and in haste,
And heard a sound of harping. In the wood
Walked Alarin the harper, and a knight
Was with him of the name of Honolan,
Famed for his fine, fair hair; and by a strain
Of blood, much thinned and weakened though it was,
This Honolan was kinsman to Geraint.
Yet closest kinsmanhood had never served
To make him love Geraint; for envious
He was of heart, and that King Arthur held
The prince high in his favour, honouring him
In measure to the knightliness he showed,
Was ample reason for Sir Honolan
To hate Geraint in secret, and to hope,
Above all other hopes, to work him woe.
And yet, until a time should come, he kept
His malice so concealed, he was so smooth,
So silken-soft of manner, free with smiles,
And traitorly fine-spoken, that no one,
Geraint the least of all, could dream him false.

As these two loitered down the forest-path,
Around a sudden turn, where the thick sward
Muffled their coming, Enid and the prince
Rode through a patch of sunlight. And as one
Bewitched, at the white beauty of the maid
Alarin stared, and all thought of his song
Fled from him, and unknowing what he did,
He struck so roughly the taut music-strings
That whirring shrill one snapped beneath his hand.
Which, Honolan perceiving, smiled, and bowed
To cover that too evil smile, and spake
With all of joy and fervor to Geraint:
"Welcome, my lord! Thy coming gladdens me
Past my poor powers of speech. We have all heard
The story of thy prowess, from the lips
Of one who now is yolden, and retired,
At the Queen's command, into a holy house
Until his wounds be healed. Hearing the tale,
Who did rejoice as I,who am thy kin?
But one desire had I, this hour fulfilled--
To see thee in thy triumph, and to say
Thy pride therein is not so great as mine.
And that, when seeing thee, he sees also
The fairest lady eyes have ever seen,
Doubles the joy of thy friend, Honolan."

To whom made answer gaily Prince Geraint:
"Fair-spoken ever! Knew I not thy heart,
Good kinsman, I might think thy words too fair;
But in my knowledging they ring with truth.
Thy joy is timely, cousin. I am blest
Beyond all dream of blessing! I am loved
By Enid, daughter of Earl Lyconal."
And while bowed Honolan, Geraint spake on
To Alarin, who silent stood apart,
"And thou, Sir Stitcher of the Threads of Song,
Make me a song of bridals, for this night
I wed the one rare maiden of the world!"
Whereto with slow speech Alarin replied,
"To sing at others' bridals, fair, my lord,
I think will ever be my lot in life.
Yet doubt not! Thou shalt have a goodly song."

Then they went onward to Caerlleon's gate,
The four in company; and when the watch,
Stationed upon the ramparts of the King,
Beheld their near approach, the news was sent
To Guenevere that Prince Geraint did come,
And with him was a lady passing fair.
And with a noble following, the Queen
Went forth to meet and greet them, and with words
Of gentleness and courtesy she gave
To Enid welcome as a friend to be.

And that day, for the wedding, Guenevere
Clothed Enid in the garments of a bride,
With gold and jewels upon her, and in her hair
Jewels and gold. Yet now though like the sun
For beauty and for brightness, Enid prayed
That her old, satin vest be not destroyed;
For thinking how Geraint had held it dear,
She would preserve it always. And the Queen
Smiled understandingly and had the gown
Laid in a chest of cedar.

                                          And that night
Before Saint Aaron's altar they were wed.
And afterwards, in the great banquet-hall,
At the gay bridal-feasting, Alarin,
True to his promise, sang a goodly song,
Which song he called Love's House, and it was this:

"Lo, Love hath builded him a stately hall,
  Whereof the ceiling's arch he fashioneth
  Of imagery so delicate a breath
Might blur it all to discord; on the wall
The ancient arras, pictured folds a-fall,
  With voice of myriad lovers murmureth,
Whose sighs and smiles are warp and woof withal.

"And to irradiate that noble room,
  The lamp of Purity, with steadfast fire,
  Forever shadowlessly burneth higher,
Fed by sweet oil of Fair Thought, whose perfume
Balmier is than orient amber-hume,
  More subtle than what fragrances suspire
From moon-white flowers of Faerie full in bloom.

"Lo, Love hath made for him an hallowed place,
  Whereof the portal is of beauty rare;
  The door-trees are of Constancy, more fair,
Finer than finest porphyry; a grace,
Passing all earthly fulgence, from the face
  Of Truth is shed, from that high lintel, where
He standeth, kingly crowned, with crystal mace.

"And at the threshold, which is Sympathy,
  Two staves of odorous sandal, opposite
  Each unto other, without light belit,
Do bear two banners of bright blazonry,
Vermeil and green, and in charactery
  Of gold, the vermeil hath upon it writ
Time, but the green one hath Eternity.

"Such is Love's temple. Whoso would intrude
  With forceful foot and portment orgulous,
  And speech imperative and clamorous,
Love doth outcast, for never manner rude
He suffereth. But unto him imbued
  With all humility, he sayeth thus:
'Enter, O Heart, into beatitude!'"

                      THE TRIAL OF ENID

                                  I

Three years had sped, three years of cloudless joy;
And still Geraint and Enid at the court
Of Arthur lingered, happy in their love
Which had known never failing, but become
More wonderful with every piling day,
And in the fair renown that each had gained.
For as the bud is to the perfect bloom,
So was the Enid of that earlier charm
Of Faerie, and the new grace of a maid,
Unto the Enid of this latelier time,
Blossomed to more, not less, of loveliness;
Enid, by years ennobled, on whom was set
The light of a great beauty, and the crown
Of gracious, ever-stainless womanhood,
Of whom all men said honour as a wife
And praise as a fair woman, and whom the Queen
Held as the first and closest of her friends,
Loving her even as Geraint had wished.
And Arthur loved Geraint, who in these years,
Frequenting knightly jousts and tournaments,
And all encounters of the lance and shield
And singing sword, ever from all forthbare
The golden eagles on the field of green
Victorious, until a name was his
Upon men's tongues, of the Unvanquished Knight,
The Prince of Many Battles, and his deeds
The length and breadth of Britain were retold,
And swelling like a wave, his fame was flung
Against the outermost marches of the land.

Then in the fourth year, at the Whitsuntide
Again at old Caerlleon-upon-Usk,
King Arthur held his court, and there to him,
Upon a day, rode two men full of years,
Entered the audience-hall, and bowed and said:
"Hail to thee, Lord of Britain! We are come
From thy true vassal, Erbin, King of Devon;
He greets thee as his nephew and his lord,
And asks thy hearkening to his word of need
Which we declare. The feebleness of age
Is on the king, and knowing this, the chiefs
Whose lands do neighbor his are insolent
And covetous grown, and with impunity
Harass his borders, and lay waste his towns,
And ever set their boundaries farther forth.
Erbin is old, and who hath dread of him?
But Prince Geraint, his son, is strong with youth,
A mighty warrior whose wide fame is flown
Over the face of the kingdom. Wherefore, Sire,
Permit the son of Erbin to return
Into his father's realm, that so may be
Back-driven the fierce aggressor, the desire
Of the covetous, plucked from him, and restored
The boundaries of the kingdom. This, the prayer
Which Erbin sends thee in his hour of need."

To which said Arthur: "And the prayer is just.
And though, for mine own sake, I would have wished
The word to come for some less glorious knight
Than Prince Geraint, whose valiance hath no peer,
The justice of the plea none can deny.
Go ye, take food and wine, refresh yourselves
Of your fatigues, and this same day return,
And Prince Geraint shall follow you to-morn."
Joyfully the ambassadors retired.

Then summoning the prince, King Arthur told
The message sent from Devon; and Geraint;
Although regretful that he must forego
The noble fellowship of that fair court,
And, before all, the daily intimacy
And close communion with the King he loved,
Looked to his duty and his father's wrongs,
And cheerfully made provision to depart.
And the next morning at the hour of prime,
While the court cried farewells, and Geuenevere
Made sorrow for the going of the friend
Whom best she loved, forth from Caerlleon's gates
Rode Prince Geraint and Enid, and with them,
A gallant retinue of five score knights;
Among them such as Sir Bedvere the Brave,
Who, in an after year, beyond the sea
Fighting for Arthur through the lines of Rome,
At Bayonne found a tomb; and Peredur,
The seventh son of Evrawc of the North,
A breaker of enchantments; bold Sir Howel,
Kinsman of Arthur, unto whom was given
Lordship in Brittany; that noble knight,
The greatest of the sons of Pellinore,
Sir Lamorak de Galis, to be slain
By Gawain's evil brethren traitorly;
And, of a semblant frank and debonair,
Hiding an envious treason in his heart
Which yet had found no outlet, Honolan.

Never a fairer host was seen to pass
Over the Severn, journeying towards the south.
Two days they traveled over hills and slopes,
Through forests and wide laundes, by shining streams,
And on the third day, in the blaze of noon,
Rode into Carnant, walled and towered and spired,
King Erbin's capital city, where he lay
In a strong fortress till his son should come.
Then were bells rung in gladness and the folk
Shouted and wept for joy, and crowded close
To touch the housings of Geraint's destrier,
Crying that their own prince was come again.
And through streets hung with tapestries and scarves
Of coloured silks, and banners of the king,
And strown with reeds and mint and iris-flower,
Geraint and Enid with their train of knights
Passed to the fortress, where King Erbin gave
To all a royal welcome, to his son
Honours and blessings, and to that son's wife,
Whom then first he beheld, a father's love,
Not only for her peerlessness of charm,
But for her noble clarity of soul;
And ever he loved her as his own fair child,
And ever in her he had exceeding pride.

Then upon Erbin's foes Geraint made war,
Swift and retributive, and vanquished them,
Back-drove the fierce aggressor, the desire
Of the covetous plucked from him, and restored
The boundaries of the kingdom. And with peace
Came order and prosperity where had been
Confusion and disaster, and the realm
Felt the protection of the governing hand,
And knew the kingly blood was warm again.
And Erbin, of the great pride which he had
In his son's warriorhood, transferred to him
Daily such added power that he became
Virtually, if not in name, the king,
And vassals from far corners of the land
Journeyed to do him homage as their lord.
And like a generous man, Geraint enriched
His friends, his nobles, and his gathering court
With jewels and arms and steeds from Araby,
And won a name for largesse, and renown
As a most princely knight and knightly prince.
And he let cry great tournaments, wherein
He battled as the least conspicuous knight,
And often masked his shield, that he might have
No vantage from his name or from his fame,
And all who came against him overbare;
And when, at each day's closing, pursuivants
Would bid the disguised champion unhelm,
That so the victor of the field be known,
Behold, it was Geraint! Thus, while his friends
Rejoiced in his unfaltering force and skill,
And Enid gloried in her matchless knight,
And Arthur, in his palace to the north,
Heard, and was gladdened by the noble tale,
The prince's fame increased, until at last,
In all the Devon-realm remained no man
Who dared oppose the arm of such renown.
And then a change grew over Prince Geraint.

For as the mantle of the months was spread
In riper, tawnier colours, and the grass
At every roadside whitened with the fire
And wasting weight of summer, in his halls
Geraint began to linger easefully,
For a time seeking minstrelsy and games;
And found a pleasure in the tumblers' skill,
Their leapings and their twistings, in the tilts
At chess and tric-trac, and a new delight
In the melodious languour of the viol,
And psaltery and cithern, harp and rote,
To which, in lowered voices, minstrels sang
The lays of lovers of the long ago.
And afterwards, resurgent, with each day
More mighty, in his soul so strong a tide
Of love for his fair wife began to rise
That all his life was compassed by that love,
And merged and utterly resolved in love--
With Enid only, knew he any joy,
To Enid only, did he give a thought,
And all his hours he spent with her alone.
And for the sake of her companionship,
His harpers and his tumblers and his games
He heard and saw no more; the noble sport
Of hunting, and the knightly exercise
Of joust and tournament he did forgo;
And for his nobles' good will had no care,
Forsook his princely duties, and turned away
The hearts of all the host of all his court.

Wherefore, while over-fast the summer aged
To autumn's pathos of impermanence,
While in the fretful winds of afternoon,
Recurrently, a crescent minor wailed
And died away and swelled and wailed again,
Beginning to intone the time-old dirge
For all the beauty that ere long must die,
Like to the wind, but with more rapid wing,
A rumor breathed across King Erbin's realm,
At first the merest whisper, of which none
Could tell the origin, save Honolan;
But passed from ear to ear, from tongue to tongue,
Gathering to more than whisper, at the last
Blew with such violence that every churl
On Erbin's farthest marches knew the tale,--
How Prince Geraint had turned him recreant,
How all his glorious force had fallen from him,
How, from excessive love for his fair wife,
The Prince of Many Battles had declined
Into a silken lingerer in a bower,
Sunk in a shameful lethargy, and content.
And in unlowered voices, men began
To jeer and scoff at him, to make his name
A jest and soon a hissing, and to cry
Out against Enid as the cause of all.
And Arthur, in his palace to the north,
Heard, and lamented for his peerless knight;
And Erbin heard and sorrowed for his son;
And Enid heard and saddened for her lord,
Tormented by unreasoning self-reproach;
But Prince Geraint heard nothing, lost in love.

And Erbin said to Enid on a day,
"It is not thy will, daughter, that our prince
Forsake his name and fame for love of thee?"
"Nay, sire," said Enid, sadly, "I do swear
Nothing more hateful is to me than this."
"Upon thee, then, my daughter, does it rest
To tell the prince what people say of him,
And rouse him to his knighthood once again.
From thy lips will he hear it gentliest."
And Enid bowed her head in mute assent.
And with each dawn that followed, she resolved
To tell Geraint all ere the night should come;
But such a dread she had of paining him,
And such a delicacy of saying aught
That would mean disapproval or dispraise,
That each night fell to find all still untold.
But what with the great love she had for him,
And her great dolour for his lost renown,
What with the anguish of her self-reproach,
And the continual conflict with herself,
The brightness of the colour in her cheek
Faded to pallor, and the shining light
Of joy passed from her face, and to her eyes
A shadow came, darkening day by day.

This change, so causeless seeming, Prince Geraint
Perceived, and at it wondered, much distressed.
Yet thinking that perchance some proof of love
Had been by him omitted, which, though slight,
Might be dear to a woman, he took pains
To be still more the lover, to devise
A hundred new ways to insure her joy;
But maugre all his care--nay, as he thought,
The more for all his care--he saw his wife
Sadden and whiten with each added day.

At last one undertide, when the long beams
Of sunlight, slanting through the pallid gold
Of leaves just touched with autumn, on the floor
Of Enid's bower a patterned shadow cast
Through the tall, painted casement, as they sat
And watched the shifting of the coloured glow,
And she was pale and quiet, speaking not,
He rose and came to her, and took the face
He loved between his hands, and said to her:
"So sad, so pale, my Enid! Why so sad?
Thou knowest how well I love thee. Enid--thou--
Dost thou not love me, Enid, any more?"
To which she answered, "Yea, so very well!"
Yet drew away, and could not look at him,
For in her heart she thought: " Do I love well?
If I loved well would I not have the strength
To tell him what the people say of him,
Even, though doing so, I wounded sore?
True love is strong; my love is weak, weak, weak!
I fear my love is not as true love is!"
For this, her eyes were downcast, and her face
Avert, her manner conscious and constrained.
But to Geraint, who could not understand,
There came an apprehension undefined,
A sharp and sudden pang of formless dread;
And with her words he was unsatisfied.
And half in sorrow, half in wrath, he turned
And left the bower, and while the palace-folk
Gave silent place before him and exchanged
Curious glances at his gloomy brow,
He passed to a fair pleasuance, cool and green,
Hedged in with hawthorns and with beeches white;
And there, upon the velvet of the turf,
In a fierce restlessness paced to and fro.

Thither came Honolan, most curious
Of all the curious watchers in the hall.
"My lord," he said, "I know not if I come
Welcome or most unwelcome, but I saw
The pain upon thy countenance and feared
Some heavy evil had befallen thee;
And having thy well-being at my heart
Always, I thought to learn what woe is thine."
To which Geraint made answer with a groan
Only, saying no word; but unabashed,
Sir Honolan continued: "Nay, my prince,
Why keep thy grief from me? Less hardly borne
Is sorrow that is shared with some true friend.
And am I not of kindred soul with thee
Even as of one blood? Shall kindred hopes
And dreams not make me worthy of thy trust?"
"I fain would think so," answered Prince Geraint;
"Yea, I do think so, friend. But even to thee
I am not certain should I speak of this--
And yet, why not? I am half-mad with doubts,
Questions which have no answers. What hath chanced
To make my wife so changed--so wan of hue,
So saddened of demeaour? More than life,
Than all life gives, I love her, as God knows!
And in all ways have sought to prove my love!
Why do I hear her sighing in the day?
Why have I heard her weeping in the night?
What reason can there be for such a change?"
Then smiled Sir Honolan, and in the smile
Was that at which Geraint cried suddenly,
"Thou knowest the reason! Speak! What dost thou know?"
But with a feigned disquiet, Honolan,
Stammering, said, "My lord, command me not!
I do but hazard guesses--wide, perchance.
I pray thee ask me nothing." But Geraint
In one great fear returned, "What knowest thou?"
"Nothing I know," said Honolan, "but this--
If I must speak--this any one would think:
When ladies weep, whose lords are by their side,
Whose lords, unwavering in tender care,
Do set their every hope to pleasing them,
To gratifying each small wish unnamed--
In such fair circumstance when ladies weep,
Perchance--I only say perchance, my lord,--
They then beweep one absent."

                                                And Geraint
Stopped in his restless motion like a man
Who, in the rout of battle, feels the quarrel
Drive to the heart and turn him into stone.
And it came to him he should slay this man,
Like any unclean thing that drags its slime
Across the good, the bright, the beautiful;
And to his shame he knew he could not slay,
For both his arms were nerveless and unpowered,
His will, no stronger than a broken reed;
And well he realized that this was due
Not to the words in their self-singleness,
But to the fact they closed so perfectly
With that fierce, formless doubt, which, having had
No import and no object, now had both.

"Thou meanest then--" and like a weight the pain
Dragged at his speech--"What meaning, Honolan?
Stay, tell me not! I know too well, too well!
And though because thy lips could form those words,
I think I should have slain thee with my hands,
I must learn more. Who is the man she loves?
Can thy guess cover him?"

                                          "Mayhap not, lord;
But I can name thee one who sighs for her,
As I dare swear,--one who in Arthur's court
Is called the favorite minstrel, Alarin
The Faery-son. Hear while I tell thee that
To which mine eyes were witness. Dost recall
How, when returning from the very quest
Which gave thee thy fair lady, in the wood
Beyond Caerlleon, Alarin and I
Met you two coming? Well I call to mind
Thy joy in love and in thy joy mine own!--
Three years agone, three years! But I delay:
When 'round the sudden turn of the wood-path,
Ye twain came riding through the sunlit glade,
At that first sight of thy sweet lady's face,
How tense and hueless did our minstrel grow,
Like one who hath a vision in his soul!
How he did stare and stare! How pluck the strings
Of his forgotten harp until one brake,
Whirring, beneath his hand! What look was his!--
Oh, never men look so save they do love!
All this, my prince, saw I to my great grief.
Ay, and the song he sang that very night
When ye were wed! He had sung otherwise
Before my bridal-board, I warrant thee!
But thou, my lord, so deep in thy new love--
How couldst thou see the double meaning in it?--
Love's House, built unto him, not unto thee!"

But all the while a passion of remorse
Tortured Geraint; the words that fell so fast
And glibly evil from the other's tongue,
The very name of him toward whom had leaped
His jealousy's first impulse--though he heard,
He heard them as far sounds that matter not,
So dwarfed their brief significance was made
By his own sense of overwhelming shame,
In listening to what was surely false,
In hearkening to a slander on his wife.
And desperately he answered, like a man
Who would convince himself before all men:
"It can not be! She is too good, too fair,
Too gentle to be touched by any sin!
Mire could not cling to her white purity!
We wrong her, I and thou, by dreaming it.
But mine is the immeasurable shame--
I am her husband and her lover too--
I never should have hearkened to a tale
Wherein truth can not be!"

                                                "Yea, even so,"
Said Honolan, "I have not called it truth;
I were as grieved as thou to have it proved.
My love for thee, and thine insistence, lord,
Only, urged me to speak and tell thee that
Which at the least is certain--he loves her;
That she loves him I make no certainty,
And fain were I to think it most untrue.
But this I know, as thou must also know,
That three years work a change in many a dame,
And harp-skilled fingers and a tuneful voice
And words of faery melody have power
To bring the marriage-vow to pliancy;
And singing she loves always, as all know.
How often he sang to her! I have marked
At the great festivals how, when he sang,
He might have been alone with her, so plain
It was the song was meant for her alone!
But thou, my lord, saw'st nothing, being in love."

And when Geraint said no word in reply,
Gazing in moody silence at the ground,
Sir Honolan went on, his voice more low,
More soft, and with a covert malice in it:
"And after all, my prince, what is this sin?
Hath it not grown so common in these years
It scarce is held a sin now any more?
There is most noble precedent, my lord.
What of the wife of Sir Segwarides,
That good Earl of the South? And what of her,
Our Arthur's sister, wife to Uriens
Of Gore, Queen Morgan, loved by Accolon,
And by how many others since his time?
And Mark of Cornwall--can his kinglihood
Avail to keep Isoud from Tristram's arms?
And if we closelier come upon the throne,
What do men say of Guenevere the Queen,
Whose friendship thou didst suffer for thy wife--
Nay, didst encourage, lord? She, too, is fair,
And once, I trow, was leal; yet every child
That prattles of the great ones of the land
Links Guenevere with Lancelot! And last,
Is there no shadow on the throne itself?
What of that tale of Arthur's earlier days,
Whereof the wise man said a curse was born
To blast the realm with ruin to an end?--
Of Arthur and the lady with four sons,
To whom a fifth--"

                  "Enough!" cried Prince Geraint,
"Say no more, Honolan! Too much is said
Already, and by far! I know the tale,
Know all the tales thou tellest!--what of them?
Do they degrade my Enid to their fen?
Rather do they exalt her to the sun,
Her light of purity do magnify!
My doubt is done, my manlessness is gone;
I swear she is as stainless and as true
As when I found her in her father's hall,
A maiden with her soul bright in her eyes.
I will believe no falsity in her
Until her own sweet lips proclaim it so!
And had I the most faint distrust of thee,
Did I suspect that thou wouldst spread this lie,
Wouldst breathe a word of it to any one,
I promise I should slay thee--yea, and should
Though brotherhood stood in our cousinship!
I trust thee; give thou me no cause for doubt!"

And in a storm of self-wrath Prince Geraint
Strode from the pleasaunce back to Enid's bower;
And found her there as he had left her--still
And pale and very silent--yet so fair,
Of such unequalled purity of line,
That looking at the beautiful, white brow,
Sorely he blamed him for his lack of faith,
And in remorseful tenderness took oath
That never would he doubt her any more.
But that same night, as Honolan had known,
The dread incertitude would rise again
Despite the strongest setting of his will;
And all the vague suspicions and the fears
And questions he could not explain aside
Returned to his tormenting, and he lay
With neither sleep nor peace the long night through,
And not until the dawning slept at last.

But as the morning mounted in the east,
The ripe autumnal sunshine, amber-hued,
Streamed through the windows, rich with imagery,
Full on the couch of Enid and Geraint.
And Enid woke and saw the counterpane
Had slipped from off the prince's breast and arms,
And bending over him, while still he slept,
She gazed upon the sinewed brawn of breast
And on the mighty muscles of his arms,
Exulting in the grandeur of his mould.
And then she seemed to hear the busy tongues
Calling him recreant, in endless tales
Of his unknightly lethargy and sloth;
And all the gladness died within her heart,
And all at once she wept and lowly said:

"How like a noble weapon is my lord!
Like some rare glaive of finest-tempered steel,
Which often in the fray hath tried its edge,
And never brake nor turned nor showed a flaw!--
Yet now in idleness is rust-consumed!
Ah, God forgive me! Am I not the rust
That hath consumed the valiance of my lord?--
That makes him think no more of plunging steeds,
Hauberk and pluméd helm, and blazoned shield,
Driving of spear, sword-clanging, clapping hands,
And gree of tourney, and all the glory of it?
Through love of me is my great prince unmanned,
Shorn of his honour, from his height is fallen,
And given for a prey to evil tongues.
The people call him recreant, but I--
I am the recreant! To me is due
The blame, the shame for loss of his renown!
And having wrought this treason, do I speak
To rouse him to his knightlihood again?
To tell him how in every laggard's talk
His hand is grown too weak to hold the sword,
His valour, thinned to craven apathy?
To remedy my treason, do I speak?--
Ay me! Ay me! Thus am I false indeed!"

And by a most unhappy circumstance,
Her tears fell on his breast, and he awoke
And found her weeping, and her last sad words
Rang in his ears, "Thus am I false indeed!"
And all the evil speech of Honolan,
And all his own suspicions and his fears
Boiled upward in his mind and seemed confirmed.
And power to reason that if she were false,
She had not so confessed it, he had none;
But like one mad he flung him from the couch
And stared at her, and like a madman cried,
"So, from thy very lips I learn a truth
I might have learned from others, had I thought
To put a credence in it!" Then he turned
And shouted to his squire, "Be quick! My horse,
My arms, my lady's palfrey--ready them
With all the haste thou canst!" And to his wife
He spake with harsh command: "Do thou arise,
Array thee, for we go adventuring!--
What matter whither, so that we be gone?
So that I take thee far from courts and halls?
For I will root these fancies from thy heart,
And drive these wishful memories from thy soul,
And I will have thee with me till I die!"
And then a devil seemed to rise in him,
Prompting his words, for with a bitter smile
He added, "And if on this quest I die,
What grief to thee? Easier then to seek
The company of him for whom thou weepest!"
But Enid, though in sorrowful amaze
Stung by the taunt she could not understand,
Met his gaze steadily: "My lord Geraint,
Thy meaning is a hidden thing to me."
And though he would have answered, "Search thy heart
For meaning!" the clear look within her eyes
Stayed his reproach, for in his soul he knew
Never a guilty woman could look so.
And fain would he have taken her in his arms,
And all their misery had ended then;
But such a storm of wrath and pride and shame
Possessed him that he could not, and he cried:
"I said, array thee! Do I speak in vain?
Array thee in thy poorest, oldest gown,--
Ay, even the satin one I saw thee wear
When first I found thee in the ancient hall.
Three years thou hast not worn it. Don it now,
And come with me!"

                                    And mutely Enid went
And took the worn robe from the cedrine chest,
And shook the flowers-of-balsam from the folds,
And put it on, and the squire armed Geraint.
Then silent each to other, they went forth
Into the castle-courtyard, filled with folk
Wondering at the story which was rife.
And much of marvel at the prince's arms,
At Enid's strange, worn raiment, at the dole
On either's face, the knights and ladies made;
But to Geraint none dared to say a word--
Not even Honolan--so black he looked.
But thither came King Erbin, and he said
Full sorrowfully, "My son, what doest thou?
Wilt thou ride forth with neither knight nor squire?
Beyond our borders is a perilous land;
Wilt thou endanger Enid and thyself?
For thy wife's sake go not unretinued!"
But Geraint answered, "Sire, it is my will.
I pray thee do not seek to alter it."
And with no further word, he set his wife
Upon her dappled palfrey, he himself
Mounted his bay destrier of Gascon breed,
And from the palace-gates they went the way
Which led to the great wilderness of the west.
And Geraint said to Enid: "Do thou ride
Before me always by a furlong's half,
And whatsoever thou mayest see or hear,
Saving I speak to thee, speak not to me!"
And sadly she rode on as she was bid.

And in such wise did they depart from home;
And all that from the courtyard watched them go
Had but one thought, "They go unto their death!"

                                     II

The noon had passed, and a grey bank of cloud,
Rapidly mounting from the hazy south,
Slipped o'er the westering sun, and spread beyond
Till all the heaven was mantled in dull grey,
And all the landscape darkened. And a wind,
Uprising, momently increased in force,
And with a low, wild wailing swept across
The waste wherethrough rode Enid and Geraint.
For Erbin's marches they had left behind,
Long since the mellow harvest-fields had passed,
The orchards, red and golden with ripe fruit,
And all the peace and plenty of that fair realm;
And now they rode in one vast, dreary plain,
Where evenly on all sides the leaden sky
Came down to the flat launde, with never break
Of hill nor tree on which the eye could rest;
Where nothing throve save thorny clumps of gorse,
And sweeps of heather powdered grey with dust;
Where not a sound there was but of the wind,
Crying of desolations and of death.
And unto Enid, riding far before,
Half-sick with loneliness and wounded love,
The grey monotony of earth and sky
And the funereal music of the wind
Became as an oppression, and grew and grew
To horror definite, until at last
Hardly could she refrain from riding back
And crying to Geraint that they were doomed--
That they were caught between this sky and plain,
That they must ride forever upon this waste,
Forever see the angry heaven lower
Evenly to the launde, forever hear
The wailing, the unearthly threne of wind!--
But she rode on with neither cry nor word.

But deaf to wind, and blind to earth and sky,
Conscious alone of memories that rent
His mind with living torture, rode Geraint.
Ever his thoughts went wandering to the past,--
A ruined hall, a ruddy sunset glow,
A song down-floating through the violet dusk,
A maiden of the fairness of a fay!
And he had sworn to love the maiden well,
To care for her as no man else could care,
However worthier! He had invoked
A punishment from Heaven should he fail
But once in his great love's true tenderness!--
Then would he look where Enid rode before,
And in remorseful anguish groan aloud.
Another picture: ivy, and the white,
Closed blooms of honeysuckles, and the dawn
Shining in misty silver on a court
Changed by Love's miracle into a shrine!
And he, with soul exalted, had taken vow,
By conduct ever nobler, knightlier,
To prove Love's grace was not too ill bestowed,
To prove, so far as any might deserve
Such grace, he would deserve it by his life!
Then did he know that Honolan had lied!--
But why, but why, "Thus am I false indeed"?
And not as knight-at arms would think to ride,
With head bowed on his breast, with body limp,
Sunk forward in the saddle, rode Geraint
Through unrecked hours of waste and grieving wind.

At last, above the launde, Enid beheld
The far-off swaying of a shadowy line,
And nearer saw a tangled coppice-wood.
And gladly did her eyes rest on this break
In the flatness of the plain, and she rode on,
Watching the young trees bend before the wind.

Then she was ware that three armed horsemen lurked
Close in the thicket shadow, and as she drew
Nearer, the leader boasted to his men:
"Behold, two horses and armour and a girl
Come to us for the taking! Yonder knight--
What man of spirit is he, that he hangs
His head so heavily and rides behind?
Easy to vanquish him first, and mine the right
To attack him first, seeing I saw him first."

And Enid heard and on her fell great fear.
And she looked back and saw how Prince Geraint
Did ride indeed with head sunk on his breast,
Seeing and hearing nothing; and she thought,
"He will be slain for he is off his guard!
Before he can couch lance he will be slain!
And yet he has forbidden me to speak!
But herein is no silence; I must speak!"

And swiftly she rode back and spake to him:
"My lord, three horsemen wait in yonder copse,
And I have heard them plan thine overthrow."
Then wrath with her it was not, but self-wrath
Which made of her its victim, that caused Geraint
To answer irritably, "Did I command
Thy warning or thy silence? Did I say
Speak, or speak not, saving I speak to thee?
But ride apart, for yonder comes the first."
Hardly had Enid ridden to one side,
When, with lance couched, upon spur-maddened steed,
The bandit leader rushed upon Geraint.
But while against the prince's shield, his lance
Shivered, Geraint's brake not, but with such force
Struck on the center of the other's shield,
That wood and leather--ay, and mail beneath--
Alike were riven, and to a cubit's length
The spear passed through the body, and when withdrawn,
Down from his plunging horse the foeman fell
And in a rush of blood his life outflowed.
Whereat the other horsemen both at once
Couched lances and bare down upon Geraint.
And at the golden eagles aimed the first,
But his arm wavering, the lance went wide,
And ere could he recover, such a blow
Geraint dealt on his helm that in a swoon
To earth he hurtled and lay as he were dead.
And fearful lest the fate of his two friends
Be also his, the third knight turned and fled
For shelter towards the coppice, but Geraint,
Pursuing, overtook him, and on the shield
Struck him so mightfully that from his horse
The bandit fell and lay a moment stunned,
Then rose and fled on foot, at which the prince,
Scorning to follow, suffered him to escape.
But the three horses of his vanquished foes
Geraint bound all together by their reins,
And gave the reins to Enid, saying to her,
"Ride onward now and drive these steeds before;
And say no word, but if I speak to thee!"
And forward through the plain she drove the three;
And one was black, and one was white, and one
Was dapple-grey.

                        They passed the coppice-wood,
Journeying towards the swaying, shadowy line.
And slowly into dusk the sad day waned,
And tightlier seemed the ominous sky to close
Down on the barren moors, and with the voice
Of all the souls in Annwyn cried the wind.
At length to Enid, straining through the gloom,
The line mysterious resolved itself
Into a forest of such vast extent
That neither end nor boundary could she see
Save on the side before her, and the trees
Loomed darkling to the heavens, and in the wind
She saw the mighty branches twist and writhe
Like limbs of tortured giants, and they seemed
To her the symbols of a woe to come.

Then was she ware that five horsemen rode
Forth from the deeper shadows, and men of might
She saw they were, stalwart and huge of frame,
Mounted on powerful chargers, and every man
Had shield in place and spear in battle-rest.
And nearer drawing, Enid hear one say:
"Behold, at last a booty! Five good steeds,
And better yet, a lady! And no one
To guard them but yon craven of a knight,
Who, weaker than his woman, slinks behind!--
Sir Dolourous, whom any boy could slay!"
To which another made a loud reply,
"The lady we hold in common, but the knight--
His life, his horse, his armour--shall be mine!
Wherefore I make requiring of you all,
That I be given the first encounter with him."

Fearful indeed was Enid, hearing them.
And through the gloom she looked back to Geraint,
And saw him bent above the saddle-bow,
Seeing and hearing nothing; and she thought,
"Surely will he be slain before mine eyes!
For he is wearied by the former fray,
And now, while off his guard, these five will come
Against him all defenseless! Not to speak
Is but to join the five in slaying him!"
Then swiftly back along the bridle-path,
She drove the snorting horses, and she cried
In voice made shrill by fear, "My lord, yon knights
Purpose thy death; I heard them plotting it.
And they are five and thou art only one!"

But angrily and bitterly Geraint
Smiled on her misery: "And once again
My wishes go unheeded! I declare
To Heaven that their purpose grieves me less
Than thy continual disobedience.
But ride apart: I battle with the first."

Then down upon the prince the first knight spurred;
But never had Geraint's hand been more firm,
His aim more sure and steady! Swift and hard
He smote the other's shield, that 'neath the blow
It crumpled like old parchment, the lance flew
Far from his foeman's grasp, his stirrups brake,
Wounded and senseless was he dashed to earth.
The second came, and furiously Geraint
Thrust the long spear-head through the ringéd mail
Into his enemy's neck, that the sharp blade
Protruded at the back, and when wrenched forth,
Two spouting blood-streams washed the life away.
Then setting spurs to his own horse, the prince,
With thunder-sound of onset, met the third,
And dealt him such a blow upon the shield,
That from the shock both horse and man were hurled
Backwards, flat to the earth, and though the steed
Arose, the rider could not, curshed to death.
At which in fear, the two remaining fled,
Hoping to reach the forest; but Geraint
Pursued and overtook them, and his lance
Struck on the nearer's heavy shoulder-arms,
And cracked the armour, but the lance itself,
Strained in six former frays, brake to the haft.
Whereat both bandits drew their swords, and both
Attacked the prince, who with his own true glaive
Received them valiantly; and while the dark
Settled upon them and their figures grew
Indefinite in outline, that to her
Who watched with eyes dilated, now one seemed
Geraint, and now another, for a space
They did sharp battle, stroke and counterstroke,
Tracing, traversing, matching foyne with foyne,
Until at last on one assailant's helm,
Geraint brought down so mightily his blade,
That helm and bone and brain alike were riven,
And stiffly, like a stone, the dead man fell.
And in a mortal terror the fifth knight
Slipped from his horse, his lance and sword and shield
He flung away, and fell upon his knees,
And stretched his hands in suppliance to Geraint,
Shrieking, "Thy mercy, lord!" And half in scorn
And half in ruth according him the boon,
Geraint dismounted, took the other's lance,
Then caught the five great chargers, and all five
Binding together by the bridle-reins,
He gave the reins to Enid, saying to her:
"As with the three, so drive the eight before;
And though it seems my words have little weight,
This time I charge thee with especial force,
Saving I speak to thee, speak not to me!"

Then in the moonless, black, wind-raving night
They entered that great forest and they rode
In murky labyrinths of shadowy trunks,
Just visible by trebled blacknesses.
And in their faces slanting sheets of rain
Were driven through the canopy of leaves;
And the night grew in violence, with the brief
Brilliance of lightnings, and long thunder-rolls;
While often the deep forest found a tongue,
And spake in snap and crash of breaking boughs,
And roar when roots gave way and giants fell,
Crushing their neighbors downwards in the fall.
And always in wild cadences that rose
And died away to swell to mightier sound,
Through twice ten thousand tree-tops the storm-wind
Sang with stupendous music, voice of God,
Of all the world, of angels, or of Hell.

Then riding up to Enid's side, Geraint
Saw the great difficulty which she had
In driving the eight horses through the wood,
By reason of the maze of nebulous trunks,
And by the chargers' terror of the storm.
And insofar as wrath would suffer him,
The prince was moved to sorrow for her plight;
And he said to her, "Lady, it is vain
To attempt going forward. It were best
To bide here till the dawn." "As thou wilt, lord,"
Said Enid. And Geraint, dismounting, took
Enid down from her palfrey, and they sought
A refuge from the wind and from the rain
Beneath the branches of a huge old tree;
And Geraint said, "Sleep, lady; I will watch."
"Nay, lord," made answer Enid, "thou art worn
And battle-weary. Thou hast need for rest.
Sleep thou, and I will watch." And deeply touched
He was by her concern and tenderness;
Yet such a tumult still of wrath and pride
Made riot in his heart, that not one word
Could he say in reply, and like one dumb
He lay down in his armour and he slept.
And neither food nor drink they had that night.
And all night long, the storm encompassing her,
While Geraint slept unmindful of the din,
Enid kept watch, and in her hands she held
The reins of ten horses; but at last
In early morning, the rain fell no more,
And the wind died, and on the wood was peace;
And lifting tired eyes to the brightening sky,
With a wan gladness Enid saw the dawn
Come to the world, and the new dawn was fair.

Then in that first thin light Geraint awoke;
And he was startled by the weariness,
The pallor on Enid's face, and secretly
A great fear grappled him lest she should die.
But he said only, "Now shall we proceed."
And Enid said no word of her fatigue,
And of their hunger-faintness neither spake.
So they rode onward through the wood, in front
Enid with the eight chargers; and they fared
By coverts dense and sapling-serried dells,
Where from close, leafy branches, the night's rain
Showered on them as they passed; and much beheld
Of ravage of the storm, in scattered limbs
And riven trunks and stalwart trees uptorn.
And they rode on until the tempest-zone
They left behind, the débris saw no more,
And through a sparser growth they made their way,
Until what time the sun had reached the height
Of the second hour, emerging from the wood,
They came unto a valley very fair.

And there they saw a shining river flow
On sands so yellow surely they were gold;
And crystal-clear the water, that like jewels,
The many-colored pebbles of the bed,
Bright in the depths, flung back the morning sun;
And by the rivage lacy willows grew,
Their slender leaves tinged with autumnal gold.
And on the river's farther side they saw
Ripe fields of grain, and reapers reaping it,
While far beyond arose the towers and spires
Of a fair city ringed with radiant walls.
And all the land lay shimmering in the haze
Of autumn's amber sunshine; like a band
Of flowing gold and crystal was the stream,
Like fields of rippling gold, the feathery grain,
And seeming through the fall of glamorous light
To tremble like a fleeting loveliness,
Fairer for evanescence, yonder towers
Were as a faery city, beautiful
Beyond the beauty earthly hands may build.

Down to the stream rode Enid and Geraint;
And eagerly the horses bent and drank
Of the clear water. Then at a wide ford,
They crossed the river, by a lofty steep
Ascending to the fields of golden grain.
And there they met a young squire clad in brown,
A leathern satchel hanging from his neck,
A pitcher of bright blue within his hand,
Upon the pitcher's mouth, a bright blue bowl,
Around the rim whereof a cordon ran
Of small, white, dancing figures, youths and maids.

With courtesy the squire saluted them.
"May Heaven prosper thee," replied Geraint,
"And pray, whence comest thou?" "I come," he said,
"From yonder shining city. And thou, lord--
Were it presumptuous in me to ask
Whence thou art come?" "Nay, friend," returned the prince,
"We came through the great forest." "Not to-day
Have ye traversed that forest. It must be
Ye spent last night therein." "Ay, even so."
"Then neither food nor drink ye had, I ween.
But in this pitcher is a sweet red wine,
And in this satchel have I meat and bread.
Wherefore, my lord, take now a meal from me
And do me honour." "Gently said, young sir,
But will no one go hungered?" asked Geraint.
"The reapers, yea; but gladly will I fetch
Another breakfast for them. Do thou eat,
And thy fair lady whom I see so pale."
"We will," returned Geraint, "and Heaven reward
Thy thoughtful courtesy!"

                                       Whereat the prince
Dismounted and took Enid from her horse.
And they sat down, and skilfully the squire
Served them with bread and meat and sweet red wine.
And a faint colour crept to Enid's cheek,
By which Geraint was gladdened. The meal done,
The squire said with all deference, "My lord,
If thou wilt now permit me, I will go
To fetch the reapers' breakfast." "Yea, fair youth,"
Replied the prince, "go thou, and take for us
The city's choicest lodging, and good space
Of stablement for the horses, and return
And so conduct us thither. And to requite
Thy service and thy gift, whichever steed
Pleases thee most, make choice of for thine own."
Then the squire flushed with pleasure, and he sank
On one knee to Geraint: "My lord, thy gift
Would amply pay ten services like mine."
And choosing joyfully the dapple-grey,
He galloped to the city, and secured
The best and richest lodgings that he knew,
And stabling for the horses. Then he filled
His satchel once again with reapers' fare,
His cruse with wine; and afterwards he went
Into the palace of his lord, Earl Dwinne,
And told him the adventure. "I go now,
My lord," he said, "to squire them to the town,
This knight and his fair lady." Spake the earl:
"Thou sayest the lady is so very fair?
Conduct them hither! I would welcome them,
And fitly entertain them in my hall."
So the youth swiftly bare to Prince Geraint
The welcome of Earl Dwinne to court and hall.
But Geraint answered: "Not to court nor hall
Will we go, by my faith! We know too much
Of halls and courts, and folk who loiter there!
Only to our own lodgings will we go;
And if Earl Dwinne would greet me, let him come
And visit me; I will not visit him."
Then went they to the city, and they had
Fair, roomy chambers, hung with scarlet silks,
And spread with green, new rushes. And the seats,
Couches and tables were of carven oak,
Covered with silver damask. And Geraint
Said to the squire, "Unarm me, friend, then go;
But eveningwards return to wait on me."
Thereon the squire departed, and the prince
Spake unto Enid, "If thou hast the need
Of service, call the woman of the house."
"I shall, lord," answered Enid. And Geraint
Lay down upon a couch and soon he slept.
And Enid also slept, but brokenly,
Too over-wearied for a perfect rest.

So in late undertide the squire returned
To attend on Geraint, who bade him give
The landlord order that he make a feast
Of best and costliest fare, and that he ask
Whatever friends he would to come and be
The prince's guests. And princely was the feast
Which Geraint held that night, choice was the food,
Age-mellowéd the wine, and all was light
Of tapers and of torches, and the sheen
Of silver plates and chalices of gold.
But in the heart of Enid was small joy;
And she arose and left the glittering board,
And the gay company which heeded not,
And in the farthest corner of the room
Found a low bench, and there she sat alone.

Thereon behold, into the festival,
With twelve tall knights behind him, came Earl Dwinne,
A slender, small gallant, too delicate
Of form and feature for a man, and pale
With the unhealthy pallor which long years
Of revelries and ranging lusts do give.
And with magnificence was Dwinne arrayed
In azure velvet with a dust of pearls,
His mantle, purfled with white ostrich plumes,
The scabbard of his sword, one blaze of fire
From rubies sewn in patterns of the rose;
And clad in yellow satin, his twelve knights
In scabbards of black damask ware their swords.
Then Prince Geraint arose, and courteously
Welcomed the earl, who with an easy grace
Made fair rejoinder, "Heaven keep thee, Lord."
And even as he did so looked beyond,
And saw where Enid drooped, alone and sad.
Then in their precedence they all sat down
And lifted high the cups and drank, and ate.
And Dwinne made inquiry of the prince's quest--
The object of his journey--but Geraint
Was silent for a moment, and his brow
Darkened with the old cloud of jealous pain,
Ere briefly he responded: "I have none
Saving to seek adventures and to ride
Whither my humour leads me." "Rightly said,
My lord!" cried Dwinne. "Chance purposes are best!
Fixed purpose is a tyrant! To thy health
And good adventuring!" And all drank deep;
But none could drink more freely than the earl,
And none could jest more lightly, gailier sing
A drinking-song, and song and jest he made,
Until what with the glowing wine and lights
And ringing words and laughter, Prince Geraint
Forgot his wrath and sorrow, entertained
So very well he was. And he saw not
How evermore the glances of the earl
Returned to rest on Enid; but she saw,
Blushing for shame at their unmasked desire.

So sped the time in joyance, till a troop
Of minstrels entered, bearing lute and harp
And violin, and sweetly played and sang.
Then, on a sudden thought, Dwinne seized a lute
From out the player's hand, and touched the strings
To low-toned, yearning music, and a song
He fashioned of the fleeting of delight:

"Cull thou the day! How could I trulier sing
  Than bidding every one who hears forbear
To waste the heart in futile questioning
  After the riddled Whither and the Where,
Since than this moment is what goodlier thing?
Wherefore, Belovéd, mourn not utterly;
While Time shall last a little, love have we.

"Grasp the sweet hour! Bethink thee, it will pass,
  And what shall come hereafter no man knows;
Already the long shadows bar the grass,
  Already creeps the witherance on the rose,
And swift the sands heap in the nether glass.
Wherefore thy smile, Belovéd, since the sheaf
Of years is small for joy, too small for grief.

"Cling to the now! What madness to explore
  With sightless eyes the unlit ways that wend
All to one blackness at the Future's shore!
  That unto all things earthly is an end,
Of this alone is certainty; wherefore
Give me delight, Belovéd, since the day
Comes soon when all delight shall pass away."

Then for a moment the bright revelry
Was clouded with a sadness, which Earl Dwinne
Shattered with laughter, crying, "Truth in wine!
And therein let us drown it! Know the truth--
Ay, speak the truth--but drown the truth in wine!"
And once again they lifted high their cups,
And each man pledged his neighbor, and they drank,
And the wine filled their veins with flowing fire
And beat within their temples; and they drank,
Finding in wine forgetfulness of the song.
But Enid thought, "Why sing the song to me?"

And when all were their merriest, the earl
Said to Geraint, "Wilt thou permit me, lord,
To speak with yonder lady? For thy sake
I fain would lay my service at her feet."
"Gladly, fair friend," replied the prince, and Dwinne,
Thanking him, went and sat by Enid's side;
And two spear-lengths they were from Prince Geraint.

And under cover of the clamorous tongues
And strains of manifold music, speaking low,
Said Dwinne to Enid: "Hearing the song I sang,
Thou knewest it was for thee. Thou only art
My soul's desire in whom is my delight!"
But Enid, with sweet statelihood and grace,
Though paling at the lust in his regard,
Answered, "My lord, thou doest thyself a wrong
No less than me, in uttering such words
To which I will not hearken in any wise."
Said Dwinne, "Consider well! Rather wouldst thou
Then, lady, follow a man who loves thee not
Than bide with one who loves thee as his life?"
But Enid, though the words smote on her heart
With forceful pain, responded, "With my lord
Rather would I go always--with my knight,
My first love and my last, who loves me well--
Yea, spite of all, I know he loves me well!"

Whereto said Dwinne: "Nay, is his love so great?
His treatment of thee sounds another tale.
Thou art a gentlewoman, reared to rank
And tenderest usage, and of feature fair
Beyond my thought of women. Not for thee
Should paths be rough and wounding; yet this man
Drags thee perforce upon an aimless quest,
That hath no profit but only peril in it,
And to the pressure of any evil chance
Subjects thee needlessly, just at his will!
But I would guard thee in fair pleasaunces,
Laced in with roses yellow as the sun,
And make thy life no heavier than a dream
Couched upon swan's-down, balmed with musk and myrrh.
He loves thee well! Yet silken stuffs of green
Are in his coat and surcoat; green and gold,
The plumes upon his helmet; and his mail
Is of a triple steel inwrought with gold.
Oh, never knight-at-arms more gay than he!--
And never beggar-woman, more than thou!
But I will clothe thee in the finest vair
The furriers have for queenhood; cisclations,
Scarlets and Alexandrian brocades--
All these shall be for thee when thou art mine.
Lo, how he loves thee! Neither youth nor maid
He gives for thine attendance; thine own hands
Must do each several task, however mean--
His lady to a serving-wench constrained!
But in my palace are there youths and maids,--
A hundred, and not one but is most fair,
A hundred, and not one but gently born--
And all shall call thee 'Lady,' and be thine.
Leave him and come with me! I love thee so!
Thy hair is as a brightness to my soul
Whereto is seldom brightness! Stay with me,
And I will cherish thee for evermore!"

But Enid said: "Shall I not go with him
In whom is my affiance and my trust,
For whom is all the love that I shall know?
These things thou sayest, O my lord, are true;
And why these things are true I can not tell;
And that these things are true drags at my heart.
And yet because my love is such a strength,
With him must I go always to the end.
And since it is so, for thy knighthood's sake,
Let us depart in peace!"

                                       "By God!" cried Dwinne,
And though his tones were low, his burning eyes
Consumed her with their passion, "If I do,
Without one clasping of thy loveliness,
Then may my foemen slay me in my hall,
Mine earldom pass to strangers! Hearken thou!
Thee I will have, won by whatever means!
Unarmed is yonder man; a single word--
My twelve knights flesh their swords within his breast;
And while his head turns carrion on my walls--
A shuddering and a horror--thou shalt be,
Whether thou wilt or no, my latest bride,
The fairest of all ladies I have seen--
I never knew a face could be so fair.
But so thou comest to me willingly,
I will not slay this man, nor prison him:
He shall go free."

                     Then like to one who gropes
Through an enshrouding blackness, through his words
Did Enid grope, already in her eyes
The vision of Geraint pale in his blood;
And only could she think, "He will be slain!
How shall my lord, unarmed, contend with twelve?
Ay, were he armed, he would be slain by twelve!"
And then her woman's wit devised a way,
And she made answer: "Lord, thy will is mine.
Come with the morrowing and take me hence.
But for to-night I pray thee let me be.
Small pleasure wouldst thou have of me to-night;
For I am like to swoon of my fatigues,
For on me is a lethargy like death."
Arose Earl Dwinne and bowed and took his leave,
And all his knights went with him, with the rout
Of townsmen following, that so the room
Cleared quickly, and again they were alone,
Geraint and Enid. And because she thought,
"To speak now of the treachery of Dwinne
Were needlessly to rob my lord of rest,
Which he must have to battle with the foes
Who in these lands beset us everywhere,"
Enid said naught of peril at that time,
And wordlessly Geraint lay down and slept.
But lest she overlie the hour for flight,
Enid fought sleep, and noiselessly she placed
At Geraint's side his armour, piece by piece,
As he should don it. And the night wore on,
And still she kept her vigil; but so tired
She was with dole and unaccustomed toils
That all unwittingly her head sank low--
She slept and dreamed, and in her dream she seemed
To hear the beat of hoofs innumerable
Of fast-pursuing steeds and clang of arms;
And in affright she started up and stared
Wildly about, and saw the east was grey,
Slit with the red line of an angry dawn;
And down the stony streets the heavy carts
Went to bring in the harvest, rumbling loud
Upon the paving-stones,--the pound of hoofs
And din of arms which she had heard in dream.
Then smiling wanly at such fantasies,
She stole to Geraint's couch, and placed her hand
Lightly upon his brow, awakening him,
And whisperingly she said, "Arise, my lord,
And arm thyself before it be too late."
And when he did so, wondering at her words,
She told him all the traitorous speech of Dwinne
And her own answer.

                                       Quickly then Geraint,
Calling his host, required the reckoning.
"Thou owest me but little," said the man.
"Will seven chargers pay thee?" "Truly, lord,
One were too much." "Take seven," said the prince,
"And bring our own two horses to the door.
And wilt thou guide us to the city walls?
I would depart from town a different way
From that by which I entered." "Noble sir,
My will is but to serve thee," he returned.

So through the twilight of the tortuous streets
He guided them, and through the western gate,
From which outled a highroad. There Geraint
Dismissed him, saying: "Our great thanks, good friend!
Need of thy farther guidance have we none.
Farewell and Heaven keep thee!" "And keep thee,
My lord, and thy fair lady!" said the host,
And left them, with a glad heart hastening home.
But when he reached his house, surrounding it
He saw the twelve chief knights of the Earl Dwinne,
Mounted on snorting horses, men and steeds
Clad all in heavy armour, and each knight
Bare a long lance of battle. And he saw
The earl's proud charger at the mounting-stage,
Champing his golden snaffle. And the earl
Rushed from the entrance, crying, "They are gone!"
Then saw the trembling landlord, ran to him,
With sword uplifted forced him to his knees:
"Thou villain, didst thou suffer them to escape?"
"Ah, my lord earl, I had no word from thee
That I restrain them." "Which way did they go?"
"Forth by the western highroad." And Earl Dwinne
Into his saddle sprang, dashed deep the rowels,
Brandished his naked sword above his head,
And shouting "Follow!" at a speed that recked
Nothing of others' lives nor of his own,
Galloped through street and square and gate, and rode
Until far in the distance he beheld
Two moving figures, Enid and Geraint;
And his own shout of triumph was twelve times
Multiplied as his knights rushed to the prey.

And Enid, by Geraint's will riding first,
Heard the fierce clamor, distance-thinned yet clear;
And looking back she saw a dust-cloud roll
Rapidly down the highroad, and the forms
Of furious riders loomed within the mist,
Their armour glinting fitfully. Then in dread
Greater than aught she yet had known, she turned
And rode back to Geraint, crying aloud,
"My lord, my lord, defend thee, for they come!
The host of Dwinne will hew thee to thy death!"

And suddenly Geraint wheeled his destrier
To face his foes and feutred fast his lance.
And in the moment on him seven knights
Bare headlong, captained by the seneschal
Of the earl's household. But the mighty charge
Steadfastly he received, that like a wave
Which hurls its thunderous volume on a rock,
And can not move it, and the wave is split,
And all force is spent in impotent spray
Which swirls and eddies harmlessly beyond,
They split upon his firmness and swirled by,
But leaderless, for at his stirrup dragged
The seneschal, face downwards in the dust.
And Geraint wheeled and spurred into the midst
Of the returning seven, and with seven
At once did he engage, thrilling with lance,
Slashing with pitiless sword, that evermore
They yielded ground before him, for like those
About whom olden legends hang, he fought--
Like Eldol, Earl of Gloucester, with the blades
Of treachery contending, or like him
Before whose single sword battalions fell,
Rhuvawn, the chief of kings. So fought Geraint
Till of the seven only three remained
To fight ever again, and gaping wounds
They had, all three, and in a common fear
They quailed beneath the warrior's circling sword,
And cowered before the eagles on his shield,
And fled back to their master.

                                                Then the wrath
Of Dwinne was changed to fury. Hard he drave
Into his charger's side the maddening spur
And whirlwind-violent lashed upon Geraint.
But like the slenderest reed by autumn meres
His lance brake on the prince's stubborn shield,
Splintering to his fingers, while Geraint's,
Mightfully thrust and surely, cleft in twain
The attacker's shield, rent wide his useless mail,
Entered his body to a mortal hurt,
And with a sharp scream Dwinne threw out his arms
And fell from his horse, dead. Whereat his knights,
Wounded and those unwounded, flung away
Their weapons, and dismounting, came and knelt
Before the victor, saying, "Mercy, lord!"
And merciful was Geraint, and rode aside
And said to Enid, "Do we now proceed."
So on the highway they rode forth again.

But sadly, with much weeping, did the knights
Place their dead master on a shield's reverse,
And bear him to his city. Thus died Dwinne,
By his own lorded passions slain at last,
Earl Dwinne, yet in the summer-flush of youth.

                            III

With a fierce brightness the autumnal sun
Blazed at an hour to noon, when, journeying fast
Along the highroad, Enid and Geraint
The slain earl's ultimate marches overfared,
And saw below them a low range of hills,
Green, greenish-brown, and tending into grey.
These climbing, from the summit they beheld
A valley fair and wide, of fertile fields
Russet and gold with harvest, wherein folk
Reaped grain or gathered fruits, and through the vale,
Rushing and roaring like a storm, a stream
Tumbled the liquid thunder of a flood
Hued black and livid by the sombre rocks
Of its deep bed. And windingly the road
Descended to the valley, there in twain
Dividing, of which one, with gradual grade,
Ribboned the low flank of the farther hills;
Whereas the other, level, broad and straight,
Ran to a bridge of heavy masonry,
Spanning the river, and above the bridge,
Upon the opposite side of that dark stream,
They saw a fair, strong castle, massive-walled,
High-towered and widely-moated, and they thought
No man had builded better than the lord
Who reared this so fair fortress.

                                          Then they rode
Down from the hill-top and approached the place
Where the two highways parted, and they saw
A peasant toiling in a field close by,
Sheaving the grain. To him spake Prince Geraint:
"Tell me, I pray thee, who thy liege lord is,
Lord likewise of this valley and of yon towers."
"A king, Guivret the Little," said the man,
"And a most valiant champion. Wherefore, sir,
I warn thee shouldst thou choose the lower road
And cross the bridge and ride beneath his walls,
Thy lot were like to be disgrace and shame,
Since every knight who comes upon his lands
He forces to a combat, and not one
But in the end must yield him to my king."
"Nevertheless, by that way will I go,"
Replied Geraint, and Enid riding first,
They crossed the bridge and passed beneath the towers.

But when they had proceeded a short space,
The thud of iron-shod hoofs smote on their ears,
A voice behind them cried, "Oh, keep thee, knight!
For thy presumption shalt thou dearly pay,
Daring to enter these forbidden lands!"
And Geraint, turning, set his lance in rest.
And lo, upon a war horse great and strong,
Dark bay in colour, nostrils scarlet-wide,
A knight who ware above his shining mail
A silken surcoat of the colour of Inde,
Rushed towards him, and the prince had never seen
A man of smaller stature than this knight.
And at such fearful pace the charger came
That finer than a millstone grinds the corn,
He ground the stones beneath his clanging hoofs,
And sparks flew outward from him like a fire;
And backwards in the wind of that wild speed
Were borne the milk-white plumes of the knight's crest
And the blue pennon streaming from his lance;
And to the blazon on his dark blue shield,
An argent lion couchant, leaping life
Seemed by that headlong motion to be given.

Then Geraint spurred to meet him, and the shock
Of their encountering was so merciless
That both their steeds were beaten to the earth.
They rose and charged again, and yet again,
With iron-tipped lances gave such fearful strokes,
Each to the other, that they rased away
The paintures and the colours from their shields;
And often through the leather and the wood
The sharp spears drave, through plate and inner mail,
And pierced their bodies and made gaping wounds;
But always it was difficult for Geraint
To battle with the other, whose small size
Rendered sure aim scarce possible. They fought
Until both horses fell upon their knees
From sheer exhaustion, and both knights were thrown
Heavily to the ground. But they arose,
Despite their grievous hurts, and drew their swords,
Hurtling together fiercely, and on foot
Fought stubbornly and long, until their shields
Shielded no more, but splintered wood become,
And fluttering rags of leather; and their arms
Were crushed and hewed and hacked to the bare flesh;
And they swayed both with weakness, and the light
Of the broad day grew darkness to their eyes,
And a red vapor of blood. And all the while
Enid looked on, with neither scream nor tear;
For past all ease of weeping was her woe,
And past all utterance. But on her face
Was a grey rigor like to naught save death,
And in her gaze, a straitness over-tense;
And ever one hand kept clutching at her throat,
Her fingers bruising red the soft, white flesh,
And she not knowing it.

                                          So they fought long,
Till finally within the prince's mind,
Blood-clouded, pain-distorted, a dim thought
Unconsciously took form: "One stroke--my last!
If good, I live; if not,--" and all his strength,
Or rather, the poor remnants of his strength,
Summoning to him, like a thrower of dice
Who stakes his all upon a single cast,
He lifted high his blade, and such a blow
Dealt on his foeman's helm that circlewise
The sword flew from the hand of the Little King,
And dizzily he slipped down to his knees.

Then in the curious monotone of pain
Scarce bearable, yet borne without a sign,
Guivret said, "I am yolden to thy grace;
Of the fair fight the victory is thine."
To which, with mirthless smile, Geraint replied:
"Thereof hath no man victory. But of grace,
Guivret the Little, will I freely grant,
If thou wilt be mine ally, and engage
To fight against me never, but to bring
Me succor if thou hearest I have the need."
"This will I, gladly, lord," answered Guivret;
So pledged his faith. "And since my name to thee
Is not unknown, right fain would I know thine."
"Geraint, the son of Erbin," said the prince;
"Geraint, a name of battles!" said the king;
"The bearer of the goodly eagle-shield,
Geraint, the sword of Devon! O my lord,
Come with me to Penévric by the Stream,
Yon castle, which now owns thee for its liege.
There my two sisters, skilled in surgery,
Will cure our dolorous wounds." But Geraint said,
"I thank thee, but I go upon my way."

Then Guivret looked at Enid, where she stood;
And grieved that one of her so noble mien,
That one so beautiful, should have such woe.
And he said to Geraint: "Thy course is wrong,
My lord, yea, greatly wrong; if peril rise
Before thee in thy weakness and thy hurts,
What prospering canst thou hope?"

                                                      But wilfully
The prince responded, "I have answered thee."
And though his wounds bled deathfully, and the throb
And ache of them was torture, he would do
Nothing but mount his horse, feutre his lance,
Abandon his unserviceable shield,
Bid Enid ride on first, and so depart;
While in a helpless pity for them both
Looked after them Guivret the Little King.

But on the highroad Enid and Geraint
Proceeded till they saw before them lie
A vast, deep forest. And the afternoon
Was like the height of summer for the close
Of stifling, windless heat; and for the blood
Which covered all his body like a pall,
The prince's armour cleaved unto his flesh,
And all his hurts pulsed with the fever-fire.
Wherefore most cool and grateful looked the wood,
And entering it, they halted in the shade.

As they thus rested, suddenly from the wood
Shrilled forth a piteous wailing, and the voice
Was of a woman seeming crazed with grief.
"Lady, do we ride forward," said Geraint,
"And learn what this betokens." And they rode,
Threading the dark, still thickets, and at last
Came to a grassy glade, wherein they saw
Two horses standing, one, a knight's destrier,
The other, a lady's palfrey. There behold,
Upon the trodden, blood-besprinkled grass,
His battered helm beside him, prostrate lay
A young knight in white armour, a mere boy
With yellow, curling hair, and he was dead.
And a young maid in a grey riding-dress
Knelt at his side, her eyes wildered with grief.
And ever and anon she flung herself
Upon the dead knight, kissing lips and hair,
Chafing his hands, beseeching him to speak,
With such exceeding weeping and such wails
That it was sorrow both to see and hear;
And Enid, looking, shuddered, for she thought,
"A day like this will come also to me!"

"Ah! Lady," queried Prince Geraint in ruth,
"What hath befallen thee?" "My love is slain!"
She moaned in answer; "Without cause is slain!
We journeyed to the court of King Guivret,
Where was to be our wedding on the morn;
But here two villains met us, giants both,
And both at once they set upon my love,
And without cause they slew him where he lies!"
Then in a generous anger sware Geraint,
"Slaying, they shall be slain! Where are they now?"
"They went by yonder path, but he is dead!"
Then fell she to her dolour, and Geraint
Spake unto Enid: "Do thou bide with her,
Enid, for she is like to die of grief.
And when I have avenged her, I shall come."

So by the bridle-path he rode away;
And Enid in mute terror saw him go,
Thinking of his great wounds, the giants' strength,
Quite certain that he never would return;
And smitten by the thought that but for her,
Even though all unwilling, but for her,
This hapless quest had never been begun.
And then she looked upon the girl, so young
And fair and in such sorrow, and her heart
Was stirred with pity poignant as a pain.
And she dismounted quickly, went to her,
Knelt by her, took her in her arms, and kissed
Her eyes and stroked her hair, and soothed, and said
Sweet woman-words of comfort which she felt
Futile while uttering them. And the girl clung,
Her face to Enid's breast, and at the last
Grew very still and silent. "Can she sleep?"
Mused Enid, but up-turning the white face,
Drew back in a slow horror, for she slept
Indeed,--the sleep of death.

                                          Meanwhile Geraint
Caught sight of the two murderers, and in brawn
And stature they were giants in good truth.
Each looked to have the strength of two strong men,
Each carried on his shoulder a huge club,
Knotted, and braced with iron. Crying to them,
"For slaying yonder knight yourselves shall die!"
The prince rushed on them, with his long spear thrust
The nearer through the body that he died.
But ere he could pluck forth the lance again,
The other giant struck him with his club,
Crushing his side and shoulder, that his wounds,
Partially closed and stanched, opened anew
And from him all his blood began to flow.
Yet Geraint drew his sword and made attack,
And gave a blow so violent on the crown
Of the giant's head that bone and brain were split,
And he fell dead. Then careless that he left
His lance still fixed within his first foe's breast,
Fainting from loss of blood, with one desire,
One only, to reach her he loved so well,
Geraint returned to Enid, where she sat
Between the dead young lovers, and her eyes
Brightened at seeing him, but when he came
Before her, he fell swooning from his horse.

And Enid gave a moaning, stifled cry;
And flung herself upon him, calling him,
Entreating him to speak to her, but Geraint
Lay in so deep a swoon it seemed his death.
And then a numbing fear gripped Enid's heart;
And though with nerveless fingers she undid
The buckles of his armour, and laid bare
The dreadful wounds, and from her hem tore strips,
And wiped the blood away and bound his hurts,
Ever it seemed to her she did a thing
Which she had done before, so strong the sense
Had been upon her of a woe to come.
And when at last, his head upon her lap
Placing, she sat and gazed at his dear face,
She neither wept nor wailed; her eyes were dry
And bright as with a fever, and her lips
Kept whispering just the words, "Dead? Dead, my love?
And dead because of me?" And to and fro
Her body rocking slightly, thus she sat,
Whispering, "Dead? And dead because of me?"

So waned the afternoon, until the rays
Of the low sun wrought glory in the glade,
Kindling to gold the foliage. Then the dusk
Fell with a chill of autumn. Long before
Had Enid's palfrey and the lovers' steeds
Strayed far into the forest; but looking down
With sorrow almost human in its eyes,
Like faithfullest of friends, Geraint's destrier
Remained by Enid quietly. And the dusk
Deepened to dark, but Enid knew it not--
Knew neither light nor change to dusk nor dark,
For to her all was blackness.

                                             But Behold,
Upon a sudden through the forest streamed
The smoky flare of torches, and the combes
And alleys of the wood rang with the shouts
And jests and oaths of fierce and lawless men.
Then upon steaming horses flecked with foam,
Into the hollow glade was poured the band
Of ruffians of the ruffian Earl Limours,
Returning from a foray, with the spoils
Of sackage bound about their saddle-bows.
And in the forefront, on a huge, black horse,
His shield an empty blackness, and his spear
Grim with the hue of carnage, rode Limours,
A man of mighty stature, with a cruel
And swarthy countenance.

                                          At once the earl
Saw Enid and rode to her, with an oath
Saying, "What have we here? A woman lone,
With dead at either side, and in her lap,
One who will live not long in any case!"
Roughly to Enid then, "Does he live yet,
The one thou holdest?" Dully she replied,
As if another spake in place of her,
"I know not, but I fear that he is dead."
"Who is he?" asked Limours. "A knight and prince."
"And thou--art thou his wife or lady-love?"
"Both, both," said Enid. Whereupon Limours,
With a harsh laugh, gave ordering to his men:
"Quick! Make a sapling-litter for the man
And carry him to our hall, where we shall learn
Whether he live or die. And take his steed--
The horse at least may pay us for our pains.
As to the two dead bodies, let them lie."
And then again to Enid: "But as for thee,
I share with thee my charger. For know well
A fair face, even though bemarred with grief,
Is never slighted by the Earl Limours."

Which saying, he had Enid lifted up
And placed before him on the saddle-cloth;
While quickly his wild vassals used their brands
To cut two saplings upon which they laid
Branches crosswise, and on these placed Geraint,
His sword beside him. And in such array
They journeyed to the stronghold of Limours.

And great and gaunt and menacing was the hall
They entered, with a floor of naked stone,
And walls of stone begrimed by smoke and age;
Hung with fantastic cobwebs etched in soot,
Hung with old shields and helms, old spears and swords,
Eaten away with rust, and tattered flags
Fretted about the blood-stains,--booty all
Of ravagings in old years. A fire flamed high
In a vast, blackened fireplace; torches set
In rusted iron burned fitfully; down the room,
Ranged in long rows, were tables and their banks
Of bare, unfinished boards.

                                                   And upon these
The followers of Limours flung down the fruits
Of the day's foray--glittering, costly heaps:
Hauberks of silver mail, and helms and greaves
Inlaid with gold, and swords with jewelléd hilts;
Much silver plate, beakers and cups of gold,
Hanaps adorned with gems; and spurs and bits,
All of fine gold; and piles of various coins;
And surcoats of green satin, women's gowns
Of scarlet lined with minever, kirtles blue,
And mantles furred with ermine; while of rings,
Girdles and carcanets of twisted gold
And many gem-encrusted, such a sum
That onerous were the counting. Then the earl
Made the apportionment, to every man
Gave what he deemed was rightful, silencing
Any half-muttered word of discontent
With curses and with blows of his mailed hand;
And that which was the largest share and best
He for himself reserved.

                                          Then Prince Geraint,
Still in his swoon upon the leafy bier,
Limours caused to be placed upon a couch
In the center of the hall, and Enid sat
Beside him on a low bench, with her arms
Stretched over him, her cheek against his hand;
And neither did she weep nor did she wail.

And Limours doffed his armour, and his men
Did likewise, and a shout rose for the feast.
So entered kitchen-fellows, on huge trays
Bearing whole wild boars roasted, bullock's flesh,
Bittern and other fowl; and casks of wine
Were rolled into the hall; the tables set
With trenchers and with flagons and with cups--
A table-service of which some was wood,
And much was silver, ay, and part was gold.
And then in flaunting garments tricked with jewels
Too many, and with jangling chains of gold,
A throng of women came into the hall,
The wantons of the earl and of his men.
And all sat down together to the feast,
And ate and drank, and presently the talk
Grew fast and boisterous, the jesting broad,
The laughter gross, and always some would raise
Snatches of shameless songs.

                                          But Earl Limours,
With scarce a taste of food or sip of wine,
Pushed cup and platter from him; moodily
And with a dangerous lowering of brows
Sat, with his eyes on Enid; and at last
He rose and went to her, and seized her arm,
And pulled her to her feet, and spake to her:

"Why dost thou grieve for him? If he be dead
Will thy dole give him life? And if he live,
It matters not--he were as dead to thee.
For I have set my heart on having thee,
And I will have thee, not by any man
Living or dead, be barred from my desire.
Why starest thou so? The change is good enough,--
God knows, all to thy vantaging. Thou hast seen
What riches one day brings me; I have lands
And vassals who obey me to the death.
And riches, lands and vassals shall be thine.
So! Droop no more! I have no taste for grief.
It is my pleasure that my women smile;
Remember that!"

                                          And going to the heap
Of pillage that was his, he plucked a robe
Of scarlet damask from it, and returned
And thrust it towards her: "Go, and doff thy rags,
And clothe thee in this dress and come to me!"
But Enid, shaken from her apathy
By his discourteousness, stood white and straight
And resolute before him, answering him,
"My lord commanded me to wear this gown;
And till his will be changed, I wear it still."

And the earl flushed with anger, and his brows
Drew to a savage scowl; yet with his wrath
Unwilling admiration he must mix
For her defiance of him, in his power
Completely as she was. Never before
Had he known woman who could dare so much.
A moment he stood speechless; then he turned
And drew her to the table, forced her down
Into the seat by his, and pushed a plate
Of steaming meat before her and he said,
"I will forbear this once; but eat with me."

But Enid said: "Till yon pale man arise
And part the plate with me, I will not eat."
Raging, Limours replied: "A fool art thou!
Yon man is dead already. What avail
To take a vow that can not be fulfilled?
Is thy wit weak? I warn thee, have a care,
Lest I be angered from my gentleness,
And teach thee what it means to disobey.
Once more will I forbear; but drink with me."

But Enid pushed the heavy cup of gold,
Studded with rubies, with a red wine brimmed,
From her and said, "Till yon still man arise
And part the cup with me, I will not drink."

Then in a crimson fury, with the veins
Knotting upon his forehead, the black earl
Sprang from the bench, and with a grip that pained
Caught Enid by the shoulder, held her fast
At arm's length, raised his hand, crying aloud,
"As well may I be rough as gentle with thee!"
But when he made to strike, of his men one
Who had been born to nobler circumstance,
Remembering her he loved in that far youth,
Ere riot blasted him, arose and ran
And interposed himself before Limours,
Sheltering Enid. "It were better, lord,"
He said, "to use her gently. She is fair,
Womanly with a perfect womanhood."

But the earl, answering not, drew back a step,
Snatched up the massy hanap, poised it high,
Hurled it with fatal certaintly of aim,--
It struck the liegeman's temple and he reeled,
Groped with unsteady hand, then with a sigh
Sank in the pool of spilt wine and of blood
From the cut oozing, writhed once, and was still.

Then even that brutal fellowship was stirred
To a dull anger 'gainst the murderer;
And dark looks were passed slowly down the board,
And all at once the feast came to an end;
And in the ghastly silence one who well
Had loved the slain man, sobbed--and caught her breath
Suddenly in sharp fear, and tried to smile,
Finding Limours' eyes on her. And Limours,
Feeling the gathering menace of his men,
Maddened the more, and as if demon-driven
He drew to Enid, saying, "Learnest thou well
How they who cross me fare! And as with him,
Why not with thee?" and struck her in the face
With heavy hand!

                              And not so much the blow
It was as the mind-desolating thought
"He had not dared, saving my lord is dead!"
That forced a cry from Enid, loud and shrill,
Wailing and vibrant through the echoing hall,--
The cry of one for whom all things are done.

But in the black abysses of his swoon
Prince Geraint heard, and struggled towards the cry;
Battled through sheer eternities, it seemed,
With seething, formless horrors, some that mowed,
Some yelling voicelessly--an offspring all
Of consciousness returning--and at last
Leaped from the couch, and the great, lighted hall
Burst on his vision and the savage earl,
And the dead man prone in the wine and blood,
And Enid trembling from the blow, and pale
As palest death. And Geraint seized his sword
And rushed upon Limours, and with one blow
Struck head from body, and all they that sat
About the board, upstarting, fled from him,
Their faces ashen at the sight they saw,
Shrieking, "It is the dead man!" And the hall
Cleared in a moment of all enemies.

And Geraint folded Enid in his arms,
Kissing her on the throat and lips, and hair;
And clasped the face he loved in yearning hands,
And clasped her body in poor, faltering hands,
And knelt and pressed his cheek against her gown,
Kissing the robe's thin tatters, all the while
Whispering, "O Belovéd, what am I?
O dear my love, how have I treated thee!
O dear beyond all words, how dealt with thee!
Forgive, forgive!"

                                 But Enid saw alone
How shuddering fits of weakness mastered him,
How his hands quivered brokenly, and her fear
For him was such she could not say a word
Of love or any comforting--naught but this:
"Go, go, my lord! Go, ere they come again!
Geraint, go ere they slay thee!"

                                          Then he rose:
"Come, we shall go together;" and they passed
Into the courtyard, where Geraint's destrier
Stood saddled and still bridled. And Geraint
Mounted and drew up Enid, and she sat
Behind him with her arms about his waist.
And none came forth to hinder their escape,
When from the grim hall of the grim Limours
Rapidly through the night they rode away;
And a sweet wind was hurrying o'er the world,
And wreathed in wisp-like clouds the moon was sheen.

And Geraint said: "Belovéd, shall we ride
Unto a brighter world and fairer life,--
Ay, fairer for the weight of lifted woe?
I love thee; I have wronged thee; all my vows--
To cherish thee with such exceeding care,
To prove me not unworthy of thy love--
I brake them all, in all am I forsworn.
And yet forgive me, Enid, whom I love
So very, very well." And tenderly
She forward bent and kissed him as they rode;
And Love was come again to his high place,
And in two hearts was joyance at the last.

So they fared onward by a grassy way
Between two hawthorn-hedges, and the night
Was like a web of silver on the land.
But lo, before them, sharp against the sky
They saw the points of lances, heard the noise
Of an approaching host. Then Prince Geraint,
Checking his charger, said: "Who these may be,
I know not; but dismount, Enid, and hide
In yonder deepest shadow of the hedge,
Where they may not perceive thee." But she wept
And clung to him in anguish: "O my love,
So weak and wounded, without lance or shield,
How wilt thou make a stand against these men?
Let me stay with thee and thy lot be mine!"
"Nay," he replied, "I pray thee by our love,
Enid, to hide." And lest he suffer more,
She did as he would have her.

                                                Then behold,
Armed in full armour, with long spear in rest,
Upon a powerful, rushing steed, a knight
Forthissued from the host against Geraint.
And Enid saw, and seeing had such dole
As might not be contained, and she ran out
To meet the galloping steed, and wildly cried,
"O knight, eternal shame be thy reward
Slaying a man forwounded!" But the knight,
Reining his horse so sharply that it hurled
Back on its haunches, answered, "Do I see
Geraint's fair lady?" "Ah, but thou?" she said--
And then the moonfire showed upon his shield
The argent lion of the Little King,
Guivret, their friend and ally.

                                             And Guivret,
Lightly dismounting, knelt and kissed her hand,
Then ran to Prince Geraint, saying, "My lord,
If I had slain thee, grief had been my death.
I came to bring thee help if there was need.
For after that I saw thee ride away
This undertide, and went back to my towers,
Ever must I be thinking of thy wounds,
Thy lady's wondrous beauty, and the lands
Perilous of the evil Earl Limours.
I could not rest from thinking, and I rose
To call my thousand knights and men-at-arms--"
"And wounded as thou wert," brake in Geraint,
"To bring to me the help I greatly need.
Ah, friend, thine oath was more than empty words!"
"Lord," said the Little King, "I am thy man,
And love is there between us, as I hope.
And now I say again what I have said:
Come with me to my castle and be healed,
For grievous are thy hurts. And if not they
May move thee, then have pity on thy wife,
So worn, so dolour-stricken. For her sake
Come where she may have comfort. On the morn
We celebrate a wedding in our hall;
Joyance and cheer and chime of marriage-bell
Will make the world grow winsomer to you both."

But Enid, when she heard him, called to mind
The young dead lovers lying in the glade,
And understood and grieving told him all.
And King Guivret wept bitterly and he said:
"Cadoc of Tabriol, my sister's son,
Just issued from his squireship! Brave and true,
A good knight he had proved. And sweet Yglais,
His bride that should have been--so young and fair!
And they are dead! The wedding-wine is mulled,
The hall is strown for bridals. They are dead!
And we must toll the bells to other tune.
And yet, my lady and my lord Geraint,
Though mourning fills our chambers, will ye come
And find repose and healing for your hurts?"
"Fair friend," replied Geraint, "we thank thee; yea."

Then caused the king two litters to be made
Of tree-boughs, covered with soft grass and silks,
And on the one placed Enid, and Geraint
Upon the other. And the morning-grey
Revealed to them the castle by the stream,
High-towered Penévric, where in robes right rich
And all of luxury, they lodged full well;
And where the sisters, skilled in surgery,
Used every art to cure the prince's wounds.

And such was their unfailing craft and care,
That when a month was ended, strong and well
And vigorous of manhood was Geraint.
Then joy returned to Enid, and with joy
Rose-red of cheek, and golden sheen of hair,
And in her eyes the shining of a light.
And happiness gave to her such a grace,
So wonder-working and so excellent
That where she was there all was beautiful--
Ay, that which had been never; and all men,
Beholding her fair nobleness and charm,
Were minded to gaze long, lest when she pass
All beauteousness go with her. And Geraint
Had in his heart a love past any speech.

But naught of traitor was there in this love,
As had been in the old. From this should spring
Not slothfulness, dishonourable ease,
Indifference to his duties as a prince,
A people's disaffection, the dark slime
Of slanders that ere long must change to truths,
But action, honour on the field of arms,
Fair duties fairly done, all knightlihood,
A people's reverence for a worthy lord,
And wide, yet wider fame. For in those days
Of health restored, when Enid and Geraint
Re-entered into that companionship
And unison of spirit which they prized
Above all other good, and which had been
So long denied them by their own distrust,
Misunderstandings, doubts and unshared griefs,
Then frankly each to other told a tale:
Enid, of her unwillingness to speak
And tell him how the people scoffed at him
As given up to luxury, and content;
Geraint, of his ignoble doubts of her,
Of how the evil words of Honolan
Had closed with hers so fatefully on that morn.
And then he said: "Yet, Enid, all the while
I knew that he had lied; and all the while
It was upon me I should cast me down
And cry forgiveness that I wronged thee so;
But such a storm of wrath and shame and pride
Possessed me that all gentlehood was stilled.
And, Enid, what a poor thing was my pride!
My pride, which took no reck of periling thee!
My pride, wherein was neither reasoning
Nor courtesy nor any knightliness!
It was my master; yet at best it was
Only the wilful passion of a child!
And well-nigh it brought ruin to us both."

But Enid, looking on him with clear eyes
A little grave with tenderness, replied:
"O knight of mine, the past is past indeed.
The Mansions of To-morrow are so fair!
Therein shall we dwell always, with us, Love,
Kinglier-souled that he is learn'd of Pain.
True lover and true knight, I love thee well!"

So with Guivret the Little they abode
A fortnight and a month, and found him frank
And ever faultless in his courtesy.
But then they fell to longing for their home,
The pleasant land of Devon, where should be
A life the fairer for the lifted woe,
A love the greater that it had been tried,
Proved in the furnace-fires of stress and strife.
Wherefore they spake their purpose to Guivret;
And though for his own sake he much desired
Their tarriance still, of five score knights he formed
A retinue befitting, and with such train
Geraint and Enid rode to their own realm.

And heart-deep was the welcome which they had
From Erbin who had feared that they were dead,
And when they came before him, wept with joy.
And wide rejoicing made he in his court.
Then, though at Enid's gentle word, Geraint
Spared to Sir Honolan his evil life,
He banished him to shores beyond the seas.

And in the years that followed all was well.
Never did Prince Geraint again decline
To aught that was unworthy; steadfast, brave,
Tireless in quest of honour, a true knight
He was in all ways knightly, and the tongues
Which once had scoffed, spake nothing but his praise,
And praise of her with whom he had such love,
Enid, so very fair and very leal.
And when the good King Erbin was no more,
Unto Geraint and Enid passed the crown
Of Devon, and a king and queen were they,
To Arthur tributary, but paramount
In their own land. And king and queen they lived
And loved, until transformed to deathless names.

                           AFTERWORD

So hath the fair old history an end.
And yet, I pray you, gentles, linger still
And hear the song which folk say Alarin
Made when he dwelt in Faerie. For of him,
The story goes that Enid and Geraint
Had been in Devon at King Erbin's call
Hardly a twelvemonth, when from Arthur's court
He went away, and no man saw him more;
And wise folk say he sought, and seeking found,
The Country of the Clearness, Faeryland.

And the chief harper to the faery-king
He was, and ware the potent crown of joy;
Beheld the walls of beryl and the towers
Of amethyst and loadstone, heard the plash
Of waters Avalonian where the cups
Of lilies mould a margin to their flow,
And saw the stars wet with the faery sea.

And yet he made a small song, even this:

"Here, to suspended music, the slow hours
  Turn neither east nor west their golden ball;
And here, by wind-blown fountains, are the flowers
                              Which never fall.

"Ah, but what profit of the sovran day?
  What profit of this immortality,
If still remembrance and its fret must fray
                              Unceasingly?

"Here is the light whose sumless levels foam
  Like billows crescent to a crystal strand--
Serenities celestial--and they dome
                              A changeless land.

"Ah, but what comfort in such clarity?
  What soul in such placidity of grace?--
Ah, but the light which never lived for me
                              Upon her face!"

---

---

ROSENTHAL'S ELAINE

by

W[ILLIAM] H[ENRY] RHODES

I stood and gazed far out into the waste;
No dip of oar broke on the listening ear;
But the quick rippling of the inward flood
Gave warning of approaching argosy.

Adown the west, the day's last fleeting gleam
Faded and died, and left the world in gloom.
Hope hung no star up in the murky east
To cheer the soul, or guide the pilgrim's way.
Black frown'd the heavens, and black the answering earth
Reflected from her watery wastes the night.

Sudden, a plash! then silence. Once again
The dripping oar dipped in its silver blade,
Parting the waves, as smiles part beauty's lips.
Betwixt me and the curtain of the cloud,
Close down by the horizon's verge, there crept
From out the darkness, barge and crew and freight,
Sailless and voiceless, all!
Ah! Then I knew
I stood upon the brink of Time. I saw
Before me Death's swift river sweep along
And bear its burden to the grave.
"Elaine!"
One seamew screamed, in solitary woe;
"Elaine! Elaine!" stole back the echo, weird
And musical, from off the further shore.
Then burst a chorus wild, "Elaine! Elaine!"
And gazing upward through the twilight haze,
Mine eyes beheld King Arthur's phantom Court.
There stood the sturdy monarch: he who drove
The hordes of Hengist from old Albion's strand;
And, leaning on his stalwart arm, his queen,
The fair, the false, but trusted Guinevere!
And there, like the statue of a demi-god,
In marble wrought by some old Grecian hand,
With eyes downcast, towered Lancelot of the Lake.
Lavaine and Torre, the heirs of Astolat,
And he, the sorrowing Sire of the Dead,
Together with a throng of valiant knights
And ladies fair, were gathered as of yore,
At the Round Table of bold Arthur's Court.
There, too, was Tristram, leaning on his lance,
Whose eyes alone of all that weeping host
Swam not in tears; but indignation burned
Red in their sockets, like volcanic fires,
And from their blazing depths a Fury shot
Her hissing arrows at the guilty pair.
Then Lancelot, advancing to the front,
With glance transfixed upon the canvas true
That sheds immortal fame on ROSENTHAL,
Thus chanted forth his Requiem for the Dead:

Fresh as the water in the fountain,
Fair as the lily by its side,
Pure as the snow upon the mountain,
Is the angel
Elaine!
My spirit bride!

Day after day she grew fairer,
As she pined away in sorrow, at my side;
No pearl in the ocean could be rarer
Than the angel
Elaine!
My spirit bride!

The hours passed away all unheeded,
For love hath no landmarks in its tide.
No child of misfortune ever pleaded
In vain
To Elaine!
My spirit bride!

Here, where sad Tamesis is rolling
The wave of its sorrow-laden tide,
Forever on the air is heard tolling
The refrain
Of Elaine!
My spirit bride!

---

---

KING ARTHUR'S SLEEP

A BALLAD OF BALA FAIR

by

ERNEST RHYS

                        I.

On the morn of sweet St. Martin
   Davie drew a hazel wand,
And he singing came to Bala,
   With the hazel in his hand.

What he sang, the cock-thrush echoed,
   Some wild rhyme of Merlin's doom,
Or the sad refrain of Rhuddlan,
   Or the love of Hob and Twm.

From the hill, he heard the harpers,
   And the hagglers, in the town,
And his heart leapt up to hear them,
   As he sang, and hastened down.
                        

                        II.

What cobbled ancientry is this comes coughing thro' the fair,
                     Davie dear?
Like one from out the grave arisen, the grave-mould in his hair?

The shepherd boys cry 'Druan!' the Bala maids 'Beware!
                     Davie dear!'
Yea sure, at sight of Davie's wand, he waits a while to stare.

'If thou'll take me where thy hazel grew,--ah, this cough has made me old!'
                     Davie's told,--
'I'll twine thy wand with silver, and bind thy belt with gold!'

Can you bear to leave untasted all the fun of Bala Fair,
                     Davie dear?
'Davie dear!' the maids keep calling. His wand leads otherwhere.
                        

                        III.

Far from Bala fair, the Lonnen
   Leans against the mountain side;
Far above the Lonnen haystacks,
   Drops the brook the hazels hide.

Davie leads, the grey-man follows,
   As grey-eve, St. Martin's morn;
While across the Lonnen haystacks,
   Now the pale frost-fog is borne.

Davie leads, the grey-man follows;
   And he coughs; but Davie sighs
As they climb, and mark the night-fall;
   With no lantern but their eyes.

By the torrent, mid the hazels,
   Hardly may the grey-man see,
Groping, kneeling, there, a gravestone,
   Cast with Druid charactry.

Ach, he coughs; his lean long fingers
   Strain upon it, til it stirs,
But a cry from out the torrent,
   And the hazels Davie hears!

                        IV.

Deep as Merlin's grave, the stairway
   That descended, gloom on gloom,
Into darkness that no window
   Ever yet let sun illume.

Davie fears, but he must follow:
   Till the darkness soars and falls,--
Arched and groined, and looped and lifted,
   Like St. David's twilit walls.

And within, a trembling twilight
   Surely shewed a thousand men,
All asleep, in shining helmets,
   Ah, to see them wake again.

'They are mighty Arthur's warriors!'
   Said the grey-man; 'Till the day
When the bell shall ring to wake them,
   They must sleep. Then wake for aye!

'With his knights at the Round Table,--
   Owain, Kai, and Percival,--
See,--the little star that crowns him,
   There sleeps Arthur, King of all.

'But as Merlin said, not waking
   In our time, save yonder bell
Ring,--and see the gold around them
   That is ours. Oh, Sirs, sleep well!'

                        V.

Davie's lips part, wide with wonder,
   At the warriors in their sleep,
With such spears, and splendid helmets;
   'Ah,' he cries, 'to see them leap

'Forth to life, and march to music,
   Flashing all their thousand spears;
Ring, you bell, until King Arthur
   Rises, royal, when he hears!'

Still the old man gropes and grumbles
   O'er his gold, as Davie's gone;
Hark, ye mystic hall of warriors,
   Hark, the bell rings, night is done!

At its stroke, the mountain trembled,
   And the thousand spears replied,
Grounding on the mouldy pavement,
   As the men rose, side by side.

Oh, the soldiers rise in radiance,
   All in motion, helm and spear!
And King Arthur's crown, above them,
   Like a star shines steadfast there!

But a voice cried,--'Sleep, King Arthur!
   Greed of gold, a boy at play,
Wake thy destined sleep; far distant
   Still is the awakening day!'

And King Arthur cried,--'Sleep, soldiers!
   Sleep, my spears!' They sank again
Into silence. Round the table
   Arthur slept with all his men!

But the old man hastened, stumbling,
   From his gold, and grumbling crept,
And drew Davie up the stairway,
   Looking back at those who slept.

Far below, the Lonnen windows,
   Sent one gleam forth lonelily,
As alone stood Davie, asking,--
   'Old man, gold man, where is he?'
                        

                        VI.

Many a morn, up from the Lonnen,
   Davie led his sheep to seek
For the door, but never found it,--
   Many a morn, week after week!

Many an eve, too, Davie waited,
   Year by year, till he was grown
Stalwart, and the Lonnen pastures,
   And the sheep there were his own.

And when he was grey, he told it,
   In his sounding mountain tongue
To his grandsons; and they told it
   To the harp when songs were sung.

So my grandsire told the story
   O'er to me: and long I sought
For King Arthur's Hall,--and seeking,
   Yet must wander, finding nought.

Yet we wait the day of waking!
   But the grave its counsel keeps:
Still within his Hall of Waiting,
   With his warriors Arthur sleeps.

---

---

THE DEATH OF MERLIN

by

ERNEST RHYS

 

             I.--THE SEA-RUMOUR.

                               I.

Three sailors pass, by the Water-gate,
And sing of Merlin, as it grows late.
Last night they sailed the Irish Sea,
The bitter sea, in a wild twilight,
Where its tide swims north to Enlli strait.
From the Water-gate to Merlin's Tree,--
They sing to-night
Of Merlin's death and Annwn's might.

                               II.

To-night, oh Towy, from the seas,
We saw their mast o'ertop thy trees,
The tow rope swayed their top-mast tall;
While the wind whipt the rain like a tarrying team,
And the spent leaves speckled thy serpent stream:
Thro' the sleepy town, what songs are these
They sing, till they reach the Spital wall,
And break the dream of Morial?

                  
                                         III.

                    SAILORS' SONG.

   'Marvellous Merlin is wasted away
   With a wicked woman:--woe might she be!
   For she hath closed him in a crag
               On Cornwall coast.'

                               IV.

'A fair sea-tale! What woman could,
With all the red witchery of her blood,
Enchant the Enchanter that is lost?
Her maiden mystery,' Morial said,
'Was Nimua's art, in Merlin's mood.
What iron crag of Cornwall coast,
What cleft of fierce Tintagil's head,
Keeps him that like a flower all Carnac sunward spread?'

             II.--THE SECOND SEA-RUMOUR.

                              I.

Deep, deep is the night, the street deserted:
One house alone wakes broken-hearted:
A candle winks in the window-pane.
The children wake and cry within
At the thing that never yet tear averted.
As the monk sains the dead, another strain
From the quay below, brings the sailor's din
And tells some belated ship is in!

                              II.

'Yo ho, yo he!' a hearty sound:
But their barque has gotten a sore sea-wound.
Her master hastens from the quay;
At the Spital gate, now hear him knock,
And hum to himself, while on the ground
From his fierce red-beard, and his stained sea-frock,
The salt sea-fret continually
Drops as he drones his sea-mystery.
                             

                                        III.

               SHIPMASTER'S SONG.

   Marvellous Merlin is wafted away
   In a sailing island, a ship of glass;
   Far over the edge of the world he's blown
              By Annwn's blast.

                              IV.

His voice fell as he sang, forlorn
As a voice o'er the drown'd five cities borne:
To a mariner on the winter sea:
And the monk that came from the dead-chamber,
With thought of death, grew sad to hear:
And sad his 'Benedicite?'
[Twas Morial spoke], as he turned the key.

                              V.

The wet night wind went whistling through
The wicket as he swung it to,
And the lantern gaped at the red sea-beard.
'From demons save my soul,' began
The Shipmaster: 'Hark ye, it blew
The blackest blast that ever I knew,
Under Enlli Isle: and we fell afeard,
For the Isle was adrift, and we barely cleared.

                              VI.

'Like a ship of glass as white as milk,
With mast of ebon and shroud of silk,
She sailed away. But see in black
Stands Merlin midships, round his head
A ring of white-fire,--while the rack
Screams by o'erhead: and the long-drown'd dead
Stand up to see. But he never looks back:
Tho' the hounds of Annwn are on his track.

                              VII.

'Oh, the dead cried out, and the sea-worms leapt,
For her keel drag'd fathom deep, and swept
Gulfs dark with demons in her wake!
And they sea-witched us, me and my men,
Till we drank the salt, and never slept,
And for many a moon beat the sea, and then,
Came home, came home! Good Morial, take
Off Satan's curse for Christ His sake!'

                              VIII.

Next noon, see, on the sunn'd ebbtide,
His ship sails trim from Towy side,
And the sailors sing: but Morial
Thinks of the dead last night, and deems
That Merlin lies indeed where glide
Those snakes that demons are. His dreams
Make pale moon-paintings on his wall;
Where the drowned sink, saying,--'Death is all!'

                              IX.

Oh, then to all else Morial died,
Save scroll and desk, and wall beside:
For Merlin's history let him write!
The Abbot said, and nothing hide:
But year by year the thread unwind
Of Merlin's mystery from his mind;
From demon birth, thro' sin and sleight,
To the dark sea-death in the drifting night.

             III.--MORIAL'S DEATH-DREAM.

                              I.

Now Calan Gauav again draws on,
And many a marching year is gone:
And yet, as thirty years before,
His faith thrice-slain, writes Morial.
He hardly marks the one year more;
The winter dusk stand at the door;
The winter wind sigh in the wall;
The winter leaves by the window fall.

                              II.

To-night there should have been a moon:
But it rained hard all afternoon,
And chill the early twilight fell,
O'er Merlin's death he bent his head,
To tell the end: 'Now from Annwn,
The demons call;' he writes, 'the bell
[And never a mass for Merlin said,]
Rings thrice in Enlli for the dead!'

                              III.

With every word he writes, he dies;
The historian with his histories.
The parchment paled as now the pen
With failing charactry made pause
O'er Merlin's demon-obsequies,
Too monstrous to be told of men:
Thrice dead is all that Merlin was:--
'MERLINUS MORTUUS: DEO LAUS!'

                              IV.

His heart slept there: but sure the gloom
Hid one that spoke within the room,
A face that grew on the grey wall,
And seemed to speak, and fade again
'Beneath Galltvyrthen is my tomb,
Where now the rain drips, Morial:
But I hear the stars at their ancient strain:
And it needs you come where I have lain.'

                              V.

He knew that voice, that tone of fate;
And cried, 'I come!' The Spital gate
Creak'd as he passed. The wind made spears
Of the shattered rain: his pulses leapt
To feel them fall: his heart grew great
With every gust: his only fears,
To feel how frail the pace he kept;
To feel how slow his stiff feet stept.

                              VI.

By Towy's tide, o'er Gwili's flood--
Now Morial gains Galltvyrthen wood.
In the heart of the wood the wind lay still;
The moon in the trees lit a silver lamp;
And Morial saw where the Nine Oaks stood
About the grave-stone under the hill,
That rose from the mould and the dead-leaf-damp,
In the twilight of the moon's white lamp.

             IV.--THE WAKING OF MERLIN.

                              I.

'Merlin!' he cried. Like nine grey men,
The oaks, he thought, moved nearer then
The door of death, whose mysteries
Gave way at the clay's rebirth;
As shaking off the grave again,
With all his smouldering fervencies
Regathered from his mother Earth,
Her Marvellous Son stood forth.

                              II.

But first, half-risen from the clay,
'Marw a garav,' he seemed to say--
'Marw Mordav'--'Since Mordav's dead,
I want to die!' So long ago,
He cried on dread Arderyd's day,
Thought Morial,--and in his bed
Of death, that crimson stream of woe
Seemed thro' his dream to flow and flow.

                              III.

'Crist Celi' next he cries, with hands
Heaved trembling up, and forthright stands:
And surely now the nine Oak-trees
Stand, nine grey Druids, robed in white,
Armed with the smoking bardic brands,
And hymn the Eternal Three Essences,
And weave the rune of the crescent Light,
Whose dawn-fire breaks on Merlin's night.

                              IV.

                    DRUIDS' SONG.

Marvellous Merlin's awake with the day:
The Morning Star calls the Dawn from the hill:
The Flame wakes again on the ash of thy brands,
             Oh sacred hearth!

Wild Merlin's awake. The Sun's on his way;
Where the Elements heard the harp of the Stars,
That Darkness let shine, as Death does thy Life,
             Oh Cymraec Land!

                              V.

Their hymn was done. Their brands the smoke
Sent branching up; and Merlin spoke:
'The Soul aspires, past Night's last arch;
Where they that stained Arderyd's dust,
Cross, to the ardent fields of air;
And make such music in their march,
Their hearts forget the deadly thrust,
Whose purple decks the robes they wear.

                              VI.

'Now Morning, from Caer Cennen's steep,
Comes marching,' Merlin cries, 'to keep
Watch on the mountain fastnesses!
Crying to all the Cymraec fields--
Awake! Not long King Arthur's sleep
Shall be, ere while the herd-boy sees
The dawn that yields
The cry of harps, the glancing of his shields!'

                              VII.

So Morial heard, that might not write
Nor add the morn to Merlin's night.
That ends his mortal chronicle;
And some say still, that many a one
Read Annwn's mark, and dreadful might,
In the dead face of Morial:
There speaks the Night! The Night is done:
And Marvellous Merlin's Day's begun.

---

---

THE WAKING OF KING ARTHUR

BRECHVA'S HARP-SONG

by

ERNEST RHYS

Little harp, at the cry
   He shall come in his time;
And thy sword-song on high,
   High shall chime.

Little harp, in his heart
   Is the fire; in his hand
Are the sword, and the Art,
   To command.

Little harp, like the wind
   Is his strength; like thy sound
Are his words, to unbind
   Every wound.

Little harp, if his name
   Be unknown, ye shall hear
How the Stars tell his fame
   Far and near.

Little harp, if unknown
   He awake, there shall sing
All the Stars, as they crown
   Him All-King!

---

---

SIR LAUNCELOT AND THE SANCGREAL

by

ERNEST RHYS

                                          "Car il ¹ n'or à nul pech'eour
                                          Ne compaignie ne amour."

He found a chamber where the door was shut,
    And thereto set his hand to open it;
And mightily he tried, and still might not:
    And then he heard a voice which sang so sweet,
It seemed none earthly thing that he heard sing,
                         "Honour and joy be given
                          To the High King of Heaven!"

It seemed none earthly thing that sung therein,
    So sweet the voice, it near had made him greet,--
For well he knew his body, stained with sin,
    Was for that mystic chamber all unmeet,
Wherein those voices rang, yes, choired and sang;
                         "Honour and joy be given
                         To the High King of Heaven!"

For well he knew that there the Sancgreal
    Upon the board was set for sinless souls,
While the three rays shone sidelong down the wall;
    While he without did kneel with many a stain,
And there to that hid noise he joined his voice,
                         "Pity and grace be given,
                         To me, lost child of Heaven!"

With that he saw the chamber door unclose,
    And out there shone a clearness and a light
As all the torches in the world that house
    Had lighted and been borne there burning bright
About the Sancgreal, while sang they all,
                         "Honour and joy be given,
                         To the sweet lord of Heaven!"

Oh, much he marvelled, and would enter in,
    And cried, "Fair Father Jesu" in his need,
Remembering then men's woe and mortal sin
    For which the Christ upon the Cross did bleed,--
Yes, crying still that prayer, he entered there,--
                         "Pity and grace be given
                         To me, poor knight of Heaven!"

Right so he entered, where the Sancgreal
    Did shine to greet him; but a gust of fire,
And a grim smoke, there smote and made him fall;
    It took his body's might, and all desire;
He had no voice nor will, though they sang still,
                         "Honour and joy be given,
                         To the High King of Heaven!"

Then many hands did raise and bear him out,
    And there all night he lay, till morning time;
And many a day like dead lay Launcelot,
    He heard no bell at matin or at prime:
Nathless he deem'd did sing, none earthly thing,
                         "Honour and joy be given,
                         To the High King of Heaven!"

Then came a dayspring and a fair white dawn,
    And he rose up, yet did not rise the same:
For all the bitterness and pain were gone:
    For he who sinn'd the sin had borne the shame,
And seen the Sancgreal, and heard them call,
                         "Honour and joy be given,
                         To the High King of Heaven!"

           *          *           *           *           *

Oh now, frail sons of earth, who fell in sin;
    Learn from the piteous deed of this dread knight,
Beat at the door, and cry, and enter in,
    And you shall win the Grail, and see the Light,
Yes, like none earthly thing, shall hear them sing,
                         "Honour and joy be given,
                         To the High King of Heaven!"

¹ i.e. le Gréail."

---

---

THE CITY OF SARRAS

by

ERNEST RHYS

     "I require you that ye bury me not in this country, but as soon as I am dead put me in a boat at the next haven, . . . and as soon as ye three come to the city of Sarras, there to achieve the Holy Grail, . . . there bury me in the spiritual place."

                          I
OH, have you not heard of Sir Galahad,
    Sir Bors and Sir Percival,--
How they came to the Castle of Carbonek,--
    On the Quest of the Sancgreal?

                          II
They sate at King Pelles' table,--
    And they saw a Spear that bled
Three drops of blood most marvellous,--
    And a marvellous sweet voice said,--

                          III
"Sir Galahad,--Sir Galahad!
    Sir Bors, and Sir Percival!"--
And all three saw a shining form
    By the cup of the Sancgreal.

                          IV
"This is Joseph of Arimathea,"
    It said, "The which had grace;
Which was saved in the City of Sarras
    In the Spiritual Place!"

                          V
They grew adread to see the form
    Of one dead, three hundred year!
But Joseph said, "A man like you,
    Look on me,--have no fear!"

                          VI
Then they saw two angels stand there,
    Wax candles in their hand:
And Joseph of Arimathea
    Between that twain did stand.

                          VII
"Now," said he, "servants of Jesu Christ
    All three, you shall be fed
Afore this table with meats, more sweet
    Than any knight ate," he said:
But when he had said it, he vanished away,
    And the greater grew their dread.

                          VIII
Then came One from the Holy Grail,--
    They saw his blood; they knew the Light!
My knights, he said, my true children:
    You shall taste of the Grail this night.

                          IX
Straightway Sir Galahad kneeled down,--
    Sir Bors, and Sir Percival:
And they humbly received their Saviour
    And partook of the Sancgreal.

                          X
Too sweet for earth its savour was;--
    Too marvellous to be told
Was the Mystery, and beyond man's sight
    What the three knights saw unroll'd.

                          XI
This night, said he, you have seen much:
    But after Night, the Day;
And here in the realm of Logris
    The Sancgreal cannot stay.

                          XII
You have seen this night your souls' desire;
    But there waits a Mystery
More strange, my knights, than you can think
    Till to Sarras you sail the sea,--

                          XIII
Till you come where Joseph of Arimathea
    Stood with me, face to face;--
Till you stand in the City of Sarras,
    In the Spiritual Place.

---

---

THE LAMENT OF SIR ECTOR DE MARIS

by

ERNEST RHYS

                               I

Thro' waste and steep, this seven year
  Sir Ector seeks Sir Launcelot,
His flower of knights, his brother dear.

From Calabre to Gwent, he sought;
  Last home to Joyous Garde, he hight
By roads that once Sir Launcelot brought.

                               II

What lights are they that burn all night,
  Within the quire of Joyous Garde?
Sir Ector draws rein at the sight.

What songs are they to heaven's Lord?
  What singing men, that sing and pause?
Sir Ector doffs his helm and sword.

They sing no song of "Deo Laus":
  Sir Ector de Maris knows them not:
Yet, well they know his thrice-scarr'd brows.

"There lies they brother, Launcelot,"
  Sir Bors says, standing by the bier,
"That thou this seven year hath sought!"

Through waste and steep, this seven year,
  He sought; and now he swoons to see
That face he sought lie on the bier.

The kneeling knights rise silently:
  They bear him forth to the cool night-air
The summer night drinks from the sea.

                               III

When Ector woke, what anguish there
  He made, what pity in him wrought:
His cries were more than heart can bear.

"Oh Launcelot, oh Launcelot,
  Of Christian knight, the flower and head,
And there thou liest, Sir Launcelot.

"I will dare say," Sir Ector said,
  "Of all men thou wert courtliest,
And the truest knight ever love bested.

"Of a sinful man, thou wert the best,
  That ever loved; and of all, did ride
The lists full-arm'd, the goodliest.

"And thou were first in the battle-tide
  To meet the spears; yet, the gentlest man
That sate in hall by the ladies' side.

"And thou wert always the meekest one
  That served thy lord in Camelot:
And the sternest knight, since wars began,

"Put spear in rest, or ever fought
  With thy mortal foe: and there, how low,
How low, thou liest, Sir Launcelot!"

               *               *               *

The sorrow then, no man can know:
Weeping, complaining, without end,
For the noblest knight, the truest friend,
That ever into the grave did go.

---

---

THE LAST SLEEP OF SIR LAUNCELOT

by

ERNEST RHYS

                "Behold also this mighty champion, Launcelot, peerless of knighthood, . . . that sometime was so terrible."

Still asleep, and fast asleep,
    The hermit-bishop lay,
And fell upon a great laughter
    An hour before the day.

Therewith his fellowship arose,
    And asked what ailed him then?
"Alas!" said he, "such joy was mine
    As shall not be again.

"Here was Sir Launcelot with me,
    And angels too, far more
Than there be men, that heav'd him up
    To heaven's open door!"

"Vexing of dreams, it is but dreams,"
    Said Bors. The bishop said,
"Yet go to Launcelot's bedside!"
    They go; they find him dead.

Still asleep, and fast asleep,
    Oh, sweet the smile he wore!
Sir Launcelot lay fast asleep,
    To waken never more.

Yes, there he lay, and smiled in sleep;
    And a sweetest savour rose:
But greater dolour none has heard,
    Than the dole within that house.

        *        *        *

Next day, the mass of requiem sung,
    They lift for him his sword.
The same bier that bare Gwenevere,
    Bare him to Joyous Garde.

And still asleep, and fast asleep,
    His visage open laid,
Within the quire of Joyous Garde
    Sir Launcelot lies dead.

---

---

THE QUEST OF THE GRAIL: ON THE EVE

by

ERNEST RHYS

                          "And then the king and all estates went home unto Camelot, and so went to evensong
                       to the great minster. And so after upon that to supper."

                                        I
"Before you take this Quest," (he said), "in order set,--
Each knight around the Table, --come, sup with me yet;
Come, keep the feast, that after us men never shall forget!"

                                        II
Now, round the Table seated, each tall knight in his place,--
Hears noises like to thunder, and sees a light whose rays
Make shine his fellows by him, with brows more bright than day's.

                                        III
Not one could speak, for wonder. Then lo, within the hall
Wrapt round with snow-white samite, the blessed Sancgreal
And sweetest savours filled the board; and meat and drink for all.

                                        IV
The mystic Vessel like a gleam went by: it could not stay:
And the knights all fell to feasting, and the vision passed away,
That all shall quest, but few shall find, until the earth's last day.

                                        V
And then they fell to babbling, their hands upon their knees,
And babbled of the morrow, and all the joy there is
For them that quest, and ride the lands, and cross the winter seas.

                                        VI
But the tears fell down King Arthur's cheeks, as he sate with his men:
"Ye have set me in great sorrow," said Arthur to them then:
"For oh, I doubt, my fellowship, shall meet no more again!"

---

---

TIMOR MORTIS

by

ERNEST RHYS

                         "The thing that I feared is fallen upon me."

When deadly flesh, oh knight, shall see
   The spiritual things,
The samite cloth, the Mystery,
   The long street where the wings
Of eagles are the minstrelsy,
       And winnow death, like dust away
           Upon a windy day.

Then, if thine arm, like Galahad,
   And thy heart tremble too,
Heave up, oh knight, thy hands, full glad
   To know the death he knew
The samite drawn, the Grail unclad
       Logris and beyond the sea
           That sails to Ar'mathie.

There, healed and solaced by the Grail,
   Thy wounds shall hurt not so:
But He, that Knight whom men did nail
   Upon the tree shall show
Those wounds they made, that brow left pale
       By death, which call and bid thee come
           Safe, oh knight errant, home.

---

---

MERLIN

by

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

I
"Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
D'ye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough
And hard enough into the feathery west
Ye'll have a glimmer of the Grail itself?
And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady,
What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?"

So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight
Because he loved him as he laughed at him,
Intoned his idle presence on a day
To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone,
Had there been in him thought of anything
Save what was murmured now in Camelot
Of Merlin's hushed and all but unconfirmed
Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard
At first there was a ghost in Arthur's palace,
But soon among the scullions and anon
Among the knights a firmer credit held
All tongues from uttering what all glances told--
Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon,
Fearing he might say more to Lancelot
Of Merlin's rumor-laden resurrection
Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish,
Had sauntered off with his imagination
To Merlin's Rock, where now there was no Merlin
To meditate upon a whispering town
Below him in the silence.--Once he said
To Gawaine: "You are young; and that being so,
Behold the shining city of our dreams
And of our King."--"Long live the King," said Gawaine.--
"Long live the King," said Merlin after him;
"Better for me that I shall not be King;
Wherefore I say again, Long live the King,
And add, God save him, also, and all kings--
All kings and queens. I speak in general.
Kings have I known that were but weary men
With no stout appetite for more than peace
That was not made for them."--"Nor were they made
For kings," Gawaine said, laughing.--"You are young,
Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world
Between your fingers, knowing not what it is
That you are holding. Better for you and me,
I think, that we shall not be kings."

Gawaine,
Remembering Merlin's words of long ago,
Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again,
He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard:
"There's more afoot and in the air to-day
Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin
May or may not know all, but he said well
To say to me that he would not be King.
Nor more would I be King." Far down he gazed
On Camelot, until he made of it
A phantom town of many stillnesses,
Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings
To reign in, without omens and obscure
Familiars to bring terror to their days;
For though a knight, and one as hard at arms
As any, save the fate-begotten few
That all acknowledged or in envy loathed,
He felt a foreign sort of creeping up
And down him, as of moist things in the dark,--
When Dagonet, coming on him unawares,
Presuming on his title of Sir Fool,
Addressed him and crooned on till he was done:
"What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?"

"Sir Dagonet, you best and wariest
Of all dishonest men, I look through Time,
For sight of what it is that is to be.
I look to see it, though I see it not.
I see a town down there that holds a king,
And over it I see a few small clouds--
Like feathers in the west, as you observe;
And I shall see no more this afternoon,
Than what there is around us every day,
Unless you have a skill that I have not
To ferret the invisible for rats."

"If you see what's around us every day,
You need no other showing to go mad.
Remember that and take it home with you;
And say tonight, 'I had it of a fool--
With no imediate obliquity
For this one or for that one, or for me.'"
Gawaine, having risen, eyed the fool curiously:
"I'll not forget I had it of a knight,
Whose only folly is to fool himself;
And as for making other men to laugh,
And so forget their sins and selves a little,
There's no great folly there. So keep it up,
As long as you've a legend or a song,
And have whatever sport of us you like
Till havoc is the word and we fall howling.
For I've a guess there may not be so loud
A sound of laughing here in Camelot
When Merlin goes again to his gay grave
In Brittany. To mention lesser terrors,
Men say his beard is gone."

"Do men say that?"
A twitch of an impatient weariness
Played for a moment over the lean face
Of Dagonet, who reasoned inwardly:
"The friendly zeal of this inquiring knight
Will overtake his tact and leave it squealing,
One of these days."--Gawaine looked hard at him:
"If I be too familiar with a fool,
I'm on the way to be another fool,"
He mused, and owned a rueful qualm within him:
"Yes, Dagonet," he ventured, with a laugh,
"Men tell me that his beard has vanished wholly,
And that he shines now as the Lord's anointed,
And wears the valiance of an ageless youth
Crowned with a glory of eternal peace."

Dagonet, smiling strangely, shook his head:
"I grant your valiance of a kind of youth
To Merlin, but your crown of peace I question;
For, though I know no more than any churl
Who pinches any chambermaid soever
In the King's palace, I look not to Merlin
For peace, when out of his peculiar tomb
He comes again to Camelot. Time swings
A mighty scythe, and some day all your peace
Goes down before its edge like so much clover.
No, it is not for peace that Merlin comes,
Without a trumpet--and without a beard,
If what you say men say of him be true--
Nor yet for sudden war."

Gawaine, for a moment,
Met then the ambiguous gaze of Dagonet,
And, making nothing of it, looked abroad
As if at something cheerful on all sides,
And back again to the fool's unasking eyes:
"Well, Dagonet, if Merlin would have peace,
Let Merlin stay away from Brittany,"
Said he, with admiration for the man
Whom Folly called a fool: "And we have known him;
We knew him once when he knew everything."

"He knew as much as God would let him know
Until he met the lady Vivian.
I tell you that, for the world knows all that;
Also it knows he told the King one day
That he was to be buried, and alive,
In Brittany; and that the King should see
The face of him no more. Then Merlin sailed
Away to Vivian in Broceliande,
Where now she crowns him and herself with flowers
And feeds him fruits and wines and many foods
Of many savors, and sweet ortolans.
Wise books of every lore of every land
Are there to fill his days, if he require them,
And there are players of all instruments--
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols; and she sings
To Merlin, till he trembles in her arms
And there forgets that any town alive
Had ever such a name as Camelot.
So Vivian holds him with her love, they say,
And he, who has no age, has not grown old.
I swear to nothing, but that's what they say.
That's being buried in Broceliande
For too much wisdom and clairvoyancy.
But you and all who live, Gawaine, have heard
This tale, or many like it, more than once;
And you must know that Love, when Love invites
Philosophy to play, plays high and wins,
Or low and loses. And you say to me,
'If Merlin would have peace, let Merlin stay
Away from Brittany.' Gawaine, you are young,
And Merlin's in his grave."

"Merlin said once
That I was young, and it's a joy for me
That I am here to listen while you say it.
Young or not young, if that be burial,
May I be buried long before I die.
I might be worse than young; I might be old."--
Dagonet answered, and without a smile:
"Somehow I fancy Merlin saying that;

A fancy--a mere fancy." Then he smiled:
"And such a doom as his may be for you,
Gawaine, should your untiring divination
Delve in the veiled eternal mysteries
Too far to be a pleasure for the Lord.
And when you stake your wisdom for a woman,
Compute the woman to be worth a grave,
As Merlin did, and say no more about it.
But Vivian, she played high. Oh, very high!
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols,--and her love.
Gawaine, farewell."

"Farewell, Sir Dagonet,
And may the devil take you presently."
He followed with a vexed and envious eye,
And with an arid laugh, Sir Dagonet's
Departure, till his gaunt obscurity
Was cloaked and lost amid the glimmering trees.
"Poor fool!" he murmured. "Or am I the fool?
With all my fast ascendency in arms,
That ominous clown is nearer to the King
Than I am--yet; and God knows what he knows,
And what his wits infer from what he sees
And feels and hears. I wonder what he knows
Of Lancelot, or what I might know now,
Could I have sunk myself to sound a fool
To springe a friend. . . . No, I like not this day.
There's a cloud coming over Camelot
Larger than any that is in the sky,--
Or Merlin would be still in Brittany,
With Vivian and the viols. It's all too strange."

And later, when descending to the city,
Through unavailing casements he could hear
The roaring of a mighty voice within,
Confirming fervidly his own conviction:
"It's all too strange, and half the world's half crazy!"--
He scowled: "Well, I agree with Lamorak."
He frowned, and passed: "And I like not this day."

II

Sir Lamorak, the man of oak and iron,
Had with him now, as a care-laden guest,
Sir Bedivere, a man whom Arthur loved
As he had loved no man save Lancelot.
Like one whose late-flown shaft of argument
Had glanced and fallen afield innocuously,
He turned upon his host a sudden eye
That met from Lamorak's an even shaft
Of native and unused authority;
And each man held the other till at length
Each turned away, shutting his heavy jaws
Again together, prisoning thus two tongues
That might forget and might not be forgiven.
Then Bedivere, to find a plain way out,
Said, "Lamorak, let us drink to some one here,
And end this dryness. Who shall it be--the King,
The Queen, or Lancelot?"--"Merlin," Lamorak growled;
And then there were more wrinkles round his eyes
Than Bedivere had said were possible.
"There's no refusal in me now for that,"
The guest replied; "so, 'Merlin' let it be.
We've not yet seen him, but if he be here,
And even if he should not be here, say 'Merlin.'"
They drank to the unseen from two new tankards,
And fell straightway to sighing for the past,
And what was yet before them. Silence laid
A cogent finger on the lips of each
Impatient veteran, whose hard hands lay clenched
And restless on his midriff, until words
Were stronger than strong Lamorak:

"Bedivere,"
Began the solid host, "you may as well
Say now as at another time hereafter
That all your certainties have bruises on 'em,
And all your pestilent asseverations
Will never make a man a salamander--
Who's born, as we are told, so fire won't bite him,--
Or a slippery queen a nun who counts and burns
Herself to nothing with her beads and candles.
There's nature, and what's in us, to be sifted
Before we know ourselves, or any man
Or woman that God suffers to be born.
That's how I speak; and while you strain your mazard,
Like Father Jove, big with a new Minerva,
We'll say, to pass the time, that I speak well.
God's fish! The King had eyes; and Lancelot
Won't ride home to his mother, for she's dead.
The story is that Merlin warned the King
Of what's come now to pass; and I believe it
And Arthur, he being Arthur and a king,
Has made a more pernicious mess than one,
We're told, for being so great and amorous:
It's that unwholesome and inclement cub
Young Modred I'd see first in hell before
I'd hang too high the Queen or Lancelot;
The King, if one may say it, set the pace,
And we've two strapping bastards here to prove it.
Young Borre, he's well enough; but as for Modred,
I squirm as often as I look at him.
And there again did Merlin warn the King,
The story goes abroad; and I believe it."

Sir Bedivere, as one who caught no more
Than what he would of Lamorak's outpouring,
Inclined his grizzled head and closed his eyes
Before he sighed and rubbed his beard and spoke:
"For all I know to make it otherwise,
The Queen may be a nun some day or other;
I'd pray to God for such a thing to be,
If prayer for that were not a mockery.
We're late now for much praying, Lamorak,
When you and I can feel upon our faces
A wind that has been blowing over ruins
That we had said were castles and high towers--
Till Merlin, or the spirit of him, came
As the dead come in dreams. I saw the King
This morning, and I saw his face. Therefore,
I tell you, if a state shall have a king,
The king must have the state, and be the state;
Or then shall we have neither king nor state,
But bones and ashes, and high towers all fallen:
And we shall have, where late there was a kingdom,
A dusty wreck of what was once a glory--
A wilderness whereon to crouch and mourn
And moralize, or else to build once more
For something better or for something worse.
Therefore again, I say that Lancelot
Has wrought a potent wrong upon the King,
And all who serve and recognize the King,
And all who follow him and all who love him.
Whatever the stormy faults he may have had,
To look on him today is to forget them;
And if it be too late for sorrow now
To save him--for it was a broken man
I saw this morning, and a broken king--
The God who sets a day for desolation
Will not forsake him in Avilion,
Or whatsoever shadowy land there be
Where peace awaits him on its healing shores."

Sir Lamorak, shifting in his oaken chair,
Growled like a dog and shook himself like one:
"For the stone-chested, helmet-cracking knight
That you are known to be from Lyonnesse
To northward, Bedivere, you fol-de-rol
When days are rancid, and you fiddle-faddle
More like a woman than a man with hands
Fit for the smiting of a crazy giant
With armor an inch thick, as we all know
You are, when you're not sermonizing at us.
As for the King, I say the King, no doubt,
Is angry, sorry, and all sorts of things,
For Lancelot, and for his easy Queen,
Whom he took knowing she'd thrown sparks already
On that same piece of tinder, Lancelot,
Who fetched her with him from Leodogran
Because the King--God save poor human reason!--
Would prove to Merlin, who knew everything
Worth knowing in those days, that he was wrong.
I'll drink now and be quiet,--but, by God,
I'll have to tell you, Brother Bedivere,
Once more, to make you listen properly,
That crowns and orders, and high palaces,
And all the manifold ingredients
Of this good solid kingdom, where we sit
And spit now at each other with our eyes,
Will not go rolling down to hell just yet
Because a pretty woman is a fool.
And here's Kay coming with his fiddle face
As long now as two fiddles. Sit ye down,
Sir Man, and tell us everything you know
Of Merlin--or his ghost without a beard.
What mostly is it?"

Sir Kay, the seneschal,
Sat wearily while he gazed upon the two:
"To you it mostly is, if I err not,
That what you hear of Merlin's coming back
Is nothing more or less than heavy truth.
But ask me nothing of the Queen, I say,
For I know nothing. All I know of her
Is what her eyes have told the silences
That now attend her; and that her estate
Is one for less complacent execration
Than quips and innuendoes of the city
Would augur for her sin--if there be sin--
Or for her name--if now she have a name.
And where, I say, is this to lead the King,
And after him, the kingdom and ourselves?
Here be we, three men of a certain strength
And some confessed intelligence, who know
That Merlin has come out of Brittany--
Out of his grave, as he would say it for us--
Because the King has now a desperation
More strong upon him than a woman's net
Was over Merlin--for now Merlin's here,
And two of us who knew him know how well
His wisdom, if he have it any longer,
Will by this hour have sounded and appraised
The grief and wrath and anguish of the King,
Requiring mercy and inspiring fear
Lest he forego the vigil now most urgent,
And leave unwatched a cranny where some worm
Or serpent may come in to speculate."

"I know your worm, and his worm's name is Modred--
Albeit the streets are not yet saying so,"
Said Lamorak, as he lowered his wrath and laughed
A sort of poisonous apology
To Kay: "And in the meantime, I'll be gyved!
Here's Bedivere a-wailing for the King,
And you, Kay, with a moist eye for the Queen.
I think I'll blow a horn for Lancelot;
For by my soul a man's in sorry case
When Guineveres are out with eyes to scorch him:
I'm not so ancient or so frozen certain
That I'd ride horses down to skeletons
If she were after me. Has Merlin seen him--
This Lancelot, this Queen-fed friend of ours?"

Kay answered sighing, with a lonely scowl:
"The picture that I conjure leaves him out;
The King and Merlin are this hour together,
And I can say no more; for I know nothing.
But how the King persuaded or beguiled
The stricken wizard from across the water
Outriddles my poor wits. It's all too strange."

"It's all too strange, and half the world's half crazy!"
Roared Lamorak, forgetting once again
The devastating carriage of his voice.
"Is the King sick?" he said, more quietly;
"Is he to let one damned scratch be enough
To paralyze the force that heretofore
Would operate a way through hell and iron,
And iron already slimy with his blood?
Is the King blind--with Modred watching him?
Does he forget the crown for Lancelot?
Does he forget that every woman mewing
Shall some day be a handful of small ashes?"

"You speak as one for whom the god of Love
Has yet a mighty trap in preparation.
We know you, Lamorak," said Bedivere:
"We know you for a short man, Lamorak,--
In deeds, if not in inches or in words;
But there are fens and heights and distances
That your capricious ranging has not yet
Essayed in this weird region of man's love.
Forgive me, Lamorak, but your words are words.
Your deeds are what they are; and ages hence
Will men remember your illustriousness,
If there be gratitude in history.
For me, I see the shadow of the end,
Wherein to serve King Arthur to the end,
And, if God have it so, to see the Grail
Before I die."

But Lamorak shook his head:
"See what you will, or what you may. For me,
I see no other than a stinking mess--
With Modred stirring it, and Agravaine
Spattering Camelot with as much of it
As he can throw. The Devil got somehow
Into God's workshop once upon a time,
And out of the red clay that he found there
He made a shape like Modred, and another
As like as eyes are to this Agravaine.
'I never made 'em,' said the good Lord God,
'But let 'em go, and see what comes of 'em.'
And that's what we're to do. As for the Grail,
I've never worried it, and so the Grail
Has never worried me."

Kay sighed. "I see
With Bedivere the coming of the end,"
He murmured; "for the King I saw today
Was not, nor shall he ever be again,
The King we knew. I say the King is dead;
The man is living, but the King is dead.
The wheel is broken."

"Faugh!" said Lamorak;
"There are no dead kings yet in Camelot;
But there is Modred who is hatching ruin,--
And when it hatches I may not be here.
There's Gawaine too, and he does not forget
My father, who killed his. King Arthur's house
Has more divisions in it than I like
In houses; and if Modred's aim be good
For backs like mine, I'm not long for the scene."
III
King Arthur, as he paced a lonely floor
That rolled a muffled echo, as he fancied,
All through the palace and out through the world,
Might now have wondered hard, could he have heard
Sir Lamorak's apathetic disregard
Of what Fate's knocking made so manifest
And ominous to others near the King--
If any, indeed, were near him at this hour
Save Merlin, once the wisest of all men,
And weary Dagonet, whom he had made
A knight for love of him and his abused
Integrity. He might have wondered hard
And wondered much; and after wondering,
He might have summoned, with as little heart
As he had now for crowns, the fond, lost Merlin,
Whose Nemesis had made of him a slave,
A man of dalliance, and a sybarite.

"Men change in Brittany, Merlin," said the King;
And even his grief had strife to freeze again
A dreary smile for the transmuted seer
Now robed in heavy wealth of purple silk,
With frogs and foreign tassels. On his face,
Too smooth now for a wizard or a sage,
Lay written, for the King's remembering eyes,
A pathos of a lost authority
Long faded, and unconscionably gone;
And on the King's heart lay a sudden cold:
"I might as well have left him in his grave,
As he would say it, saying what was true,--
As death is true. This Merlin is not mine,
But Vivian's. My crown is less than hers,
And I am less than woman to this man."

Then Merlin, as one reading Arthur's words
On viewless tablets in the air before him:
"Now, Arthur, since you are a child of mine--
A foster-child, and that's a kind of child--
Be not from hearsay or despair too eager
To dash your meat with bitter seasoning,
So none that are more famished than yourself
Shall have what you refuse. For you are King,
And if you starve yourself, you starve the state;
And then by sundry looks and silences
Of those you loved, and by the lax regard
Of those you knew for fawning enemies,
You may learn soon that you are King no more,
But a slack, blasted, and sad-fronted man,
Made sadder with a crown. No other friend
Than I could say this to you, and say more;
And if you bid me say no more, so be it."

The King, who sat with folded arms, now bowed
His head and felt, unfought and all aflame
Like immanent hell-fire, the wretchedness
That only those who are to lead may feel--
And only they when they are maimed and worn
Too sore to covet without shuddering
The fixed impending eminence where death
Itself were victory, could they but lead
Unbitten by the serpents they had fed.
Turning, he spoke: "Merlin, you say the truth:
There is no man who could say more to me
Today, or say so much to me, and live.
But you are Merlin still, or part of him;
I did you wrong when I thought otherwise,
And I am sorry now. Say what you will.
We are alone, and I shall be alone
As long as Time shall hide a reason here
For me to stay in this infested world
Where I have sinned and erred and heeded not
Your counsel; and where you yourself--God save us!--
Have gone down smiling to the smaller life
That you and your incongruous laughter called
Your living grave. God save us all, Merlin,
When you, the seer, the founder, and the prophet,
May throw the gold of your immortal treasure
Back to the God that gave it, and then laugh
Because a woman has you in her arms . . .
Why do you sting me now with a small hive
Of words that are all poison? I do not ask
Much honey; but why poison me for nothing,
And with a venom that I know already
As I know crowns and wars? Why tell a king--
A poor, foiled, flouted, miserable king--
That if he lets rats eat his fingers off
He'll have no fingers to fight battles with?
I know as much as that, for I am still
A king--who thought himself a little less
Than God; a king who built him palaces
On sand and mud, and hears them crumbling now,
And sees them tottering, as he knew they must.
You are the man who made me to be King--
Therefore, say anything."

Merlin, stricken deep
With pity that was old, being born of old
Foreshadowings, made answer to the King:
"This coil of Lancelot and Guinevere
Is not for any mortal to undo,
Or to deny, or to make otherwise;
But your most violent years are on their way
To days, and to a sounding of loud hours
That are to strike for war. Let not the time
Between this hour and then be lost in fears,
Or told in obscurations and vain faith
In what has been your long security;
For should your force be slower then than hate,
And your regret be sharper than your sight,
And your remorse fall heavier than your sword,--
Then say farewell to Camelot, and the crown.
But say not you have lost, or failed in aught
Your golden horoscope of imperfection
Has held in starry words that I have read.
I see no farther now than I saw then,
For no man shall be given of everything
Together in one life; yet I may say
The time is imminent when he shall come
For whom I founded the Siege Perilous;
And he shall be too much a living part
Of what he brings, and what he burns away in,
To be for long a vexed inhabitant
Of this mad realm of stains and lower trials.
And here the ways of God again are mixed:
For this new knight who is to find the Grail
For you, and for the least who pray for you
In such lost coombs and hollows of the world
As you have never entered, is to be
The son of him you trusted--Lancelot,
Of all who ever jeopardized a throne
Sure the most evil-fated, saving one,
Your son, begotten, though you knew not then
Your leman was your sister, of Morgause;
For it is Modred now, not Lancelot,
Whose native hate plans your annihilation--
Though he may smile till he be sick, and swear
Allegiance to an unforgiven father
Until at last he shake an empty tongue
Talked out with too much lying--though his lies
Will have a truth to steer them. Trust him not,
For unto you the father, he the son
Is like enough to be the last of terrors--
If in a field of time that looms to you
Far larger than it is you fail to plant
And harvest the old seeds of what I say,
And so be nourished and adept again
For what may come to be. But Lancelot
Will have you first; and you need starve no more
For the Queen's love, the love that never was.
Your Queen is now your Kingdom, and hereafter
Let no man take it from you, or you die.
Let no man take it from you for a day:
For days are long when we are far from what
We love, and mischief's other name is distance.
Let that be all, for I can say no more;
Not even to Blaise the Hermit, were he living,
Could I say more than I have given you now
To hear; and he alone was my confessor."

The King arose and paced the floor again.
"I get gray comfort of dark words," he said;
"But tell me not that you can say no more:
You can, for I can hear you saying it.
Yet I'll not ask for more. I have enough--
Until my new knight comes to prove and find
The promise and the glory of the Grail,
Though I shall see no Grail. For I have built
On sand and mud, and I shall see no Grail."--

"Nor I," said Merlin. "Once I dreamed of it,
But I was buried. I shall see no Grail,
Nor would I have it otherwise. I saw
Too much, and that was never good for man.
The man who goes alone too far goes mad--
In one way or another. God knew best,
And he knows what is coming yet for me.
I do not ask. Like you, I have enough."

That night King Arthur's apprehension found
In Merlin an obscure and restive guest,
Whose only thought was on the hour of dawn,
When he should see the last of Camelot
And ride again for Brittany; and what words
Were said before the King was left alone
Were only darker for reiteration.
They parted, all provision made secure
For Merlin's early convoy to the coast,
And Arthur tramped the past. The loneliness
Of kings, around him like the unseen dead,
Lay everywhere; and he was loath to move,
As if in fear to meet with his cold hand
The touch of something colder. Then a whim,
Begotten of intolerable doubt,
Seized him and stung him until he was asking
If any longer lived among his knights
A man to trust as once he trusted all,
And Lancelot more than all. "And it is he
Who is to have me first," so Merlin says,--
"As if he had me not in hell already.
Lancelot! Lancelot!" He cursed the tears
That cooled his misery, and then he asked
Himself again if he had one to trust
Among his knights, till even Bedivere,
Tor, Bors, and Percival, rough Lamorak,
Griflet, and Gareth, and gay Gawaine, all
Were dubious knaves,--or they were like to be,
For cause to make them so; and he had made
Himself to be the cause. "God set me right,
Before this folly carry me on farther,"
He murmured; and he smiled unhappily,
Though fondly, as he thought: "Yes, there is one
Whom I may trust with even my soul's last shred;
And Dagonet will sing for me tonight
An old song, not too merry or too sad."

When Dagonet, having entered, stood before
The King as one affrighted, the King smiled:
"You think because I call for you so late
That I am angry, Dagonet? Why so?
Have you been saying what I say to you,
And telling men that you brought Merlin here?
No? So I fancied; and if you report
No syllable of anything I speak,
You will have no regrets, and I no anger.
What word of Merlin was abroad today?"

"Today have I heard no man save Gawaine,
And to him I said only what all men
Are saying to their neighbors. They believe
That you have Merlin here, and that his coming
Denotes no good. Gawaine was curious,
But ever mindful of your majesty.
He pressed me not, and we made light of it."

"Gawaine, I fear, makes light of everything,"
The King said, looking down. "Sometimes I wish
I had a full Round Table of Gawaines.
But that's a freak of midnight,--never mind it.
Sing me a song--one of those endless things
That Merlin liked of old, when men were younger
And there were more stars twinkling in the sky.
I see no stars that are alive tonight,
And I am not the king of sleep. So then,
Sing me an old song."

Dagonet's quick eye
Caught sorrow in the King's; and he knew more,
In a fool's way, than even the King himself
Of what was hovering over Camelot.
"O King," he said, "I cannot sing tonight.
If you command me I shall try to sing,
But I shall fail; for there are no songs now
In my old throat, or even in these poor strings
That I can hardly follow with my fingers.
Forgive me--kill me--but I cannot sing."
Dagonet fell down then on both his knees
And shook there while he clutched the King's cold hand
And wept for what he knew.

"There, Dagonet;
I shall not kill my knight, or make him sing.
No more; get up, and get you off to bed.
There'll be another time for you to sing,
So get you to your covers and sleep well."
Alone again, the King said, bitterly:
"Yes, I have one friend left, and they who know
As much of him as of themselves believe
That he's a fool. Poor Dagonet's a fool.
And if he be a fool, what else am I
Than one fool more to make the world complete?
'The love that never was!' . . . Fool, fool, fool, fool!"

The King was long awake. No covenant
With peace was his tonight; and he knew sleep
As he knew the cold eyes of Guinevere
That yesterday had stabbed him, having first
On Lancelot's name struck fire, and left him then
As now they left him--with a wounded heart,
A wounded pride, and a sickening pang worse yet
Of lost possession. He thought wearily
Of watchers by the dead, late wayfarers,
Rough-handed mariners on ships at sea,
Lone-yawning sentries, wastrels, and all others
Who might be saying somewhere to themselves,
"The King is now asleep in Camelot;
God save the King."--"God save the King, indeed,
If there be now a king to save," he said.
Then he saw giants rising in the dark,
Born horribly of memories and new fears
That in the gray-lit irony of dawn
Were partly to fade out and be forgotten;
And then there might be sleep, and for a time
There might again be peace. His head was hot
And throbbing; but the rest of him was cold,
As he lay staring hard where nothing stood,
And hearing what was not, even while he saw
And heard, like dust and thunder far away,
The coming confirmation of the words
Of him who saw so much and feared so little
Of all that was to be. No spoken doom
That ever chilled the last night of a felon
Prepared a dragging anguish more profound
And absolute than Arthur, in these hours,
Made out of darkness and of Merlin's words;
No tide that ever crashed on Lyonnesse
Drove echoes inland that were lonelier
For widowed ears among the fisher-folk,
Than for the King were memories tonight
Of old illusions that were dead for ever.

IV
The tortured King--seeing Merlin wholly meshed
In his defection, even to indifference,
And all the while attended and exalted
By some unfathomable obscurity
Of divination, where the Grail, unseen,
Broke yet the darkness where a king saw nothing--
Feared now the lady Vivian more than Fate;
for now he knew that Modred, Lancelot,
The Queen, the King, the Kingdom, and the World,
Were less to Merlin, who had made him King,
Than one small woman in Broceliande.
Whereas the lady Vivian, seeing Merlin
Acclaimed and tempted and allured again
To service in his old magnificence,
Feared now King Arthur more than storms and robbers;
For Merlin, though he knew himself immune
To no least whispered little wish of hers
That might afflict his ear with ecstasy,
Had yet sufficient of his old command
Of all around him to invest an eye
With quiet lightning, and a spoken word
With easy thunder, so accomplishing
A profit and a pastime for himself--
And for the lady Vivian, when her guile
Outlived at intervals her graciousness;
And this equipment of uncertainty,
Which now had gone away with him to Britain
With Dagonet, so plagued her memory
That soon a phantom brood of goblin doubts
Inhabited his absence, which had else
Been empty waiting and a few brave fears,
And a few more, she knew, that were not brave,
Or long to be disowned, or manageable.
She thought of him as he had looked at her
When first he had acquainted her alarm
At sight of the King's letter with its import;
And she remembered now his very words:
"The King believes today as in his boyhood
That I am Fate," he said; and when they parted
She had not even asked him not to go;
She might as well, she thought, have bid the wind
Throw no more clouds across a lonely sky
Between her and the moon,--so great he seemed
In his oppressed solemnity, and she,
In her excess of wrong imagining,
So trivial in an hour, and, after all
A creature of a smaller consequence
Than kings to Merlin, who made kings and kingdoms
And had them as a father; and so she feared
King Arthur more than robbers while she waited
For Merlin's promise to fulfil itself,
And for the rest that was to follow after:
"He said he would come back, and so he will.
He will because he must, and he is Merlin,
The master of the world--or so he was;
And he is coming back again to me
Because he must and I am Vivian.
It's all as easy as two added numbers:
Some day I'll hear him ringing at the gate,
As he rang on that morning in the spring,
Ten years ago; and I shall have him then
For ever. He shall never go away
Though kings come walking on their hands and knees
To take him on their backs." When Merlin came,
She told him that, and laughed; and he said strangely:
"Be glad or sorry, but no kings are coming.
Not Arthur, surely; for now Arthur knows
That I am less than Fate."

Ten years ago
The King had heard, with unbelieving ears
At first, what Merlin said would be the last
Reiteration of his going down
To find a living grave in Brittany:
"Buried alive I told you I should be,
By love made little and by woman shorn,
Like Samson, of my glory; and the time
Is now at hand. I follow in the morning
Where I am led. I see behind me now
The last of crossways, and I see before me
A straight and final highway to the end
Of all my divination. You are King,
And in your kingdom I am what I was.
Wherever I have warned you, see as far
As I have seen; for I have shown the worst
There is to see. Require no more of me,
For I can be no more than what I was."
So, on the morrow, the King said farewell;
And he was never more to Merlin's eye
The King than at that hour; for Merlin knew
How much was going out of Arthur's life
With him, as he went southward to the sea.

Over the waves and into Brittany
Went Merlin, to Broceliande. Gay birds
Were singing high to greet him all along
A broad and sanded woodland avenue
That led him on forever, so he thought,
Until at last there was an end of it;
And at the end there was a gate of iron,
Wrought heavily and invidiously barred.
He pulled a cord that rang somewhere a bell
Of many echoes, and sat down to rest,
Outside the keeper's house, upon a bench
Of carven stone that might for centuries
Have waited there in silence to receive him.
The birds were singing still; leaves flashed and swung
Before him in the sunlight; a soft breeze
Made intermittent whisperings around him
Of love and fate and danger, and faint waves
Of many sweetly-stinging fragile odors
Broke lightly as they touched him; cherry-boughs
Above him snowed white petals down upon him,
And under their slow falling Merlin smiled
Contentedly, as one who contemplates
No longer fear, confusion, or regret,
May smile at ruin or at revelation.

A stately fellow with a forest air
Now hailed him from within, with searching words
And curious looks, till Merlin's glowing eye
Transfixed him and he flinched: "My compliments
And homage to the lady Vivian.
Say Merlin from King Arthur's Court is here,
A pilgrim and a stranger in appearance,
Though in effect her friend and humble servant.
Convey to her my speech as I have said it,
Without abbreviation or delay,
And so deserve my gratitude forever."
"But Merlin?" the man stammered; "Merlin? Merlin?"--
"One Merlin is enough. I know no other.
Now go you to the lady Vivian
And bring to me her word, for I am weary."
Still smiling at the cherry-blossoms falling
Down on him and around him in the sunlight,
He waited, never moving, never glancing
This way or that, until his messenger
Came jingling into vision, weighed with keys,
And inly shaken with much wondering
At this great wizard's coming unannounced
And unattended. When the way was open
The stately messenger, now bowing low
In reverence and awe, bade Merlin enter;
And Merlin, having entered, heard the gate
Clang back behind him; and he swore no gate
Like that had ever clanged in Camelot,
Or any other place if not in hell.
"I may be dead; and this good fellow here,
With all his keys," he thought, "may be the Devil,--
Though I were loath to say so, for the keys
Would make him rather more akin to Peter;
And that's fair reasoning for this fair weather."

"The lady Vivian says you are most welcome,"
Said now the stately-favored servitor,
"And are to follow me. She said, 'Say Merlin--
A pilgrim and a stranger in appearance,
Though in effect my friend and humble servant--
Is welcome for himself, and for the sound
Of his great name that echoes everywhere.'"--
"I like you and I like your memory,"
Said Merlin, curiously, "but not your gate.
Why forge for this elysian wilderness
A thing so vicious with unholy noise?"--
"There's a way out of every wilderness
For those who dare or care enough to find it,"
The guide said: and they moved along together,
Down shaded ways, through open ways with hedgerows,
And into shade again more deep than ever,
But edged anon with rays of broken sunshine
In which a fountain, raining crystal music,
Made faery magic of it through green leafage,
Till Merlin's eyes were dim with preparation
For sight now of the lady Vivian.
He saw at first a bit of living green
That might have been a part of all the green
Around the tinkling fountain where she gazed
Upon the circling pool as if her thoughts
Were not so much on Merlin--whose advance
Betrayed through his enormity of hair
The cheeks and eyes of youth--as on the fishes.
But soon she turned and found him, now alone,
And held him while her beauty and her grace
Made passing trash of empires, and his eyes
Told hers of what a splendid emptiness
Her tedious world had been without him in it
Whose love and service were to be her school,
Her triumph, and her history: "This is Merlin,"
She thought; "and I shall dream of him no more.
And he has come, he thinks, to frighten me
With beards and robes and his immortal fame;
Or is it I who think so? I know not.
I'm frightened, sure enough, but if I show it,
I'll be no more the Vivian for whose love
He tossed away his glory, or the Vivian
Who saw no man alive to make her love him
Till she saw Merlin once in Camelot,
And seeing him, saw no other. In an age
That has no plan for me that I can read
Without him, shall he tell me what I am,
And why I am, I wonder?" While she thought,
And feared the man whom her perverse negation
Must overcome somehow to soothe her fancy,
She smiled and welcomed him; and so they stood,
Each finding in the other's eyes a gleam
Of what eternity had hidden there.

"Are you always all in green, as you are now?"
Said Merlin, more employed with her complexion,
Where blood and olive made wild harmony
With eyes and wayward hair that were too dark
For peace if they were not subordinated;
"If so you are, then so you make yourself
A danger in a world of many dangers.
If I were young, God knows if I were safe
Concerning you in green, like a slim cedar,
As you are now, to say my life was mine:
Were you to say to me that I should end it,
Longevity for me were jeopardized.
Have you your green on always and all over?"

"Come here, and I will tell you about that,"
Said Vivian, leading Merlin with a laugh
To an arbored seat where they made opposites:
"If you are Merlin--and I know you are,
For I remember you in Camelot,--
You know that I am Vivian, as I am;
And if I go in green, why, let me go so,
And say at once why you have come to me
Cloaked over like a monk, and with a beard
As long as Jeremiah's. I don't like it.
I'll never like a man with hair like that
While I can feed a carp with little frogs.
I'm rather sure to hate you if you keep it,
And when I hate a man I poison him."

"You've never fed a carp with little frogs,"
Said Merlin; "I can see it in your eyes."--
"I might then, if I haven't," said the lady;
"For I'm a savage, and I love no man
As I have seen him yet. I'm here alone,
With some three hundred others, all of whom
Are ready, I dare say, to die for me;
I'm cruel and I'm cold, and I like snakes;
And some have said my mother was a fairy,
Though I believe it not."

"Why not believe it?"
Said Merlin; "I believe it. I believe
Also that you divine, as I had wished,
In my surviving ornament of office
A needless imposition on your wits,
If not yet on the scope of your regard.
Even so, you cannot say how old I am,
Or yet how young. I'm willing cheerfully
To fight, left-handed, Hell's three headed hound
If you but whistle him up from where he lives;
I'm cheerful and I'm fierce, and I've made kings;
And some have said my father was the Devil,
Though I believe it not. Whatever I am,
I have not lived in Time until to-day."
A moment's worth of wisdom there escaped him,
But Vivian seized it, and it was not lost.

Embroidering doom with many levities,
Till now the fountain's crystal silver, fading,
Became a splash and a mere chilliness,
They mocked their fate with easy pleasantries
That were too false and small to be forgotten,
And with ingenious insincerities
That had no repetition or revival.
At last the lady Vivian arose,
And with a crying of how late it was
Took Merlin's hand and led him like a child
Along a dusky way between tall cones
Of tight green cedars: "Am I like one of these?
You said I was, though I deny it wholly."--
"Very," said Merlin, to his bearded lips
Uplifting her small fingers.--"O, that hair?"
She moaned, as if in sorrow: "Must it be?
Must every prophet and important wizard
Be clouded so that nothing but his nose
And eyes, and intimations of his ears,
Are there to make us know him when we see him?
Praise heaven I'm not a prophet! Are you glad?"--

He did not say that he was glad or sorry;
For suddenly came flashing into vision
A thing that was a manor and a castle,
With walls and roofs that had a flaming sky
Behind them, like a sky that he remembered,
And one that had from his rock-sheltered haunt
Above the roofs of his forsaken city
Made flame as if all Camelot were on fire.
The glow brought with it a brief memory
Of Arthur as he left him, and the pain
That fought in Arthur's eyes for losing him,
And must have overflowed when he had vanished.
But now the eyes that looked hard into his
Were Vivian's, not the King's; and he could see,
Or so he thought, a shade of sorrow in them.
She took his two hands: "You are sad," she said.--
He smiled: "Your western lights bring memories
Of Camelot. We all have memories--
Prophets, and women who are like slim cedars;
But you are wrong to say that I am sad."--
"Would you go back to Camelot?" she asked,
Her fingers tightening. Merlin shook his head.
"Then listen while I tell you that I'm glad,"
She purred, as if assured that he would listen:
"At your first warning, much too long ago,
Of this quaint pilgrimage of yours to see
'The fairest and most orgulous of ladies'--
No language for a prophet, I am sure--
Said I, 'When this great Merlin comes to me,
My task and avocation for some time
Will be to make him willing, if I can,
To teach and feed me with an ounce of wisdom.'
For I have eaten to an empty shell,
After a weary feast of observation
Among the glories of a tinsel world
That had for me no glory till you came,
A life that is no life. Would you go back
To Camelot?"--Merlin shook his head again,
And the two smiled together in the sunset.

They moved along in silence to the door,
Where Merlin said: "Of your three hundred here
There is but one I know, and him I favor;
I mean the stately one who shakes the keys
Of that most evil sounding gate of yours,
Which has a clang as if it shut forever."--
"If there be need, I'll shut the gate myself,"
She said. "And you like Blaise? Then you shall have him.
He was not born to serve, but serve he must,
It seems, and be enamoured of my shadow.
He cherishes the taint of some high folly
That haunts him with a name he cannot know,
And I could fear his wits are paying for it.
Forgive his tongue, and humor it a little."--
"I knew another one whose name was Blaise,"
He said; and she said lightly, "Well, what of it?"--
"And he was nigh the learnedest of hermits;
His home was far away from everywhere,
And he was all alone there when he died."--
"Now be a pleasant Merlin," Vivian said,
Patting his arm, "and have no more of that;
for I'll not hear of dead men far away,
Or dead men anywhere this afternoon.
There'll be a trifle in the way of supper
This evening, but the dead shall not have any.
Blaise and this man will tell you all there is
For you to know. Then you'll know everything."
She laughed, and vanished like a humming-bird.
V

The sun went down, and the dark after it
Starred Merlin's new abode with many a sconced
And many a moving candle, in whose light
The prisoned wizard, mirrored in amazement,
Saw fronting him a stranger, falcon-eyed,
Firm-featured, of a negligible age,
And fair enough to look upon, he fancied,
Though not a warrior born, nor more a courtier.
A native humor resting in his long
And solemn jaws now stirred, and Merlin smiled
To see himself in purple, touched with gold,
And fledged with snowy lace.--The careful Blaise,
Having drawn some time before from Merlin's wallet
The sable raiment of a royal scholar,
Had eyed it with a long mistrust and said:
"The lady Vivian would be vexed, I fear,
To meet you vested in these learned weeds
Of gravity and death; for she abhors
Mortality in all its hues and emblems--
Black wear, long argument, and all the cold
And solemn things that appertain to graves."--
And Merlin, listening, to himself had said,
"This fellow has a freedom, yet I like him;"
And then aloud: "I trust you. Deck me out,
However, with a temperate regard
For what your candid eye may find in me
Of inward coloring. Let them reap my beard,
Moreover, with a sort of reverence,
For I shall never look on it again.
And though your lady frown her face away
To think of me in black, for God's indulgence,
Array me not in scarlet or in yellow."--
And so it came to pass that Merlin sat
At ease in purple, even though his chin
Reproached him as he pinched it, and seemed yet
A little fearful of its nakedness.
He might have sat and scanned himself for ever
Had not the careful Blaise, regarding him,
Remarked again that in his proper judgment,
And on the valid word of his attendants,
No more was to be done. "Then do no more,"
Said Merlin, with a last look at his chin;
"Never do more when there's no more to do,
And you may shun thereby the bitter taste
Of many disillusions and regrets.
God's pity on us that our words have wings
And leave our deeds to crawl so far below them;
For we have all two heights, we men who dream,
Whether we lead or follow, rule or serve."--
"God's pity on us anyhow," Blaise answered,
"Or most of us. Meanwhile, I have to say,
As long as you are here, and I'm alive,
Your summons will assure the loyalty
Of all my diligence and expedition.
The gong that you hear singing in the distance
Was rung for your attention and your presence."--
"I wonder at this fellow, yet I like him,"
Said Merlin; and he rose to follow him.

The lady Vivian in a fragile sheath
Of crimson, dimmed and veiled ineffably
By the flame-shaken gloom wherein she sat,
And twinkled if she moved, heard Merlin coming,
And smiled as if to make herself believe
Her joy was all a triumph; yet her blood
Confessed a tingling of more wonderment
Than all her five and twenty worldly years
Of waiting for this triumph could remember;
And when she knew and felt the slower tread
Of his unseen advance among the shadows
To the small haven of uncertain light
That held her in it as a torch-lit shoal
Might hold a smooth red fish, her listening skin
Responded with a creeping underneath it,
And a crinkling that was incident alike
To darkness, love, and mice. When he was there,
She looked up at him in a whirl of mirth
And wonder, as in childhood she had gazed
Wide-eyed on royal mountebanks who made
So brief a shift of the impossible
That kings and queens would laugh and shake themselves;
Then rising slowly on her little feet,
Like a slim creature lifted, she thrust out
Her two small hands as if to push him back--
Whereon he seized them. "Go away," she said;
"I never saw you in my life before."--
"You say the truth," he answered; "when I met
Myself an hour ago, my words were yours.
God made the man you see for you to like,
If possible. If otherwise, turn down
These two prodigious and remorseless thumbs
And leave your lions to annihilate him."--

"I have no other lion than yourself,"
She said; "and since you cannot eat yourself,
Pray do a lonely woman, who is, you say,
More like a tree than any other thing
In your discrimination, the large honor
Of sharing with her a small kind of supper."--
"Yes, you are like a tree,--or like a flower;
More like a flower to-night." He bowed his head
And kissed the ten small fingers he was holding,
As calmly as if each had been a son;
Although his heart was leaping and his eyes
Had sight for nothing save a swimming crimson
Between two glimmering arms. "More like a flower
To-night," he said, as now he scanned again
The immemorial meaning of her face
And drew it nearer to his eyes. It seemed
A flower of wonder with a crimson stem
Came leaning slowly and regretfully
To meet his will--a flower of change and peril
That had a clinging blossom of warm olive
Half stifled with a tyranny of black,
And held the wayward fragrance of a rose
Made woman by delirious alchemy.
She raised her face and yoked his willing neck
With half her weight; and with hot lips that left
The world with only one philosophy
For Merlin or for Anaxagoras,
Called his to meet them and in one long hush
Of capture to surrender and make hers
The last of anything that might remain
Of what was now their beardless wizardry.
Then slowly she began to push herself
Away, and slowly Merlin let her go
As far from him as his outreaching hands
Could hold her fingers while his eyes had all
The beauty of the woodland and the world
Before him in the firelight, like a nymph
Of cities, or a queen a little weary
Of inland stillness and immortal trees.

"Are you to let me go again sometime,"
She said,--"before I starve to death, I wonder?
If not, I'll have to bite the lion's paws,
And make him roar. He cannot shake his mane,
For now the lion has no mane to shake;
The lion hardly knows himself without it,
And thinks he has no face, but there's a lady
Who says he had no face until he lost it.
So there we are. And there's a flute somewhere,
Playing a strange old tune. You know the words:
'The Lion and the Lady are both hungry.'"

Fatigue and hunger--tempered leisurely
With food that some devout magician's oven
Might after many failures have delivered,
And wine that had for decades in the dark
Of Merlin's grave been slowly quickening,
And with half-heard, dream-weaving interludes
Of distant flutes and viols, made more distant
By far, nostalgic hautboys blown from nowhere,--
Were tempered not so leisurely, may be,
With Vivian's inextinguishable eyes
Between two shining silver candlesticks
That lifted each a trembling flame to make
The rest of her a dusky loveliness
Against a bank of shadow. Merlin made,
As well as he was able while he ate,
A fair division of the fealty due
To food and beauty, albeit more times than one
Was he at odds with his urbanity
In honoring too long the grosser viand.
"The best invention in Broceliande
Has not been over-taxed in vain, I see,"
She told him, with her chin propped on her fingers
And her eyes flashing blindness into his:
"I put myself out cruelly to please you,
And you, for that, forget almost at once
The name and image of me altogether.
You needn't, for when all is analyzed,
It's only a bird-pie that you are eating."

"I know not what you call it," Merlin said;
"Nor more do I forget your name and image,
Though I do eat; and if I did not eat,
Your sending out of ships and caravans
To get whatever 'tis that's in this thing
Would be a sorrow for you all your days;
And my great love, which you have seen by now,
Might look to you a lie; and like as not
You'd actuate some sinewed mercenary
To carry me away to God knows where
And seal me in a fearsome hole to starve,
Because I made of this insidious picking
An idle circumstance. My dear fair lady--
And there is not another under heaven
So fair as you are as I see you now--
I cannot look at you too much and eat;
And I must eat, or be untimely ashes,
Whereon the light of your celestial gaze
Would fall, I fear me, for no longer time
Than on the solemn dust of Jeremiah--
Whose beard you likened once, in heathen jest,
To mine that now is no man's."

"Are you sorry?"
Said Vivian, filling Merlin's empty goblet;
"If you are sorry for the loss of it,
Drink more of this and you may tell me lies
Enough to make me sure that you are glad;
But if your love is what you say it is,
Be never sorry that my love took off
That horrid hair to make your face at last
A human fact. Since I have had your name
To dream of and say over to myself,
The visitations of that awful beard
Have been a terror for my nights and days--
For twenty years. I've seen it like an ocean,
Blown seven ways at once and wrecking ships,
With men and women screaming for their lives;
I've seen it woven into shining ladders
That ran up out of sight and so to heaven,
All covered with white ghosts with hanging robes
Like folded wings,--and there were millions of them,
Climbing, climbing, climbing, all the time;
And all the time that I was watching them
I thought how far above me Merlin was,
And wondered always what his face was like.
But even then, as a child, I knew the day
Would come some time when I should see his face
And hear his voice, and have him in my house
Till he should care no more to stay in it,
And go away to found another kingdom."--
"Not that," he said; and, sighing, drank more wine;
"One kingdom for one Merlin is enough."--
"One Merlin for one Vivian is enough,"
She said. "If you care much, remember that;
But the Lord knows how many Vivians
One Merlin's entertaining eye might favor,
Indifferently well and all at once,
If they were all at hand. Praise heaven they're not."

"If they were in the world--praise heaven they're not--
And if one Merlin's entertaining eye
Saw two of them, there might be left him then
The sight of no eye to see anything--
Not even the Vivian who is everything,
She being Beauty, Beauty being She,
She being Vivian, and so on for ever."--
"I'm glad you don't see two of me," she said;
"For there's a whole world yet for you to eat
And drink and say to me before I know
The sort of creature that you see in me.
I'm withering for a little more attention,
But, being woman, I can wait. These cups
That you see coming are for the last there is
Of what my father gave to kings alone,
And far from always. You are more than kings
To me; therefore I give it all to you,
Imploring you to spare no more of it
Than a small cockle-shell would hold for me
To pledge your love and mine in. Take the rest,
That I may see tonight the end of it.
I'll have no living remnant of the dead
Annoying me until it fades and sours
Of too long cherishing; for Time enjoys
The look that's on our faces when we scowl
On unexpected ruins, and thrift itself
May be a sort of slow unwholesome fire
That eats away to dust the life that feeds it.
You smile, I see, but I said what I said.
One hardly has to live a thousand years
To contemplate a lost economy;
So let us drink it while it's yet alive
And you and I are not untimely ashes.
My last words are your own, and I don't like 'em."--
A sudden laughter scattered from her eyes
A threatening wisdom. He smiled and let her laugh,
Then looked into the dark where there was nothing:
"There's more in this than I have seen," he thought,
"Though I shall see it."--"Drink," she said again;
"There's only this much in the world of it,
And I am near to giving all to you
Because you are so great and I so little."

With a long-kindling gaze that caught from hers
A laughing flame, and with a hand that shook
Like Arthur's kingdom, Merlin slowly raised
A golden cup that for a golden moment
Was twinned in air with hers; and Vivian,
Who smiled at him across their gleaming rims,
From eyes that made a fuel of the night
Surrounding her, shot glory over gold
At Merlin, while their cups touched and his trembled.
He drank, not knowing what, nor caring much
For kings who might have cared less for themselves,
He thought, had all the darkness and wild light
That fell together to make Vivian
Been there before them then to flower anew
Through sheathing crimson into candle-light
With each new leer of their loose, liquorish eyes.
Again he drank, and he cursed every king
Who might have touched her even in her cradle;
For what were kings to such as he, who made them
And saw them totter--for the world to see,
And heed, if the world would? He drank again,
And yet again--to make himself assured
No manner of king should have the last of it--
The cup that Vivian filled unfailingly
Until she poured for nothing. "At the end
Of this incomparable flowing gold,"
She prattled on to Merlin, who observed
Her solemnly, "I fear there may be specks."--
He sighed aloud, whereat she laughed at him
And pushed the golden cup a little nearer.
He scanned it with a sad anxiety,
And then her face likewise, and shook his head
As if at her concern for such a matter:
"Specks? What are specks? Are you afraid of them?"
He murmured slowly, with a drowsy tongue;
"There are specks everywhere. I fear them not.
If I were king in Camelot, I might
Fear more than specks. But now I fear them not.
You are too strange a lady to fear specks."

He stared a long time at the cup of gold
Before him but he drank no more. There came
Between him and the world a crumbling sky
Of black and crimson, with a crimson cloud
That held a far off town of many towers.
All swayed and shaken, till at last they fell,
And there was nothing but a crimson cloud
That crumbled into nothing, like the sky
That vanished with it, carrying away
The world, the woman, and all memory of them,
Until a slow light of another sky
Made gray an open casement, showing him
Faint shapes of an exotic furniture
That glimmered with a dim magnificence,
And letting in the sound of many birds
That were, as he lay there remembering,
The only occupation of his ears
Until it seemed they shared a fainter sound,
As if a sleeping child with a black head
Beside him drew the breath of innocence.

One shining afternoon around the fountain,
As on the shining day of his arrival,
The sunlight was alive with flying silver
That had for Merlin a more dazzling flash
Than jewels rained in dreams, and a richer sound
Than harps, and all the morning stars together,--
When jewels and harps and stars and everything
That flashed and sang and was not Vivian,
Seemed less than echoes of her least of words--
For she was coming. Suddenly, somewhere
Behind him, she was coming; that was all
He knew until she came and took his hand
And held it while she talked about the fishes.
When she looked up he thought a softer light
Was in her eyes than once he had found there;
And had there been left yet for dusky women
A beauty that was heretofore not hers,
He told himself he must have seen it then
Before him in the face at which he smiled
And trembled. "Many men have called me wise,"
He said, "but you are wiser than all wisdom
If you know what you are."--"I don't," she said;
"I know that you and I are here together;
I know that I have known for twenty years
That life would be almost a constant yawning
Until you came; and now that you are here,
I know that you are not to go away
Until you tell me that I'm hideous;
I know that I like fishes, ferns, and snakes,--
Maybe because I liked them when the world
Was young and you and I were salamanders;
I know, too, a cool place not far from here,
Where there are ferns that are like marching men
Who never march away. Come now and see them,
And do as they do--never march away.
When they are gone, some others, crisp and green,
Will have their place, but never march away."--
He smoothed her silky fingers, one by one:
"Some other Merlin, also, do you think,
Will have his place--and never march away?"--
Then Vivian laid a finger on his lips
And shook her head at him before she laughed:
"There is no other Merlin than yourself,
And you are never going to be old."

Oblivious of a world that made of him
A jest, a legend, and a long regret,
And with a more commanding wizardry
Than his to rule a kingdom where the king
Was Love and the queen Vivian, Merlin found
His queen without the blemish of a word
That was more rough than honey from her lips,
Or the first adumbration of a frown
To cloud the night-wild fire that in her eyes
Had yet a smoky friendliness of home,
And a foreknowing care for mighty trifles.
"There are miles and miles for you to wander in,"
She told him once: "Your prison yard is large,
And I would rather take my two ears off
And feed them to the fishes in the fountain
Than buzz like an incorrigible bee
For always around yours, and have you hate
The sound of me; for some day then, for certain,
Your philosophic rage would see in me
A bee in earnest, and your hand would smite
My life away. And what would you do then?
I know: for years and years you'd sit alone
Upon my grave, and be the grieving image
Of lean remorse, and suffer miserably;
And often, all day long, you'd only shake
Your celebrated head and all it holds,
Or beat it with your fist the while you groaned
Aloud and went on saying to yourself:
'Never should I have killed her, or believed
She was a bee that buzzed herself to death,
First having made me crazy, had there been
Judicious distance and wise absences
To keep the two of us inquisitive.'"--
"I fear you bow your unoffending head
Before a load that should be mine," said he;
"If so, you led me on by listening.
You should have shrieked and jumped, and then fled yelling;
That's the best way when a man talks too long.
God's pity on me if I love your feet
More now than I could ever love the face
Of any one of all those Vivians
You summoned out of nothing on the night
When I saw towers. I'll wander and amend."--
At that she flung the noose of her soft arms
Around his neck and kissed him instantly:
"You are the wisest man that ever was,
And I've a prayer to make: May all you say
To Vivian be a part of what you knew
Before the curse of her unquiet head
Was on your shoulder, as you have it now,
To punish you for knowing beyond knowledge.
You are the only one who sees enough
To make me see how far away I am
From all that I have seen and have not been;
You are the only thing there is alive
Between me as I am and as I was
When Merlin was a dream. You are to listen
When I say now to you that I'm alone.
Like you, I saw too much; and unlike you
I made no kingdom out of what I saw--
Or none save this one here that you must rule,
Believing you are ruled. I see too far
To rule myself. Time's way with you and me
Is our way, in that we are out of Time
And out of tune with Time. We have this place,
And you must hold us in it or we die.
Look at me now and say if what I say
Be folly or not; for my unquiet head
Is no conceit of mine. I had it first
When I was born; and I shall have it with me
Till my unquiet soul is on its way
To be, I hope, where souls are quieter.
So let the first and last activity
Of what you say so often is your love
Be always to remember that our lyres
Are not strung for Today. On you it falls
To keep them in accord here with each other,
For you have wisdom, I have only sight
For distant things--and you. And you are Merlin.
Poor wizard! Vivian is your punishment
For making kings of men who are not kings;
And you are mine, by the same reasoning,
For living out of Time and out of tune
With anything but you. No other man
Could make me say so much of what I know
As I say now to you. And you are Merlin!"

She looked up at him till his way was lost
Again in the familiar wilderness
Of night that love made for him in her eyes,
And there he wandered as he said he would;
He wandered also in his prison-yard,
And, when he found her coming after him,
Beguiled her with her own admonishing
And frowned upon her with her own admonishing
And frowned upon her with a fierce reproof
That many a time in the old world outside
Had set the mark of silence on strong men--
Whereat she laughed, not always wholly sure,
Nor always wholly glad, that he who played
So lightly was the wizard of her dreams:
"No matter--if only Merlin keep the world
Away," she thought. "Our lyres have many strings,
But he must know them all, for he is Merlin."

And so for years, till ten of them were gone,--
Ten years, ten seasons, or ten flying ages--
Fate made Broceliande a paradise,
By none invaded, until Dagonet,
Like a discordant, awkward bird of doom,
Flew in with Arthur's message. For the King,
In sorrow cleaving to simplicity,
And having in his love a quick remembrance
Of Merlin's old affection for the fellow,
Had for this vain, reluctant enterprise
Appointed him--the knight who made men laugh,
And was a fool because he played the fool.

"The King believes today, as in his boyhood,
That I am Fate; and I can do no more
Than show again what in his heart he knows,"
Said Merlin to himself and Vivian:
"This time I go because I made him King,
Thereby to be a mirror for the world;
This time I go, but never after this,
For I can be no more than what I was,
And I can do no more than I have done."
He took her slowly in his arms and felt
Her body throbbing like a bird against him:
"This time I go; I go because I must."

And in the morning, when he rode away
With Dagonet and Blaise through the same gate
That once had clanged as if to shut for ever,
She had not even asked him not to go;
For it was then that in his lonely gaze
Of helpless love and sad authority
She found the gleam of his imprisoned power
That Fate withheld; and, pitying herself,
She pitied the fond Merlin she had changed,
And saw the Merlin who had changed the world.

VI
"No kings are coming on their hands and knees,
Nor yet on horses or in chariots,
To carry me away from you again,"
Said Merlin, winding around Vivian's ear
A shred of her black hair. "King Arthur knows
That I have done with kings, and that I speak
No more their crafty language. Once I knew it,
But now the only language I have left
Is one that I must never let you hear
Too long, or know too well. When towering deeds
Once done shall only out of dust and words
Be done again, the doer may then be wary
Lest in the complement of his new fabric
There be more words than dust."

"Why tell me so?"
Said Vivian; and a singular thin laugh
Came after her thin question. "Do you think
That I'm so far away from history
That I require, even of the wisest man
Who ever said the wrong thing to a woman,
So large a light on what I know already--
When all I seek is here before me now
In your new eyes that you have brought for me
From Camelot? The eyes you took away
Were sad and old; and I could see in them
A Merlin who remembered all the kings
He ever saw, and wished himself, almost,
Away from Vivian, to make other kings,
And shake the world again in the old manner.
I saw myself no bigger than a beetle
For several days, and wondered if your love
Were large enough to make me any larger
When you came back. Am I a beetle still?"
She stood up on her toes and held her cheek
For some time against his, and let him go.

"I fear the time has come for me to wander
A little in my prison-yard," he said.--
"No, tell me everything that you have seen
And heard and done, and seen done, and heard done,
Since you deserted me. And tell me first
What the King thinks of me."--"The King believes
That you are almost what you are," he told her:
"The beauty of all ages that are vanished,
Reborn to be the wonder of one woman."--
"I knew he hated me. What else of him?"--
"And all that I have seen and heard and done,
Which is not much, would make a weary telling;
And all your part of it would be to sleep,
And dream that Merlin had his beard again."--
"Then tell me more about your good fool knight,
Sir Dagonet. If Blaise were not half-mad
Already with his pondering on the name
And shield of his unshielding nameless father,
I'd make a fool of him. I'd call him Ajax;
I'd have him shake his fist at thunder-storms,
And dance a jig as long as there was lightning,
And so till I forgot myself entirely.
Not even your love may do so much as that."--
"Thunder and lightning are no friends of mine,"
Said Merlin slowly, "more than they are yours;
They bring me nearer to the elements
From which I came than I care now to be."--
"You owe a service to those elements;
For by their service you outwitted age
And made the world a kingdom of your will."--
He touched her hand, smiling: "Whatever service
Of mine awaits them will not be forgotten,"
He said; and the smile faded on his face.--
"Now of all graceless and ungrateful wizards--"
But there she ceased, for she found in his eyes
The first of a new fear. "The wrong word rules
Today," she said; 'and we'll have no more journeys."

Although he wandered rather more than ever
Since he had come again to Brittany
From Camelot, Merlin found eternally
Before him a new loneliness that made
Of garden, park, and woodland, all alike,
A desolation and a changelessness
Defying reason, without Vivian
Beside him, like a child with a black head,
Or moving on before him, or somewhere
So near him that, although he saw it not
With eyes, he felt the picture of her beauty
And shivered at the nearness of her being.
Without her now there was no past or future,
And a vague, soul-consuming premonition
He found the only tenant of the present;
He wondered, when she was away from him,
If his avenging injured intellect
Might shine with Arthur's kingdom a twin mirror,
Fate's plaything, for new ages without eyes
To see therein themselves and their declension.
Love made his hours a martyrdom without her;
The world was like an empty house without her,
Where Merlin was a prisoner of love
Confined within himself by too much freedom,
Repeating an unending exploration
Of many solitary silent rooms,
And only in a way remembering now
That once their very solitude and silence
Had by the magic of expectancy
Made sure what now he doubted--though his doubts,
Day after day, were founded on a shadow.

For now to Merlin, in his paradise,
Had come an unseen angel with a sword
Unseen, the touch of which was a long fear
For longer sorrow that had never come,
Yet might if he compelled it. He discovered,
One golden day in autumn as he wandered,
That he had made the radiance of two years
A misty twilight when he might as well
Have had no mist between him and the sun,
The sun being Vivian. On his coming then
To find her all in green against a wall
Of green and yellow leaves, and crumbling bread
For birds around the fountain while she sang
And the birds ate the bread, he told himself
That everything today was as it was
At first, and for a minute he believed it.
"I'd have you always all in green out here,"
He said, "if I had much to say about it."--
She clapped her crumbs away and laughed at him:
"I've covered up my bones with every color
That I can carry on them without screaming,
And you have liked them all--or made me think so."--
"I must have liked them if you thought I did,"
He answered, sighing; "but the sight of you
Today as on the day I saw you first,
All green, all wonderful" . . . He tore a leaf
To pieces with a melancholy care
That made her smile.--"Why pause at 'wonderful'?
You've hardly been yourself since you came back
From Camelot, where that unpleasant King
Said things that you have never said to me."--
He looked upon her with a worn reproach:
"The King said nothing that I keep from you."--
"What is it then?" she asked, imploringly;
"You man of moods and miracles, what is it?"--
He shook his head and tore another leaf:
"There is no need of asking what it is;
Whatever you or I may choose to name it,
The name of it is Fate, who played with me
And gave me eyes to read of the unwritten
More lines than I have read. I see no more
Today than yesterday, but I remember.
My ways are not the ways of other men;
My memories go forward. It was you
Who said that we were not in tune with Time;
It was not I who said it."--"But you knew it;
What matter then who said it?"--"It was you
Who said that Merlin was your punishment
For being in tune with him and not with Time--
With Time or with the world; and it was you
Who said you were alone, even here with Merlin;
It was not I who said it. It is I
Who tell you now my inmost thoughts." He laughed
As if at hidden pain around his heart,
But there was not much laughing in his eyes.
They walked, and for a season they were silent:
"I shall know what you mean by that," she said,
"When you have told me. Here's an oak you like,
And here's a place that fits me wondrous well
To sit in. You sit there. I've seen you there
Before; and I have spoiled your noble thoughts
By walking all my fingers up and down
Your countenance, as if they were the feet
Of a small animal with no great claws.
Tell me a story now about the world,
And the men in it, what they do in it,
And why it is they do it all so badly."--
"I've told you every story that I know,
Almost," he said.--"O, don't begin like that."--
"Well, once upon a time there was a King."--
"That has a more commendable address;
Go on, and tell me all about the King;
I'll bet the King had warts or carbuncles,
Or something wrong in his divine insides,
To make him wish that Adam had died young."

Merlin observed her slowly with a frown
Of saddened wonder. She laughed rather lightly,
And at his heart he felt again the sword
Whose touch was a long fear for longer sorrow.
"Well, once upon a time there was a king,"
He said again, but now in a dry voice
That wavered and betrayed a venturing.
He paused, and would have hesitated longer,
But something in him that was not himself
Compelled an utterance that his tongue obeyed,
As an unwilling child obeys a father
Who might be richer for obedience
If he obeyed the child: "There was a king
Who would have made his reign a monument
For kings and peoples of the waiting ages
To reverence and remember, and to this end
He coveted and won, with no ado
To make a story of, a neighbor queen
Who limed him with her smile and had of him,
In token of their sin, what he found soon
To be a sort of mongrel son and nephew--
And a most precious reptile in addition--
To ornament his court and carry arms,
And latterly to be the darker half
Of ruin. Also the king, who made of love
More than he made of life and death together,
Forgot the world and his example in it
For yet another woman--one of many--
And this one he made Queen, albeit he knew
That her unsworn allegiance to the knight
That he had loved the best of all his order
Must one day bring along the coming end
Of love and honor and of everything;
And with a kingdom builded on two pits
Of living sin,--so founded by the will
Of one wise counsellor who loved the king,
And loved the world and therefore made him king
To be a mirror for it,--the king reigned well
For certain years, awaiting a sure doom;
For certain years he waved across the world
A royal banner with a Dragon on it;
And men of every land fell worshipping
The Dragon as it were the living God,
And not the living sin."

She rose at that,
And after a calm yawn, she looked at Merlin:
"Why all this new insistence upon sin?"
She said; "I wonder if I understand
This king of yours, with all his pits and dragons;
I know I do not like him." A thinner light
Was in her eyes than he had found in them
Since he became the willing prisoner
That she had made of him; and on her mouth
Lay now a colder line of irony
Than all his fears or nightmares could have drawn
Before today: "What reason do you know
For me to listen to this king of yours?
What reading has a man of woman's days,
Even though the man be Merlin and a prophet?"

"I know no call for you to love the king,"
Said Merlin, driven ruinously along
By the vindictive urging of his fate;
"I know no call for you to love the king,
Although you serve him, knowing not yet the king
You serve. There is no man, or any woman,
For whom the story of the living king
Is not the story of the living sin.
I thought my story was the common one,
For common recognition and regard."

"Then let us have no more of it," she said;
"For we are not so common, I believe,
That we need kings and pits and flags and dragons
To make us know that we have let the world
Go by us. Have you missed the world so much
That you must have it in with all its clots
And wounds and bristles on to make us happy--
Like Blaise, with shouts and horns and seven men
Triumphant with a most unlovely boar?
Is there no other story in the world
Than this one of a man that you made king
To be a moral for the speckled ages?
You said once long ago, if you remember,
'You are too strange a lady to fear specks';
And it was you, you said, who feared them not.
Why do you look at me as at a snake
All coiled to spring at you and strike you dead?
I am not going to spring at you, or bite you;
I'm going home. And you, if you are kind,
Will have no fear to wander for an hour.
I'm sure the time has come for you to wander;
And there may come a time for you to say
What most you think it is that we need here
To make of this Broceliande a refuge
Where two disheartened sinners may forget
A world that has today no place for them."

A melancholy wave of revelation
Broke over Merlin like a rising sea,
Long viewed unwillingly and long denied.
He saw what he had seen, but would not feel,
Till now the bitterness of what he felt
Was in his throat, and all the coldness of it
Was on him and around him like a flood
Of lonelier memories than he had said
Were memories, although he knew them now
For what they were--for what his eyes had seen,
For what his ears had heard and what his heart
Had felt, with him not knowing what it felt.
But now he knew that his cold angel's name
Was Change, and that a mightier will than his
Or Vivian's had ordained that he be there.
To Vivian he could not say anything
But words that had no more of hope in them
Than anguish had of peace: "I meant the world . . .
I meant the world," he groaned; "not you--not me."

Again the frozen line of irony
Was on her mouth. He looked up once at it.
And then away--too fearful of her eyes
To see what he could hear now in her laugh
That melted slowly into what she said,
Like snow in icy water: "This world of yours
Will surely be the end of us. And why not?
I'm overmuch afraid we're part of it,--
Or why do we build walls up all around us,
With gates of iron that make us think the day
Of judgment's coming when they clang behind us?
And yet you tell me that you fear no specks!
With you I never cared for them enough
To think of them. I was too strange a lady.
And your return is now a speckled king
And something that you call a living sin--
That's like an uninvited poor relation
Who comes without a welcome, rather late,
And on a foundered horse."

"Specks? What are specks?"
He gazed at her in a forlorn wonderment
That made her say: "You said, 'I fear them not.'
'If I were king in Camelot,' you said,
'I might fear more than specks.' Have you forgotten?
Don't tell me, Merlin, you are growing old.
Why don't you make somehow a queen of me,
And give me half the world? I'd wager thrushes
That I should reign, with you to turn the wheel,
As well as any king that ever was.
The curse on me is that I cannot serve
A ruler who forgets that he is king."

In his bewildered misery Merlin then
Stared hard at Vivian's face, more like a slave
Who sought for common mercy than like Merlin:
"You speak a language that was never mine,
Or I have lost my wits. Why do you seize
The flimsiest of opportunities
To make of what I said another thing
Than love or reason could have let me say,
Or let me fancy? Why do you keep the truth
So far away from me, when all your gates
Will open at your word and let me go
To some place where no fear or weariness
Of yours need ever dwell? Why does a woman,
Made otherwise a miracle of love
And loveliness, and of immortal beauty,
Tear one word by the roots out of a thousand,
And worry it, and torture it, and shake it,
Like a small dog that has a rag to play with?
What coil of an ingenious destiny
Is this that makes of what I never meant
A meaning as remote as hell from heaven?"

"I don't know," Vivian said reluctantly,
And half as if in pain; "I'm going home.
I'm going home and leave you here to wander,
Pray take your kings and sins away somewhere
And bury them, and bury the Queen in also.
I know this king; he lives in Camelot,
And I shall never like him. There are specks
Almost all over him. Long live the king,
But not the king who lives in Camelot,
With Modred, Lancelot, and Guinevere--
And all four speckled like a merry nest
Of addled eggs together. You made him King
Because you loved the world and saw in him
From infancy a mirror for the millions.
The world will see itself in him, and then
The world will say its prayers and wash its face,
And build for some new king a new foundation.
Long live the King! . . . But now I apprehend
A time for me to shudder and grow old
And garrulous--and so become a fright
For Blaise to take out walking in warm weather--
Should I give way to long considering
Of worlds you may have lost while prisoned here
With me and my light mind. I contemplate
Another name for this forbidden place,
And one more fitting. Tell me, if you find it,
Some fitter name than Eden. We have had
A man and woman in it for some time,
And now, it seems, we have a Tree of Knowledge."
She looked up at the branches overhead
And shrugged her shoulders. Then she went away;
And what was left of Merlin's happiness,
Like a disloyal phantom, followed her.

He felt the sword of his cold angel thrust
And twisted in his heart, as if the end
Were coming next, but the cold angel passed
Invisibly and left him desolate,
With misty brow and eyes. "The man who sees
May see too far, and he may see too late
The path he takes unseen," he told himself
When he found thought again. "The man who sees
May go on seeing till the immortal flame
That lights and lures him folds him in its heart,
And leaves of what there was of him to die
An item of inhospitable dust
That love and hate alike must hide away;
Or there may still be charted for his feet
A dimmer faring, where the touch of time
Were like the passing of a twilight moth
From flower to flower into oblivion,
If there were not somewhere a barren end
Of moths and flowers, and glimmering far away
Beyond a desert where the flowerless days
Are told in slow defeats and agonies,
The guiding of a nameless light that once
Had made him see too much--and has by now
Revealed in death, to the undying child
Of Lancelot, the Grail. For this pure light
Has many rays to throw, for many men
To follow; and the wise are not all pure,
Nor are the pure all wise who follow it.
There are more rays than men. But let the man
Who saw too much, and was to drive himself
From paradise, play too lightly or too long
Among the moths and flowers, he finds at last
There is a dim way out; and he shall grope
Where pleasant shadows lead him to the plain
That has no shadow save his own behind him.
And there, with no complaint, nor much regret,
Shall he plod on, with death between him now
And the far light that guides him, till he falls
And has an empty thought of empty rest;
Then Fate will put a mattock in his hands
And lash him while he digs himself the grave
That is to be the pallet and the shroud
Of his poor blundering bones. The man who saw
Too much must have an eye to see at last
Where Fate has marked the clay; and he shall delve,
Although his hand may slacken, and his knees
May rock without a method as he toils;
For there's a delving that is to be done--
If not for God, for man. I see the light,
But I shall fall before I come to it;
For I am old. I was young yesterday.
Time's hand that I have held away so long
Grips hard now on my shoulder. Time has won.
Tomorrow I shall say to Vivian
That I am old and gaunt and garrulous,
And tell her one more story: I am old."

There were long hours for Merlin after that,
And much long wandering in his prison-yard,
Where now the progress of each heavy step
Confirmed a stillness of impending change
And imminent farewell. To Vivian's ear
There came for many days no other story
Than Merlin's iteration of his love
And his departure from Broceliande,
Where Merlin still remained. In Vivian's eye,
There was a quiet kindness, and at times
A smoky flash of incredulity
That faded into pain. Was this the Merlin--
This incarnation of idolatry
And all but supplicating deference--
This bowed and reverential contradiction
Of all her dreams and her realities--
Was this the Merlin who for years and years
Before she found him had so made her love him
That kings and princes, thrones and diadems,
And honorable men who drowned themselves
For love, were less to her than melon-shells?
Was this the Merlin whom her fate had sent
One spring day to come ringing at her gate,
Bewildering her love with happy terror
That later was to be all happiness?
Was this the Merlin who had made the world
Half over, and then left it with a laugh
To be the youngest, oldest, weirdest, gayest,
And wisest, and sometimes the foolishest
Of all the men of her consideration?
Was this the man who had made other men
As ordinary as arithmetic?
Was this man Merlin who came now so slowly
Towards the fountain where she stood again
In shimmering green? Trembling, he took her hands
And pressed them fondly, one upon the other,
Between his:

"I was wrong that other day,
For I have one more story. I am old."
He waited like one hungry for the word
Not said; and she found in his eyes a light
As patient as a candle in a window
That looks upon the sea and is a mark
For ships that have gone down. "Tomorrow," he said;
"Tomorrow I shall go away again
To Camelot; and I shall see the King
Once more; and I may come to you again
Once more; and I shall go away again
For ever. There is now no more than that
For me to do; and I shall do no more.
I saw too much when I saw Camelot;
And I saw farther backward into Time,
And forward, than a man may see and live,
When I made Arthur king. I saw too far,
But not so far as this. Fate played with me
As I have played with Time; and Time, like me,
Being less than Fate, will have on me his vengeance.
On Fate there is no vengeance, even for God."
He drew her slowly into his embrace
And held her there, but when he kissed her lips
They were as cold as leaves and had no answer;
For Time had given him then, to prove his words,
A frozen moment of a woman's life.

When Merlin the next morning came again
In the same pilgrim robe that he had worn
While he sat waiting where the cherry-blossoms
Outside the gate fell on him and around him
Grief came to Vivian at the sight of him;
And like a flash of a swift ugly knife,
A blinding fear came with it. "Are you going?"
She said, more with her lips than with her voice;
And he said, "I am going. Blaise and I
Are going down together to the shore,
And Blaise is coming back. For this one day
Be good enough to spare him, for I like him.
I tell you now, as once I told the King,
That I can be no more than what I was,
And I can say no more than I have said.
Sometimes you told me that I spoke too long
And sent me off to wander. That was good.
I go now for another wandering,
And I pray God that all be well with you."

For long there was a whining in her ears
Of distant wheels departing. When it ceased,
She closed the gate again so quietly
That Merlin could have heard no sound of it.
VII

By Merlin's Rock, where Dagonet the fool
Was given through many a dying afternoon
To sit and meditate on human ways
And ways divine, Gawaine and Bedivere
Stood silent, gazing down on Camelot.
The two had risen and were going home:
"It hits me sore, Gawaine," said Bedivere,
"To think on all the tumult and affliction
Down there, and all the noise and preparation
That hums of coming death, and, if my fears
Be born of reason, of what's more than death.
Wherefore, I say to you again, Gawaine,--
To you--that this late hour is not too late
For you to change yourself and change the King:
For though the King may love me with a love
More tried, and older, and more sure, may be,
Than for another, for such a time as this
The friend who turns him to the world again
Shall have a tongue more gracious and an eye
More shrewd than mine. For such a time as this
The King must have a glamour to persuade him."

"The King shall have a glamour, and anon,"
Gawaine said, and he shot death from his eyes;
"If you were King, as Arthur is--or was--
And Lancelot had carried off your Queen,
And killed a score or so of your best knights--
Not mentioning my two brothers, whom he slew
Unarmored and unarmed--God save your wits!
Two stewards with skewers could have done as much,
And you and I might now be rotting for it."

"But Lancelot's men were crowded,--they were crushed;
And there was nothing for them but to strike
Or die, not seeing where they struck. Think you
They would have slain Gareth and Gaheris,
And Tor, and all those other friends of theirs?
God's mercy for the world he made, I say,
And for the blood that writes the story of it.
Gareth and Gaheris, Tor and Lamorak,--
All dead, with all the others that are dead!
These years have made me turn to Lamorak
For counsel--and now Lamorak is dead."

"Why do you fling those two names in my face?
'Twas Modred made an end of Lamorak,
Not I; and Lancelot now has done for Tor.
I'll urge no king on after Lancelot
For such a two as Tor and Lamorak:
Their father killed my father, and their friend
was Lancelot, not I. I'll own my fault--
I'm living; and while I've a tongue can talk,
I'll say this to the King: 'Burn Lancelot
By inches till he give you back the Queen;
Then hang him--drown him--or do anything
To rid the world of him.' He killed my brothers,
And he was once my friend. Now damn the soul
Of him who killed my brothers! There you have me."

"You are a strong man, Gawaine, and your strength
Goes ill where foes are. You may cleave their limbs
And heads off, but you cannot damn their souls;
What you may do now is to save their souls,
And bodies too, and like enough your own.
Remember that King Arthur is a king,
And where there is a king there is a kingdom.
Is not the kingdom any more to you
Than one brief enemy? Would you see it fall
And the King with it, for one mortal hate
That burns out reason? Gawaine, you are king
Today. Another day may see no king
But Havoc, if you have no other word
For Arthur now than hate for Lancelot.
Is not the world as large as Lancelot?
Is Lancelot, because one woman's eyes
Are brighter when they look on him, to sluice
The world with angry blood? Poor flesh! Poor flesh!
And you, Gawaine,--are you so gaffed with hate
You cannot leave it and so plunge away
To stiller places and there see, for once,
What hangs on this pernicious expedition
The King in his insane forgetfulness
Would undertake--with you to drum him on?
Are you as mad as he and Lancelot
Made ravening into one man twice as mad
As either? Is the kingdom of the world,
Now rocking, to go down in sound and blood
And ashes and sick ruin, and for the sake
Of three men and a woman? If it be so,
God's mercy for the world he made, I say,--
And say again to Dagonet. Sir Fool,
Your throne is empty, and you may as well
Sit on it and be ruler of the world
From now till supper-time."

Sir Dagonet,
Appearing, made reply to Bedivere's
Dry welcome with a famished look of pain,
On which he built a smile: "If I were King,
You, Bedivere, should be my counsellor;
And we should have no more wars over women.
I'll sit me down and meditate on that."
Gawaine, for all his anger, laughed a little,
And clapped the fool's lean shoulder; for he loved him
And was with Arthur when he made him knight.
Then Dagonet said on to Bedivere,
As if his tongue would make a jest of sorrow:
"Sometime I'll tell you what I might have done
Had I been Lancelot and you King Arthur--
Each having in himself the vicious essence
That now lives in the other and makes war.
When all men are like you and me, my lord,
When all are rational or rickety,
There may be no more war. But what's here now?
Lancelot loves the Queen, and he makes war
Of love; the King, being bitten to the soul
By love and hate that work in him together,
Makes war of madness; Gawaine hates Lancelot,
And he, to be in tune, makes war of hate;
Modred hates everything, yet he can see
With one damned illegitimate small eye
His father's crown, and with another like it
He sees the beauty of the Queen herself;
He needs the two for his ambitious pleasure,
And therefore he makes war of his ambition;
And somewhere in the middle of all this
There's a squeezed world that elbows for attention.
Poor Merlin, buried in Broceliande!
He must have had an academic eye
For woman when he founded Arthur's kingdom,
And in Broceliande he may be sorry.
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols. God be with him!
I'm glad they tell me there's another world,
For this one's a disease without a doctor."

"No, not so bad as that," said Bedivere;
The doctor, like ourselves, may now be learning;
And Merlin may have gauged his enterprise
Whatever the cost he may have paid for knowing.
We pass, but many are to follow us,
And what they build may stay; though I believe
Another age will have another Merlin,
Another Camelot, and another King.
Sir Dagonet, farewell."

"Farewell, Sir Knight,
And you, Sir Knight: Gawaine, you have the world
Now in your fingers--an uncommon toy,
Albeit a small persuasion in the balance
With one man's hate. I'm glad you're not a fool,
For then you might be rickety, as I am,
And rational as Bedivere. Farewell.
I'll sit here and be king. God save the King!"

But Gawaine scowled and frowned and answered nothing
As he went slowly down with Bedivere
To Camelot, where Arthur's army waited
The King's word for the melancholy march
To Joyous Gard, where Lancelot hid the Queen
And armed his host, and there was now no joy,
As there was now no joy for Dagonet
While he sat brooding, with his wan cheek-bones
Hooked with his bony fingers: "Go, Gawaine,"
He mumbled: "Go your way, and drag the world
Along down with you. What's a world or so
To you if you can hide an ell of iron
Somewhere in Lancelot, and hear him wheeze
And sputter once or twice before he goes
Wherever the Queen sends him? There's a man
Who should have been a king, and would have been,
Had he been born so. so should I have been
A king, had I been born so, fool or no:
King Dagonet, or Dagonet the King;
King-Fool, Fool-King; 'twere not impossible.
I'll meditate on that and pray for Arthur,
Who made me all I am, except a fool.
Now he goes mad for love, as I might go
Had I been born a king and not a fool.
Today I think I'd rather be a fool;
Today the world is less than one scared woman--
Wherefore a field of waving men may soon
Be shorn by Time's indifferent scythe, because
The King is mad. The seeds of history
Are small, but given a few gouts of warm blood
For quickening, they sprout out wondrously
And have a leaping growth whereof no man
May shun such harvesting of change or death,
Or life, as may fall on him to be borne.
When I am still alive and rickety,
And Bedivere's alive and rational--
If he come out of this, and there's a doubt,--
The King, Gawaine, Modred, and Lancelot
May all be lying underneath a weight
Of bloody sheaves too heavy for their shoulders
All spent, and all dishonored, and all dead;
And if it come to be that this be so,
And if it be true that Merlin saw the truth,
Such harvest were the best. Your fool sees not
So far as Merlin sees: yet if he saw
The truth--why then, such harvest were the best
I'll pray for Arthur; I can do no more."

"Why not for Merlin? Or do you count him,
In this extreme, so foreign to salvation
That prayer would be a stranger to his name?"

Poor Dagonet, with terror shaking him,
Stood up and saw before him an old face
Made older with an inch of silver beard,
And faded eyes more eloquent of pain
And ruin than all the faded eyes of age
Till now had ever been, although in them
There was a mystic and intrinsic peace
Of one who sees where men of nearer sight
See nothing. On their way to Camelot,
Gawaine and Bedivere had passed him by,
With lax attention for the pilgrim cloak
They passed, and what it hid: yet Merlin saw
Their faces, and he saw the tale was true
That he had lately drawn from solemn strangers.

"Well, Dagonet, and by your leave," he said,
"I'll rest my lonely relics for a while
On this rock that was mine and now is yours.
I favor the succession; for you know
Far more than many doctors, though your doubt
Is your peculiar poison. I foresaw
Long since, and I have latterly been told
What moves in this commotion down below
To show men what it means. It means the end--
If men whose tongues had less to say to me
Than had their shoulders are adept enough
To know; and you may pray for me or not,
Sir Friend, Sir Dagonet."

"Sir fool, you mean,"
Dagonet said, and gazed on Merlin sadly:
"I'll never pray again for anything,
And last of all for this that you behold--
The smouldering faggot of unlovely bones
That God has given to me to call Myself.
When Merlin comes to Dagonet for prayer,
It is indeed the end."

"And in the end
Are more beginnings, Dagonet, than men
Shall name or know today. It was the end
Of Arthur's insubstantial majesty
When to him and his knights the Grail foreshowed
The quest of life that was to be the death
Of many, and the slow discouraging
Of many more. Or do I err in this?"

"No," Dagonet replied; "there was a Light;
And Galahad, in the Siege Perilous,
Alone of all on whom it fell, was calm;
There was a Light wherein men saw themselves
In one another as they might become--
Or so they dreamed. There was a long to-do,
And Gawaine, of all forlorn ineligibles,
Rose up the first, and cried more lustily
Than any after him that he should find
The Grail, or die for it,--though he did neither;
For he came back as living and as fit
For new and old iniquity as ever.
Then Lancelot came back, and Bors came back,--
Like men who had seen more than men should see,
And still come back. They told of Percival
Who saw too much to make of this worn life
A long necessity, and of Galahad,
Who died and is alive. They all saw Something.
God knows the meaning or the end of it,
But they saw Something. And if I've an eye,
Small joy has the Queen been to Lancelot
Since he came back from seeing what he saw;
For though his passion hold him like hot claws,
He's neither in the world nor out of it.
Gawaine is king, though Arthur wears the crown;
And Gawaine's hate for Lancelot is the sword
That hangs by one of Merlin's fragile hairs
Above the world. Were you to see the King,
The frenzy that has overthrown his wisdom,
Instead of him and his upheaving empire,
Might have an end."

"I came to see the King,"
Said Merlin, like a man who labors hard
And long with an importunate confession.
"No, Dagonet, you cannot tell me why,
Although your tongue is eager with wild hope
To tell me more than I may tell myself
About myself. All this that was to be
Might show to man how vain it were to wreck
The world for self if it were all in vain.
When I began with Arthur I could see
In each bewildered man who dots the earth
A moment with his days a groping thought
Of an eternal will, strangely endowed
With merciful illusions whereby self
Becomes the will itself and each man swells
In fond accordance with his agency.
Now Arthur, Modred, Lancelot, and Gawaine
Are swollen thoughts of this eternal will
Which have no other way to find the way
That leads them on to their inheritance
Than by the time-infuriating flame
Of a wrecked empire, lighted by the torch
Of woman, who, together with the light
That Galahad found, is yet to light the world."

A wan smile crept across the weary face
Of Dagonet the fool: "If you knew that
Before your burial in Broceliande,
No wonder your eternal will accords
With all your dreams of what the world requires.
My master, I may say this unto you
Because I am a fool, and fear no man;
My fear is that I've been a groping thought
That never swelled enough. You say the torch
Of woman and the light that Galahad found
Are some day to illuminate the world?
I'll meditate on that. The world is done
For me; and I have been, to make men laugh,
A lean thing of no shape and many capers.
I made them laugh, and I could laugh anon
Myself to see them killing one another
Because a woman with corn-colored hair
Has pranked a man with horns. 'Twas but a flash
Of chance, and Lancelot, the other day
That saved this pleasing sinner from the fire
That she may spread for thousands. Were she now
The cinder the King willed, or were you now
To see the King, the fire might yet go out;
But the eternal will says otherwise.
So be it; I'll assemble certain gold
That I may say is mine and get myself
Away from this accurst unhappy court,
And in some quiet place where shepherd clowns
And cowherds may have more respondent ears
Than kings and kingdom-builders, I shall troll
Old men to easy graves and be a child
Again among the children of the earth.
I'll have no more kings, even though I loved
King Arthur, who is mad, as I could love
No other man save Merlin, who is dead."

"Not wholly dead, but old. Merlin is old."
The wizard shivered as he spoke, and stared
Away into the sunset where he saw
Once more, as through a cracked and cloudy glass,
A crumbling sky that held a crimson cloud
Wherein there was a town of many towers
All swayed and shaken, in a woman's hand
This time, till out of it there spilled and flashed
And tumbled, like loose jewels, town, towers, and walls,
And there was nothing but a crumbling sky
That made anon of black and red and ruin
A wild and final rain on Camelot.
He bowed, and pressed his eyes: "Now by my soul,
I have seen this before--all black and red--
Like that--like that--like Vivian--black and red;
Like Vivian, when her eyes looked into mine
Across the cups of gold. A flute was playing--
Then all was black and red."

Another smile
Crept over the wan face of Dagonet,
Who shivered in his turn. "The torch of woman,"
He muttered, "and the light that Galahad found,
Will some day save us all, as they saved Merlin.
Forgive my shivering wits, but I am cold,
And it will soon be dark. Will you go down
With me to see the King, or will you not?
If not, I go tomorrow to the shepherds.
The world is mad, and I'm a groping thought
Of your eternal will; the world and I
Are strangers, and I'll have no more of it--
Except you go with me to see the King."

"No, Dagonet, you cannot leave me now,"
Said Merlin, sadly. "You and I are old;
And, as you say, we fear no man. God knows
I would not have the love that once you had
For me be fear of me, for I am past
All fearing now. But Fate may send a fly
Sometimes, and he may sting us to the grave,
So driven to test our faith in what we see.
Are you, now I am coming to an end,
As Arthur's days are coming to an end,
To sting me like a fly? I do not ask
Of you to say that you see what I see,
Where you see nothing; nor do I require
Of any man more vision than is his;
Yet I could wish for you a larger part
For your last entrance here than this you play
Tonight of a sad insect stinging Merlin.
The more you sting, the more he pities you;
And you were never overfond of pity.
Had you been so, I doubt if Arthur's love,
Or Gawaine's, would have made of you a knight.
No, Dagonet, you cannot leave me now,
Nor would you if you could. You call yourself
A fool, because the world and you are strangers.
You are a proud man, Dagonet; you have suffered
What I alone have seen. You are no fool;
And surely you are not a fly to sting
My love to last regret. Believe or not
What I have seen, or what I say to you,
But say no more to me that I am dead
Because the King is mad, and you are old,
And I am older. In Broceliande
Time overtook me as I knew he must;
And I, with a fond overplus of words,
Had warned the lady Vivian already,
Before these wrinkles and this hesitancy
Inhibiting my joints oppressed her sight
With age and dissolution. She said once
That she was cold and cruel; but she meant
That she was warm and kind, and over-wise
For woman in a world where men see not
Beyond themselves. She saw beyond them all,
As I did; and she waited, as I did,
The coming of a day when cherry-blossoms
Were to fall down all over me like snow
In springtime. I was far from Camelot
That afternoon; and I am farther now
From her. I see no more for me to do
Than to leave her and Arthur and the world
Behind me, and to pray that all be well
With Vivian, whose unquiet heart is hungry
For what is not, and what shall never be
Without her, in a world that men are making,
Knowing not how, nor caring yet to know
How slowly and how grievously they do it,--
Though Vivian, in her golden shell of exile,
Knows now and cares, not knowing that she cares,
Nor caring that she knows. In time to be,
The like of her shall have another name
Than Vivian, and her laugh shall be a fire,
Not shining only to consume itself
With what it burns. She knows not yet the name
Of what she is, for now there is no name;
Some day there shall be. Time has many names,
Unwritten yet, for what we say is old
Because we are so young that it seems old.
And this is all a part of what I saw
Before you saw King Arthur. When we parted,
I told her I should see the King again,
And, having seen him, might go back again
To see her face once more. But I shall see
No more the lady Vivian. Let her love
What man she may, no other love than mine
Shall be an index of her memories.
I fear no man who may come after me,
And I see none. I see her, still in green,
Beside the fountain. I shall not go back.
We pay for going back; and all we get
Is one more needless ounce of weary wisdom
To bring away with us. If I come not,
The lady Vivian will remember me,
And say: 'I knew him when his heart was young,
Though I have lost him now. Time called him home,
And that was as it was; for much is lost
Between Broceliande and Camelot.'"

He stared away into the west again,
Where now no crimson cloud or phantom town
Deceived his eyes. Above a living town
There were gray clouds and ultimate suspense,
And a cold wind was coming. Dagonet,
Now crouched at Merlin's feet in his dejection,
Saw multiplying lights far down below,
Where lay the fevered streets. At length he felt
On his lean shoulder Merlin's tragic hand
And trembled, knowing that a few more days
Would see the last of Arthur and the first
Of Modred, whose dark patience had attained
To one precarious half of what he sought:
"And even the Queen herself may fall to him,"
Dagonet murmured.--"The Queen fall to Modred?
Is that your only fear tonight?" said Merlin;
"She may, but not for long."--"No, not my fear;
For I fear nothing. But I wish no fate
Like that for any woman the King loves,
Although she be the scourge and the end of him
That you saw coming, as I see it now."
Dagonet shook, but he would have no tears,
He swore, for any king, queen, knave, or wizard--
Albeit he was a stranger among those
Who laughed at him because he was a fool.
"You said the truth, I cannot leave you now,"
He stammered, and was angry for the tears
That mocked his will and choked him.

Merlin smiled,
Faintly, and for the moment: "Dagonet,
I need your word as one of Arthur's knights
That you will go on with me to the end
Of my short way, and say unto no man
Or woman that you found or saw me here.
No good would follow, for a doubt would live
Unstifled of my loyalty to him
Whose deeds are wrought for those who are to come;
And many who see not what I have seen,
Or what you see tonight, would prattle on
For ever, and their children after them,
Of what might once have been had I gone down
With you to Camelot to see the King.
I came to see the King,--but why see kings?
All this that was to be is what I saw
Before there was an Arthur to be king,
And so to be a mirror wherein men
May see themselves, and pause. If they see not,
Or if they do see and they ponder not,--
I saw; but I was neither Fate nor God.
I saw too much; and this would be the end,
Were there to be an end. I saw myself--
A sight no other man has ever seen;
And through the dark that lay beyond myself
I saw two fires that are to light the world."

On Dagonet the silent hand of Merlin
Weighed now as living iron that held him down
With a primeval power. Doubt, wonderment,
Impatience, and a self-accusing sorrow
Born of an ancient love, possessed and held him
Until his love was more than he could name,
And he was Merlin's fool, not Arthur's now:
"Say what you will, I say that I'm the fool
Of Merlin, King of Nowhere; which is Here.
With you for king and me for court, what else
Have we to sigh for but a place to sleep?
I know a tavern that will take us in;
And on the morrow I shall follow you
Until I die for you. And when I die . . ."--
"Well, Dagonet, the King is listening."--
And Dagonet answered, hearing in the words
Of Merlin a grave humor and a sound
Of graver pity, "I shall die a fool."
He heard what might have been a father's laugh,
Faintly behind him; and the living weight
Of Merlin's hand was lifted. They arose,
And, saying nothing, found a groping way
Down through the gloom together. Fiercer now,
The wind was like a flying animal
That beat the two of them incessantly
With icy wings, and bit them as they went.
The rock above them was an empty place
Where neither seer nor fool should view again
The stricken city. Colder blew the wind
Across the world, and on it heavier lay
The shadow and the burden of the night;
And there was darkness over Camelot.

---

---

GOD'S GRAAL

by

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

     The ark of the Lord of Hosts
Whose name is called by the name of Him
Who dwelleth between the Cherubim.

O Thou that in no house dost dwell,
But walk'st in tent and tabernacle.

For God of all strokes will have one
In every battle that is done.

Lancelot lay beside the well:
     (God's Graal is good)
Oh my soul is sad to tell
The weary quest and the bitter quell;
For he was the lord of lordlihood
And sleep on his eyelids fell.

Lancelot lay before the shrine;
     (The apple tree's in the wood)
There was set Christ's very sign,
The bread unknown and the unknown wine
That the soul's life for a livelihood
     Craves from his wheat and vine.

---

---

THE BIRTH OF MERLIN
OR
THE CHILDE HATH FOUND HIS FATHER

ascribed to

WILLIAM ROWLEY

DRAMMATIS PERSONAE

AURELIUS, KING OF BRITTAIN
VORTIGER, KING OF (WELSH) BRITTAIN
UTER PENDRAGON THE PRINCE, BROTHER TO AURELIUS
DONOBERT, A NOBLEMAN, AND FATHER TO CONSTANTIA AND MODESTIA
THE EARL OF GLOSTER, AND FATHER TO EDWIN
EDOL, EARL OF CHESTER, AND GENERAL TO KING AURELIUS
CADOR, EARL OF CORNWAL, AND SUITOR TO CONSTANTIA
EDWIN, SON TO THE EARL OF GLOSTER, AND SUITOR TO MODESTIA
TOCLIO AND OSWOLD, TWO NOBLEMEN
MERLIN THE PROPHET
ANSELME THE HERMIT, AFTER BISHOP OF WINCHESTER
CLOWN, BROTHER TO JOAN, MOTHER OF MERLIN
SIR NICHODEMUS NOTHING, A COURTIER
THE DEVIL, FATHER OF MERLIN
OSTORIUS, THE SAXON GENERAL
OCTA, A SAXON NOBLEMAN
PROXIMUS, A SAXON MAGICIAN
TWO BISHOPS
TWO SAXON LORDS
TWO OF EDOLS CAPTAINS
TWO GENTLEMEN
A LITTLE ANTICK SPIRIT
ARTESIA, SISTER TO OSTORIUS THE SAXON GENERAL
CONSTANTIA AND MODESTIA, DAUGHTERS TO DONOBERT
JOAN GOE-TOO'T, MOTHER OF MERLIN
A WAITING-WOMAN TO ARTESIA
LUCINA, QUEEN OF THE SHADES

THE SCENE: Brittain .

ACT I

SCENE I


   CADOR. You teach me language, sir, as one that knows
The debt of love I owe unto her vertues;
Wherein like a true courtier I have fed
My self with hope of fair success, and now
Attend your wisht consent to my long suit.
   DONOBERT. Believe me, youthful lord,
Time could not give an opportunity
More fitting your desires, always provided,
My daughters love be suited with my grant.
   CADOR. 'Tis the condition, sir, her promise seal'd.
   DONOBERT. Ist so, Constantia?
   CONSTANTIA. I was content to give him words for oathes;
He swore so oft he lov'd me--
   DONOBERT. That thou believest him?
   CONSTANTIA. He is a man, I hope.
   DONOBERT. That's in the trial, girl.
   CONSTANTIA. However, I am a woman, sir.
   DONOBERT. The law's on thy side then: sha't have a husband,
I, and a worthy one. Take her, brave Cornwal,
And make our happiness great as our wishes.
   CADOR. Sir, I thank you.
   GLOSTER. Double the fortunes of the day, my lord,
And crown my wishes too: I have a son here,
Who in my absence would protest no less
Unto your other daughter.
   DONOBERT. Ha, Gloster, is it so? what says Lord Edwin?
Will she protest as much to thee?
   EDWIN. Else must she want some of her sisters faith, sir.
   MODESTIA. Of her credulity much rather, sir:
My lord, you are a soldier, and methinks
The height of that profession should diminish
All heat of loves desires,
Being so late employ'd in blood and ruine.
   EDWIN. The more my conscience tyes me to repair
The worlds losses in a new succession.
   MODESTIA. Necessity, it seems, ties your affections then,
And at that rate I would unwillingly
Be thrust upon you; a wife is a dish soon cloys, sir.
   EDWIN. Weak and diseased appetites it may.
   MODESTIA. Most of your making have dull stomacks, sir.
   DONOBERT. If that be all, girl, thou shalt quicken him;
Be kinde to him, Modestia: Noble Edwin,
Let it suffice, what's mine in her speaks yours;
For her consent, let your fair suit go on,
She is a woman, sir, and will be won.
   EDWIN. You give me comfort, sir.

Enter Toclio .

   DONOBERT. Now, Toclio?
   TOCLIO. The king, my honor'd lords, requires your presence,
And calls a councel for return of answer
Unto the parling enemy, whose embassadors
Are on the way to court.
   DONOBERT. So suddenly?
Chester, it seems, has ply'd them hard at war,
They sue so fast for peace, which by my advice
They ne're shall have, unless they leave the realm.
Come, noble Gloster, let's attend the king.
It lies, sir, in your son to do me pleasure,
And save the charges of a wedding dinner;
If you'l make haste to end your love affairs,
One cost may give discharge to both my cares.
      Exit Donobert, Gloster .
   EDWIN. I'le do my best.
   CADOR. Now, Toclio, what stirring news at court?
   TOCLIO. Oh, my lord, the court's all fill'd with rumor, the city with news, and the country with wonder, and all the bells i'th' kingdom must proclaim it, we have a new holy-day a coming.
   CONSTANTIA. A holy-day! for whom? for thee?
   TOCLIO. Me, madam! 'sfoot! I'de be loath that any man Should make a holy-day for me yet:
In brief, 'tis thus: there's here arriv'd at court,
Sent by the Earl of Chester to the king,
A man of rare esteem for holyness,
A reverent hermit, that by miracle
Not onely saved our army,
But without aid of man o'rethrew
The pagan host, and with such wonder, sir,
As might confirm a kingdom to his faith.
   EDWIN. This is strange news, indeed; where is he?
   TOCLIO. In conference with the king, that much respects him.
   MODESTIA. Trust me, I long to see him.
   TOCLIO. Faith, you will finde no great pleasure in him, for ought that I can see, lady. They say he is half a prophet too: would he could tell me any news of the lost prince; there's twenty talents offer'd to him that finds him.
   CADOR. Such news was breeding in the morning.
   TOCLIO. And now it has birth and life, sir. If fortune bless me, I'le once more search those woods where then we lost him; I know not yet what fate may follow me. [ Exit .
   CADOR. Fortune go with you, sir. Come, fair mistriss,
Your sister and Lord Edwin are in game,
And all their wits at stake to win the set.
   CONSTANTIA. My sister has the hand yet; we had best leave them:
She will be out anon as well as I;
He wants but cunning to put in a dye.
Exit Cador, Constantia .
   EDWIN. You are a cunning gamester, madam.
   MODESTIA. It is a desperate game, indeed, this marriage,
Where there's no winning without loss to either.
   EDWIN. Why, what but your perfection, noble lady,
Can bar the worthiness of this my suit?
If so you please I count my happiness
From difficult obtaining, you shall see
My duty and observance.
   MODESTIA. There shall be place to neither, noble sir;
I do beseech you, let this mild reply
Give answer to your suit: for here I vow,
If e're I change my virgin name, by you
It gains or looses.
   EDWIN. My wishes have their crown.
   MODESTIA. Let them confine you then,
As to my promise you give faith and credence.
   EDWIN. In your command my willing absence speaks it. [ Exit .
   MODESTIA. Noble and vertuous: could I dream of marriage,
I should affect thee, Edwin. Oh, my soul,
Here's something tells me that these best of creatures,
These models of the world, weak man and woman,
Should have their souls, their making, life, and being,
To some more excellent use: if what the sense
Calls pleasure were our ends, we might justly blame
Great natures wisdom, who rear'd a building
Of so much art and beauty to entertain
A guest so far incertain, so imperfect:
If onely speech distinguish us from beasts,
Who know no inequality of birth or place,
But still to fly from goodness: oh, how base
Were life at such a rate! No, no, that power
That gave to man his being, speech and wisdom,
Gave it for thankfulness. To him alone
That made me thus, may I whence truly know,
I'le pay to him, not man, the love I owe. [ Exit .

SCENE II


Flourish cornets. Enter Aurelius King of Brittain, Donobert, Gloster, Cador, Edwin, Toclio, Oswold, and Attendants .

   AURELIUS. No tiding of our brother yet? 'Tis strange,
So ne're the court, and in our own land too,
And yet no news of him: oh, this loss
Tempers the sweetness of our happy conquests
With much untimely sorrow.
   DONOBERT. Royal sir,
His safety being unquestion'd should to time
Leave the redress of sorrow: were he dead,
Or taken by the foe, our fatal loss
Had wanted no quick herald to disclose it.
   AURELIUS. That hope alone sustains me,
Nor will we be so ingrateful unto heaven
To question what we fear with what we enjoy.
Is answer of our message yet return'd
From that religious man, the holy hermit,
Sent by the Earl of Chester to confirm us
In that miraculous act? For 'twas no less:
Our army being in rout, nay, quite o'rethrown,
As Chester writes, even then this holy man,
Arm'd with his cross and staff, went smiling on,
And boldly fronts the foe; at sight of whom
The Saxons stood amaz'd: for, to their seeming,
Above the hermit's head appear'd such brightness,
Such clear and glorious beams, as if our men
March't all in fire; wherewith the pagans fled,
And by our troops were all to death pursu'd.
   GLOSTER. 'Tis full of wonder, sir.
Oh, Gloster, he's a jewel worth a kingdom.
Where's Oswold with his answer?
   OSWOLD. 'Tis here, my royal lord.
   AURELIUS. In writing? will he not sit with us?
   OSWOLD. His orizons perform'd, he bad me say,
He would attend with all submission.
   AURELIUS. Proceed to councel then; and let some give order,
The embassadors being come to take our answer,
They have admittance. Oswold, Toclio,
Be it your charge!-- [ Exeunt Oswold and Toclio .
    And now, my lords, observe
The holy councel of this reverend hermit:

[ Reads .] As you respect your safety, limit not
That onely power that hath protected you;
Trust not an open enemy too far,
He's yet a looser, and knows you have won;
Mischiefs not ended are but then begun .
Anselme the Hermit .

   DONOBERT. Powerful and pithie, which my advice confirms:
No man leaves physick when his sickness slakes,
But doubles the receipts: the word of peace
Seems fair to blood-shot eyes, but being appli'd
With such a medicine as blinds all the sight
Argues desire of cure, but not of art.
   AURELIUS. You argue from defects; if both the name
And the condition of the peace be one,
It is to be prefer'd, and in the offer,
Made by the Saxon, I see nought repugnant.
   GLOSTER. The time of truce requir'd for thirty days
Carries suspicion in it, since half that space
Will serve to strength their weakned regiment.
   CADOR. Who in less time will undertake to free
Our country from them?
   EDWIN. Leave that unto our fortune.
   DONOBERT. Is not our bold and hopeful general
Still master of the field, their legions faln,
The rest intrencht for fear, half starv'd, and wounded,
And shall we now give o're our fair advantage?
'Fore heaven, my lord, the danger is far more
In trusting to their words then to their weapons.

Enter Oswold .

   OSWOLD. The embassadors are come, sir.
   AURELIUS. Conduct them in.
We are resolv'd, my lords, since policy fail'd
In the beginning, it shall have no hand
In the conclusion.
That heavenly power that hath so well begun
Their fatal overthrow, I know, can end it:
From which fair hope my self will give them answer.

    Flourish cornets . Enter Artesia with the Saxon lords .

   DONOBERT. What's here? a woman orator?
   AURELIUS. Peace, Donobert!--Speak, what are you, lady?
   ARTESIA. The sister of the Saxon general,
Warlike Ostorius the East Anglese king;
My name Artesia, who in terms of love
Brings peace and health to great Aurelius,
Wishing she may return as fair a present
As she makes tender of.
   AURELIUS. The fairest present e're mine eyes were blest with!--
Command a chair there for this Saxon beauty:--
Sit, lady, we'l confer: your warlike brother
Sues for a peace, you say?
   ARTESIA. With endless love unto your state and person.
   AURELIUS. Ha's sent a moving orator, believe me.--
What thinkst thou, Donobert?
   DONOBERT. Believe me, sir, were I but yong agen,
This gilded pill might take my stomack quickly.
   AURELIUS. True, thou art old: how soon we do forget
Our own defects! Fair damsel,--oh, my tongue
Turns traitor, and will betray my heart--sister to
Our enemy:--'sdeath, her beauty mazes me,
I cannot speak if I but look on her.--
What's that we did conclude?
   DONOBERT. This, royal lord--
   AURELIUS. Pish, thou canst not utter it:--
Fair'st of creatures, tell the king your brother,
That we, in love--ha!--and honor to our country,
Command his armies to depart our realm.
But if you please, fair soul--Lord Donobert,
Deliver you our pleasure.
   DONOBERT. I shall, sir:
Lady, return, and certifie your brother--
   AURELIUS. Thou art too blunt and rude! return so soon?
Fie, let her stay, and send some messenger
To certifie our pleasure.
   DONOBERT. What meanes your grace?
   AURELIUS. To give her time of rest to her long journey;
We would not willingly be thought uncivil.
   ARTESIA. Great King of Brittain, let it not seem strange,
To embrace the princely offers of a friend,
Whose vertues with thine own, in fairest merit,
Both states in peace and love may now inherit.
   AURELIUS. She speakes of love agen:
Sure, 'tis my fear, she knows I do not hate her.
   ARTESIA. Be, then, thy self, most great Aurelius,
And let not envy nor a deeper sin
In these thy councellors deprive thy goodness
Of that fair honor we in seeking peace
Give first to thee, who never use to sue
But force our wishes. Yet, if this seem light,
Oh, let my sex, though worthless your respect,
Take the report of thy humanity,
Whose mild and vertuous life loud fame displayes,
As being o'recome by one so worthy praise.
   AURELIUS. She has an angels tongue.--Speak still.
   DONOBERT. This flattery is gross, sir; hear no more on't.--
Lady, these childish complements are needless;
You have your answer, and believe it, madam,
His grace, though yong, doth wear within his breast
Too grave a councellor to be seduc't
By smoothing flattery or oyly words.
   ARTESIA. I come not, sir, to wooe him.
   DONOBERT. 'Twere folly, if you should; you must not wed him.
   AURELIUS. Shame take thy tongue! Being old and weak thy self,
Thou doat'st, and looking on thine own defects,
Speak'st what thou'dst wish in me. Do I command
The deeds of others, mine own act not free?
Be pleas'd to smile or frown, we respect neither:
My will and rule shall stand and fall together.
Most fair Artesia, see the king descends
To give thee welcome with these warlike Saxons,
And now on equal terms both sues and grants:
Instead of truce, let a perpetual league
Seal our united bloods in holy marriage;
Send the East Angles king this happy news,
That thou with me hast made a league for ever,
And added to his state a friend and brother.
Speak, dearest love, dare you confirm this title?
   ARTESIA. I were no woman to deny a good
So high and noble to my fame and country.
   AURELIUS. Live, then, a queen in Brittain.
   GLOSTER. He meanes to marry her.
   DONOBERT. Death! he shall marry the devil first!
Marry a pagan, an idolater?
   CADOR. He has won her quickly.
   EDWIN. She was woo'd afore she came, sure,
Or came of purpose to conclude the match.
   AURELIUS. Who dares oppose our will? My Lord of Gloster,
Be you embassador unto our brother,
The brother of our queen Artesia;
Tell him for such our entertainment looks him,
Our marriage adding to the happiness
Of our intended joys; mans good or ill
In this like waves agree, come double still.

Enter Hermit .

Who's this? the hermit? Welcome, my happiness!
Our countries hope, most reverent holy man,
I wanted but thy blessing to make perfect
The infinite sum of my felicity.
   HERMIT. Alack, sweet prince, that happiness is yonder,
Felicity and thou art far asunder;
This world can never give it.
   AURELIUS. Thou art deceiv'd: see here what I have found,
Beauty, alliance, peace, and strength of friends,
All in this all exceeding excellence:
The league's confirm'd.
   HERMIT. With whom, dear lord?
   AURELIUS. With the great brother of this beauteous woman,
The royal Saxon king.
   HERMIT. Oh, then I see,
And fear thou art too near thy misery.
What magick could so linck thee to this mischief?
By all the good that thou hast reapt by me,
Stand further from destruction.
   AURELIUS. Speak as a man, and I shall hope to obey thee.
   HERMIT. Idolaters, get hence! fond king, let go:
Thou hug'st thy ruine and thy countries woe.
   DONOBERT. Well spoke, old father; too him, bait him soundly.
Now, by heavens blest Lady, I can scarce keep patience.
   1. SAXON LORD. What devil is this?
   2. SAXON LORD. That cursed Christian, by whose hellish charmes
Our army was o'rethrown.
   HERMIT. Why do you dally, sir? Oh, tempt not heaven;
Warm not a serpent in your naked bosom:
Discharge them from your court.
   AURELIUS. Thou speak'st like madness!
Command the frozen shepherd to the shade,
When he sits warm i'th' sun; the fever sick
To add more heat unto his burning pain:
These may obey, 'tis less extremity
Then thou enjoynst to me. Cast but thine eye
Upon this beauty, do it, I'le forgive thee,
Though jealousie in others findes no pardon;
Then say thou dost not love; I shall then swear
Th'art immortal and no earthly man.
Oh, blame then my mortallity, not me.
   HERMIT. It is thy weakness brings thy misery,
Unhappy prince.
   AURELIUS. Be milder in thy doom.
   HERMIT. 'Tis you that must indure heavens doom, which faln
Remember's just.
   ARTESIA. Thou shalt not live to see it.--How fares my lord?
If my poor presence breed dislike, great prince,
I am no such neglected soul, will seek
To tie you to your word.
   AURELIUS. My word, dear love! may my religion,
Crown, state, and kingdom fail, when I fail thee.
Command Earl Chester to break up the camp
Without disturbance to our Saxon friends;
Send every hour swift posts to hasten on
The king her brother, to conclude this league,
This endless happy peace of love and marriage;
Till when provide for revels, and give charge
That nought be wanting which make our triumphs
Sportful and free to all. If such fair blood
Ingender ill, man must not look for good.
Exit all but Hermit . Florish .

Enter Modestia, reading in a book .

   MODESTIA. How much the oft report of this blest hermit
Hath won on my desires; I must behold him:
And sure this should be he. Oh, the world's folly,
Proud earth and dust, how low a price bears goodness!
All that should make man absolute shines in him.
Much reverent sir, may I without offence
Give interruption to your holy thoughts?
   HERMIT. What would you, lady?
   MODESTIA. That which till now ne're found a language in me:
I am in love.
   HERMIT. In love? with what?
   MODESTIA. With vertue.
   HERMIT. There's no blame in that.
   MODESTIA. Nay, sir, with you, with your religious life,
Your vertue, goodness, if there be a name
To express affection greater, that,
That would I learn and utter: reverent sir,
If there be any thing to bar my suit,
Be charitable and expose it; your prayers
Are the same orizons which I will number.
Holy sir,
Keep not instruction back from willingness,
Possess me of that knowledge leads you on
To this humility; for well I know,
Were greatness good, you would not live so low.
   HERMIT. Are you a virgin?
   MODESTIA. Yes, sir.
   HERMIT. Your name?
   MODESTIA. Modestia.
   HERMIT. Your name and vertues meet, a modest virgin:
Live ever in the sanctimonious way
To heaven and happiness. There's goodness in you,
I must instruct you further. Come, look up,
Behold yon firmament: there sits a power,
Whose foot-stool is this earth. Oh, learn this lesson,
And practise it: he that will climb so high,
Must leave no joy beneath to move his eye. [ Exit .
   MODESTIA. I apprehend you, sir: on heaven I fix my love,
Earth gives us grief, our joys are all above;
For this was man in innocence naked born,
To show us wealth hinders our sweet return. [ Exit .

ACT II

SCENE I

Enter Clown and his sister great with childe .

   CLOWN. Away, follow me no further, I am none of thy brother. What, with childe? great with childe, and knows not whose the father on't! I am asham'd to call thee sister.
   JOAN. Believe me, brother, he was a gentleman.
   CLOWN. Nay, I believe that; he gives arms, and legs too, and has made you the herald to blaze 'em: but, Joan, Joan, sister Joan, can you tell me his name that did it? how shall we call my cousin, your bastard, when we have it?
   JOAN. Alas, I know not the gentlemans name, brother.
I met him in these woods the last great hunting;
He was so kinde and proffer'd me so much,
As I had not the heart to ask him more.
   CLOWN. Not his name? why, this showes your country breeding now; had you been brought up i'th' city, you'd have got a father first, and the childe afterwards: hast thou no markes to know him by?
   JOAN. He had a most rich attire, a fair hat and feather, a gilt sword, and most excellent hangers.
   CLOWN. Pox on his hangers, would he had bin gelt for his labor.
   JOAN. Had you but heard him swear, you would have thought--
   CLOWN. I, as you did; swearing and lying goes together still. Did his oathes get you with childe? we shall have a roaring boy then, yfaith. Well, sister, I must leave you.
   JOAN. Dear brother, stay, help me to finde him out,
I'le ask no further.
   CLOWN. 'Sfoot, who should I finde? who should I ask for?
   JOAN. Alas, I know not, he uses in these woods,
And these are witness of his oathes and promise.
   CLOWN. We are like to have a hot suit on't, when our best witness's but a knight a'th' post.
   JOAN. Do but enquire this forrest, I'le go with you;
Some happy fate may guide us till we meet him.
   CLOWN. Meet him? and what name shall we have for him, when we meet him? 'Sfoot, thou neither knowst him nor canst tell what to call him. Was ever man tyr'd with such a business, to have a sister got with childe, and know not who did it? Well, you shall see him, I'le do my best for you, Ile make proclamation; if these woods and trees, as you say, will bear any witness, let them answer. Oh yes: If there be any man that wants a name will come in for conscience sake, and acknowledge himself to be a whore-master, he shal have that laid to his charge in an hour, he shall not be rid on in an age; if he have lands, he shall have an heir; if he have patience, he shall have a wife; if he have neither lands nor patience, he shall have a whore. So ho, boy, so ho, so, so.
   [ Within .] PRINCE UTER. So ho, boy, so ho, illo ho, illo ho.
   CLOWN. Hark, hark, sister, there's one hollows to us; what a wicked world's this! a man cannot so soon name a whore, but a knave comes presently: and see where he is; stand close a while, sister.

Enter Prince Uter .

   PRINCE. How like a voice that Eccho spake, but oh,
My thoughts are lost for ever in amazement.
Could I but meet a man to tell her beauties,
These trees would bend their tops to kiss the air
That from my lips should give her praises up.
   CLOWN. He talks of a woman, sister.
   JOAN. This may be he, brother.
   CLOWN. View him well; you see, he has a fair sword, but his hangers are faln.
   PRINCE. Here did I see her first, here view her beauty:
Oh, had I known her name, I had been happy.
   CLOWN. Sister, this is he, sure; he knows not thy name neither. A couple of wise fools yfaith, to get children, and know not one another.
   PRINCE. You weeping leaves, upon whose tender cheeks
Doth stand a flood of tears at my complaint,
Who heard my vows and oathes--
   CLOWN. Law, Law, he has been a great swearer too; tis he, sister.
   PRINCE. For having overtook her;
As I have seen a forward blood-hound strip
The swifter of the cry, ready to seize
His wished hopes, upon the sudden view,
Struck with astonishment, at his arriv'd prey,
Instead of seizure stands at fearful bay;
Or like to Marius soldiers, who, o'retook,
The eye sight killing Gorgon at one look
Made everlasting stand: so fear'd my power,
Whose cloud aspir'd the sun, dissolv'd a shower.
Pigmalion, then I tasted thy sad fate,
Whose ivory picture and my fair were one:
Our dotage past imagination.
I saw and felt desire--
   CLOWN. Pox a your fingering! did he feel, sister?
   PRINCE. But enjoy'd not.
Oh fate, thou hadst thy days and nights to feed
On calm affection; one poor sight was all,
Converts my pleasure to perpetual thrall:
Imbracing thine, thou lostest breath and desire,
So I, relating mine, will here expire.
For here I vow to you mournful plants,
Who were the first made happy by her fame,
Never to part hence, till I know her name.
   CLOWN. Give me thy hand, sister, the childe has found his father . This is he, sure; as I am a man, had I been a woman, these kinde words would have won me, I should have had a great belly too, that's certain. Well, I'le speak to him.--Most honest and fleshly minded gentleman, give me your hand, sir.
   PRINCE. Ha, what art thou, that thus rude and boldly darest
Take notice of a wretch so much ally'd
To misery as I am?
   CLOWN. Nay, sir, for our aliance, I shall be found to be a poor brother in law of your worships: the gentlewoman you spake on is my sister: you see what a clew she spreads; her name is Joan Go-too't. I am her elder, but she has been at it before me; 'tis a womans fault.--Pox a this bashfulness! come forward, jug, prethee, speak to him.
   PRINCE. Have you e're seen me, lady?
   CLOWN. Seen ye? ha, ha! It seems she has felt you too: here's a yong Go-too't a coming, sir; she is my sister; we all love to Go-too't, as well as your worship. She's a maid yet, but you may make her a wife, when you please, sir.
   PRINCE. I am amaz'd with wonder: tell me, woman,
What sin have you committed worthy this?
   JOAN. Do you not know me, sir?
   PRINCE. Know thee! as I do thunder, hell, and mischief;
Witch, scullion, hag!
   CLOWN. I see he will marry her; he speaks so like a husband.
   PRINCE. Death! I will cut their tongues out for this blasphemy.
Strumpet, villain, where have you ever seen me?
   CLOWN. Speak for your self, with a pox to ye.
   PRINCE. Slaves, Ile make you curse your selves for this temptation.
   JOAN. Oh, sir, if ever you did speak to me,
It was in smoother phrase, in fairer language.
   PRINCE. Lightning consume me, if I ever saw thee.
My rage o'reflowes my blood, all patience flies me. [ Beats her .
   CLOWN. Hold, I beseech you, sir, I have nothing to say to you.
   JOAN. Help, help! murder, murder!

Enter Toclio and Oswold .

   TOCLIO. Make haste, sir, this way the sound came, it was a wood.
   OSWOLD. See where she is, and the prince, the price of all our wishes.
   CLOWN. The prince, say ye? ha's made a poor subject of me, I am sure.
   TOCLIO. Sweet prince, noble Uter, speak, how fare you, sir?
   OSWOLD. Dear sir, recal your self; your fearful absence
Hath won too much already on the grief
Of our sad king, from whom our laboring search
Hath had this fair success in meeting you.
   TOCLIO. His silence and his looks argue distraction.
   CLOWN. Nay, he's mad, sure, he will not acknowledge my sister, nor the childe neither.
   OSWOLD. Let us entreat your grace along with us;
Your sight will bring new life to the king your brother.
   TOCLIO. Will you go, sir?
   PRINCE. Yes, any whether; guide me, all's hell I see;
Man may change air, but not his misery. [ Exit Prince, Toclio .
   JOAN. Lend me one word with you, sir.
   CLOWN. Well said, sister, he has a feather, and fair hangers too, this may be he.
   OSWOLD. What would you, fair one?
   JOAN. Sure, I have seen you in these woods e're this.
   OSWOLD. Trust me, never; I never saw this place,
Till at this time my friend conducted me.
   JOAN. The more's my sorrow then.
   OSWOLD. Would I could comfort you.
I am a bachelor, but it seems you have
A husband, you have been fouly o'reshot else.
   CLOWN. A womans fault, we are all subject to go to't, sir.

Enter Toclio .

   TOCLIO. Oswold, away; the prince will not stir a foot without you.
   OSWOLD. I am coming. Farewel, woman.
   TOCLIO. Prithee, make haste. [ Exit Oswold .
   JOAN. Good sir, but one word with you, e're you leave us.
   TOCLIO. With me, fair soul?
   CLOWN. Shee'l have a fling at him too; the childe must have a father.
   JOAN. Have you ne'er seen me, sir?
   TOCLIO. Seen thee? 'Sfoot, I have seen many fair faces in my time: prithee, look up, and do not weep so. Sure, pretty wanton, I have seen this face before.
   JOAN. It is enough, though you ne're see me more. [ Sinks down .
   TOCLIO. 'Sfoot, she's faln: this place is inchanted, sure; look to the woman, fellow. [ Exit .
   CLOWN. Oh, she's dead, she's dead! As you are a man, stay and help, sir.--Joan, Joan, sister Joan, why, Joan Go-too't, I say; will you cast away your self, and your childe, and me too? what do you mean, sister?
   JOAN. Oh, give me pardon, sir; 'twas too much joy
Opprest my loving thoughts; I know you were
Too noble to deny me--ha! Where is he?
   CLOWN. Who, the gentleman? he's gone, sister.
   JOAN. Oh! I am undone, then! Run, tell him I did
But faint for joy; dear brother, haste; why dost thou stay?
Oh, never cease, till he give answer to thee.
   CLOWN. He: which he? what do you call him, tro?
   JOAN. Unnatural brother,
Shew me the path he took; why dost thou dally?
Speak, oh, which way went he?
   CLOWN. This way, that way, through the bushes there.
   JOAN. Were it through fire,
The journey's easie, winged with sweet desire. [ Exit .
   CLOWN. Hey day, there's some hope of this yet. Ile follow her for kindreds sake; if she miss of her purpose now, she'l challenge all she findes, I see; for if ever we meet with a two-leg'd creature in the whole kingdom, the childe shall have a father, that's certain. [ Exit .

SCENE II

Loud musick. Enter two with the sword and mace, Cador, Edwin, two Bishops, Aurelius, Ostorius, leading Artesia crown'd, Constancia, Modestia, Octa, Proximus a Magician, Donobert, Gloster, Oswold, Toclio; all pass over the stage. Manet Donobert, Gloster, Edwin, Cador .

   DONOBERT. Come, Gloster, I do not like this hasty marriage.
   GLOSTER. She was quickly wooed and won: not six days since
Arrived an enemy to sue for peace,
And now crown'd Queen of Brittain; this is strange.
   DONOBERT. Her brother too made as quick speed in coming,
Leaving his Saxons and his starved troops,
To take the advantage, whilst 'twas offer'd.
'Fore heaven I fear the king's too credulous;
Our Army is discharg'd too.
   GLOSTER. Yes, and our general commanded home.
Son Edwin, have you seen him since?
   EDWIN. He's come to court, but will not view the presence,
Nor speak unto the king; he's so discontent
At this so strange aliance with the Saxon,
As nothing can perswade his patience.
   CADOR. You know his humor will indure no check,
No, if the king oppose it:
All crosses feeds both his spleen and his impatience;
Those affections are in him like powder,
Apt to inflame with every little spark,
And blow up all his reason.
   GLOSTER. Edol of Chester is a noble soldier.
   DONOBERT. So is he, by the Rood, ever most faithful
To the king and kingdom, how e're his passions guide him.

Enter Edol with Captains .

   CADOR. See where he comes, my lord.
   OMNES. Welcome to court, brave earl.
   EDOL. Do not deceive me by your flatteries:
Is not the Saxon here? the league confirm'd?
The marriage ratifi'd? the court divided
With pagan infidels, the least part Christians,
At least in their commands? Oh, the gods!
It is a thought that takes away my sleep,
And dulls my senses so I scarcely know you:
Prepare my horses, Ile away to Chester.
   CAPTAIN. What shall we do with our companies, my lord?
   EDOL. Keep them at home to increase cuckolds,
And get some cases for your captainships;
Smooth up your brows, the wars has spoil'd your faces,
And few will now regard you.
   DONOBERT. Preserve your patience, sir.
   EDOL. Preserve your honors, lords, your countries safety,
Your lives and lands from strangers. What black devil
Could so bewitch the king, so to discharge
A royal army in the height of conquest,
Nay, even already made victorious,
To give such credit to an enemy,
A starved foe, a stragling fugitive,
Beaten beneath our feet, so low dejected,
So servile, and so base, as hope of life
Had won them all to leave the land for ever?
   DONOBERT. It was the kings will.
   EDOL. It was your want of wisdom,
that should have laid before his tender youth
The dangers of a state, where forain powers
Bandy for soveraignty with lawful kings;
Who being setled once, to assure themselves,
Will never fail to seek the blood and life
Of all competitors.
   DONOBERT. Your words sound well, my lord, and point at safety,
Both for the realm and us; but why did you,
Within whose power it lay, as general,
With full commission to dispose the war,
Lend ear to parly with the weakned foe?
   EDOL. Oh the good gods!
   CADOR. And on that parly came this embassie.
   EDOL. You will hear me?
   EDWIN. Your letters did declare it to the king,
Both of the peace, and all conditions
Brought by this Saxon lady, whose fond love
Has thus bewitched him.
   EDOL. I will curse you all as black as hell,
Unless you hear me; your gross mistake would make
Wisdom her self run madding through the streets,
And quarrel with her shadow. Death!
Why kill'd ye not that woman?
   DONOBERT. GLOSTER. Oh, my lord!
   EDOL. The great devil take me quick, had I been by,
And all the women of the world were barren,
She should have died, e're he had married her
On these conditions.
   CADOR. It is not reason that directs you thus.
   EDOL. Then have I none, for all I have directs me.
Never was man so palpably abus'd,
So basely marted, bought and sold to scorn.
My honor, fame, and hopeful victories,
The loss of time, expences, blood, and fortunes,
All vanisht into nothing.
   EDWIN. This rage is vain, my lord:
What the king does nor they nor you can help.
   EDOL. My sword must fail me then.
   CADOR. 'Gainst whom will you expose it?
   EDOL. What's that to you? 'gainst all the devils in hell,
To guard my country.
   EDWIN. These are airy words.
   EDOL. Sir, you tread too hard upon my patience.
   EDWIN. I speak the duty of a subjects faith,
And say agen, had you been here in presence,
What the king did, you had not dar'd to cross it.
   EDOL. I will trample on his life and soul that says it.
   CADOR. My lord!
   EDWIN. Come, come.
   EDOL. Now, before heaven--
   CADOR. Dear sir!
   EDOL. Not dare? thou liest beneath thy lungs.
   GLOSTER. No more, son Edwin.
   EDWIN. I have done, sir; I take my leave.
   EDOL. But thou shalt not, you shall take no leave of me, sir.
   DONOBERT. For wisdoms sake, my lord--
   EDOL. Sir, I'le leave him, and you, and all of you,
The court and king, and let my sword and friends
Shuffle for Edols safety: stay you here,
And hug the Saxons, till they cut your throats,
Or bring the land to servile slavery.
Such yokes of baseness Chester must not suffer.
Go, and repent betimes these foul misdeeds,
For in this league all our whole kingdom bleeds,
Which Ile prevent, or perish. [ Exit Edol, Captains .
   GLOSTER. See how his rage transports him!
   CADOR. These passions set apart, a braver soldier
Breathes not i'th' world this day.
   DONOBERT. I wish his own worth do not court his ruine.
The king must rule, and we must learn to obay,
True vertue still directs the noble way.

SCENE III

Loud musick. Enter Aurelius, Artesia, Ostorius, Octa, Proximus, Toclio, Oswold, Hermit .

   AURELIUS. Why is the court so dull? me thinks, each room
And angle of our palace should appear
Stuck full of objects fit for mirth and triumphs,
To show our high content. Oswold, fill wine!
Must we begin the revels? Be it so, then!
Reach me the cup: Ile now begin a health
To our lov'd queen, the bright Artesia,
The royal Saxon king, our warlike brother.
Go and command all the whole court to pledge it.
Fill to the hermit there! Most reverent Anselme,
Wee'l do thee honor first, to pledge my queen.
   HERMIT. I drink no healths, great king, and if I did,
I would be loath to part with health to those
That have no power to give it back agen.
   AURELIUS. Mistake not, it is the argument of love
And duty to our queen and us.
   ARTESIA. But he ows none, it seems.
   HERMIT. I do to vertue, madam: temperate minds
Covets that health to drink, which nature gives
In every spring to man; he that doth hold
His body but a tenement at will,
Bestows no cost, but to repair what's ill:
Yet if your healths or heat of wine, fair princes,
Could this old frame or these cras'd limbes restore,
Or keep out death or sickness, then fill more,
I'le make fresh way for appetite; if no,
On such a prodigal who would wealth bestow?
   OSTORIUS. He speaks not like a guest to grace a wedding.

Enter Toclio .

   ARTESIA. No, sir, but like an envious imposter.
   OCTA. A Christian slave, a cinick.
   OSTORIUS. What vertue could decline your kingly spirit
To such respect of him whose magick spells
Met with your vanquisht troops, and turn'd your arms
To that necessity of fight, which, thro dispair
Of any hope to stand but by his charms,
Had been defeated in a bloody conquest?
   OCTA. 'Twas magick, hellbred magick did it, sir,
And that's a course, my lord, which we esteem
In all our Saxon wars unto the last
And lowest ebbe of servile treachery.
   AURELIUS. Sure, you are deceiv'd, it was the hand of heaven
That in his vertue gave us victory.
Is there a power in man that can strike fear
Thorough a general camp, or create spirits
In recreant bosoms above present sense?
   OSTORIUS. To blind the sense there may, with apparition
Of well arm'd troops within themselves are air,
Form'd into humane shapes, and such that day
Were by that sorcerer rais'd to cross our fortunes.
   AURELIUS. There is a law tells us that words want force
To make deeds void; examples must be shown
By instances alike, e're I believe it.
   OSTORIUS. 'Tis easily perform'd, believe me, sir:
Propose your own desires, and give but way
To what our magick here shall straight perform,
And then let his or our deserts be censur'd.
   AURELIUS. We could not wish a greater happiness
Then what this satisfaction brings with it.
Let him proceed, fair brother.
   OSTORIUS. He shall, sir.
Come, learned Proximus, this task be thine:
Let thy great charms confound the opinion
This Christian by his spells hath falsly won.
   PROXIMUS. Great king, propound your wishes, then:
What persons, of what state, what numbers, or how arm'd,
Please your own thoughts; they shall appear before you.
   AURELIUS. Strange art! What thinkst thou, reverent hermit?
   HERMIT. Let him go on, sir.
   AURELIUS. Wilt thou behold his cunning?
   HERMIT. Right gladly, sir; it will be my joy to tell,
That I was here to laugh at him and hell.
   AURELIUS. I like thy confidence.
   ARTESIA. His sawcy impudence! Proceed to th'trial.
   PROXIMUS. Speak your desires, my lord, and be it place't
In any angle underneath the moon,
The center of the earth, the sea, the air,
The region of the fire, nay, hell it self,
And I'le present it.
   AURELIUS. Wee'l have no sight so fearful, onely this:
If all thy art can reach it, show me here
The two great champions of the Trojan War,
Achilles and brave Hector, our great ancestor,
Both in their warlike habits, armor, shields,
And weapons then in use for fight.
   PROXIMUS. 'Tis done, my lord, command a halt and silence,
As each man will respect his life or danger.
Armel, Plesgeth!

Enter Spirits .

   SPIRITS. Quid vis?
   PROXIMUS. Attend me.
   AURELIUS. The apparition comes; on our displeasure,
Let all keep place and silence. [ Within drums beat marches .

Enter Proximus, bringing in Hector, attir'd and arm'd after the Trojan manner, with target, sword, and battel-ax, a trumpet before him, and a spirit in flame colours with a torch; at the other door Achilles with his spear and falchon, a trumpet, and a spirit in black before him; trumpets sound alarm, and they manage their weapons to begin the fight: and after some charges, the hermit steps between them, at which seeming amaz'd the spirits tremble. Thunder within .

   PROXIMUS. What means this stay, bright Armel, Plesgeth?
Why fear you and fall back?
Renew the alarms, and enforce the combat,
Or hell or darkness circles you for ever.
   ARMEL. We dare not.
   PROXIMUS. Ha!
   PLESGETH. Our charms are all dissolv'd: Armel, away!
'Tis worse then hell to us, whilest here we stay. [ Exit all .
   HERMIT. What! at a non-plus, sir? command them back, for shame.
   PROXIMUS. What power o're-aws my spells? Return, you hell-hounds!
Armel, Plesgeth, double damnation seize you!
By all the infernal powers, the prince of devils
Is in this hermits habit: what else could force
My spirits quake or tremble thus?
   HERMIT. Weak argument to hide your want of skill:
Does the devil fear the devil, or war with hell?
They have not been acquainted long, it seems.
Know, mis-believing pagan, even that power,
That overthrew your forces, still lets you see,
He onely can controul both hell and thee.
   PROXIMUS. Disgrace and mischief! Ile enforce new charms,
New spells, and spirits rais'd from the low abyss
Of hells unbottom'd depths.
   AURELIUS. We have enough, sir;
Give o're your charms, wee'l finde some other time
To praise your art. I dare not but acknowledge
That heavenly power my heart stands witness to:
Be not dismaid, my lords, at this disaster,
Nor thou, my fairest queen: we'l change the scene
To some more pleasing sports. Lead to your chamber.
How'ere in this thy pleasures finde a cross,
Our joy's too fixed here to suffer loss.
   TOCLIO. Which I shall adde to, sir, with news I bring:
The prince, your brother, lives.
   AURELIUS. Ha!
   TOCLIO. And comes to grace this high and heaven-knit marriage.
   AURELIUS. Why dost thou flatter me, to make me think
Such happiness attends me?

Enter Prince Uter and Oswold .

   TOCLIO. His presence speaks my truth, sir.
   DONOBERT. Force me, 'tis he: look, Gloster.
   GLOSTER. A blessing beyond hope, sir.
   AURELIUS. Ha! 'tis he: welcome, my second comfort.
Artesia, dearest love, it is my brother,
My princely brother, all my kingdoms hope:
Oh, give him welcome, as thou lov'st my health.
   ARTESIA. You have so free a welcome, sir, from me,
As this your presence has such power, I swear,
O're me, a stranger, that I must forget
My countrey, name, and friends, and count this place
My joy and birth-right.
   PRINCE. 'Tis she! 'tis she, I swear! oh, ye good gods, 'tis she!
That face within those woods where first I saw her,
Captived my senses, and thus many moneths
Bar'd me from all society of men.
How came she to this place,
Brother Aurelius? Speak that angels name,
Her heaven-blest name, oh, speak it quickly, sir.
   AURELIUS. It is Artesia, the royal Saxon princess.
   PRINCE. A woman, and no deity, no feigned shape,
To mock the reason of admiring sense,
On whom a hope as low as mine may live,
Love, and enjoy, dear brother, may it not?
   AURELIUS. She is all the good or vertue thou canst name,
My wife, my queen.
   PRINCE. Ha! your wife!
   ARTESIA. Which you shall finde, sir, if that time and fortune
May make my love but worthy of your tryal.
   PRINCE. Oh!
   AURELIUS. What troubles you, dear brother?
Why with so strange and fixt an eye dost thou
Behold my joys?
   ARTESIA. You are not well, sir.
   PRINCE. Yes, yes.--Oh, you immortal powers,
Why has poor man so many entrances
For sorrow to creep in at, when our sense
Is much too weak to hold his happiness?
Oh, say, I was born deaf: and let your silence
Confirm in me the knowing my defect;
At least be charitable to conceal my sin,
For hearing is no less in me, dear brother.
   AURELIUS. No more!
I see thou art a rival in the joys
Of my high bliss. Come, my Artesia;
The day's most prais'd when 'tis ecclipst by night,
Great good must have as great ill opposite.
   PRINCE. Stay, hear but a word; yet now I think on't,
This is your wedding-night, and were it mine,
I should be angry with least loss of time.
   ARTESIA. Envy speaks no such words, has no such looks.
   PRINCE. Sweet rest unto you both.
   AURELIUS. Lights to our nuptial chamber.
   ARTESIA. Could you speak so,
I would not fear how much my grief did grow.
   AURELIUS. Lights to our chamber; on, on, set on! [ Exeunt . Manet Prince .
   PRINCE. `Could you speak so,
I would not fear how much my griefs did grow.'
Those were her very words; sure, I am waking:
She wrung me by the hand, and spake them to me
With a most passionate affection.
Perhaps she loves, and now repents her choice,
In marriage with my brother. Oh, fond man,
How darest thou trust thy traitors thoughts, thus to
Betray thy self? 'twas but a waking dream
Wherein thou madest thy wishes speak, not her,
In which thy foolish hopes strives to prolong
A wretched being. So sickly children play
With health lov'd toys, which for a time delay,
But do not cure the fit. Be, then, a man,
Meet that destruction which thou canst not flie.
From not to live, make it thy best to die,
And call her now, whom thou didst hope to wed,
Thy brothers wife: thou art too nere a kin,
And such an act above all name's a sin
Not to be blotted out; heaven pardon me!
She's banisht from my bosom now for ever.
To lowest ebbes men justly hope a flood;
When vice grows barren, all desires are good.

Enter Waiting Gentlewoman with a jewel .

   GENTLEWOMAN. The noble prince, I take it, sir?
   PRINCE. You speak me what I should be, lady.
   GENTLEWOMAN. Know, by that name, sir, Queen Artesia greets you.
   PRINCE. Alas, good vertue, how is she mistaken!
   GENTLEWOMAN. Commending her affection in this jewel, sir.
   PRINCE. She binds my service to her: ha! a jewel; 'tis
A fair one, trust me, and methinks, it much
Resembles something I have seen with her.
   GENTLEWOMAN. It is an artificial crab, sir.
   PRINCE. A creature that goes backward.
   GENTLEWOMAN. True, from the way it looks.
   PRINCE. There is no moral in it alludes to her self?
   GENTLEWOMAN. 'Tis your construction gives you that, sir;
She's a woman.
   PRINCE. And, like this, may use her legs and eyes
Two several ways.
   GENTLEWOMAN. Just like the sea-crab,
Which on the mussel prayes, whilst he bills at a stone.
   PRINCE. Pretty in troth. Prithee, tell me, art thou honest?
   GENTLEWOMAN. I hope I seem no other, sir.
   PRINCE. And those that seem so are sometimes bad enough.
   GENTLEWOMAN. If they will accuse themselves for want of witness,
Let them, I am not so foolish.
   PRINCE. I see th'art wise.
Come, speak me truly: what is the greatest sin?
   GENTLEWOMAN. That which man never acted; what has been done
Is as the least, common to all as one.
   PRINCE. Dost think thy lady is of thy opinion?
   GENTLEWOMAN. She's a bad scholar else; I have brought her up,
And she dares owe me still.
   PRINCE. I, 'tis a fault in greatness, they dare owe
Many, e're they pay one. But darest thou
Expose thy scholar to my examining?
   GENTLEWOMAN. Yes, in good troth, sir, and pray put her to't too;
'Tis a hard lesson, if she answer it not.
   PRINCE. Thou know'st the hardest?
   GENTLEWOMAN. As far as a woman may, sir.
   PRINCE. I commend thy plainness.
When wilt thou bring me to thy lady?
   GENTLEWOMAN. Next opportunity I attend you, sir.
   PRINCE. Thanks, take this, and commend me to her.
   GENTLEWOMAN. Think of your sea-crab, sir, I pray. [ Exit .
   PRINCE. Oh, by any means, lady.--
What should all this tend to?
If it be love or lust that thus incites her,
The sin is horrid and incestuous;
If to betray my life, what hopes she by it?
Yes, it may be a practice 'twixt themselves,
To expel the Brittains and ensure the state
Through our destructions; all this may be
Valid, with a deeper reach in villany
Then all my thoughts can guess at;--however,
I will confer with her, and if I finde
Lust hath given life to envy in her minde,
I may prevent the danger: so men wise
By the same step by which they fell, may rise.
Vices are vertues, if so thought and seen,
And trees with foulest roots branch soonest green. [ Exit .

ACT III

SCENE I

Enter Clown and his sister .

   CLOWN. Come, sister, thou that art all fool, all mad-woman.
   JOAN. Prithee, have patience, we are now at court.
   CLOWN. At court! ha, ha, that proves thy madness: was there ever any woman in thy taking travel'd to court for a husband? 'Slid, 'tis enough for them to get children, and the city to keep 'em, and the countrey to finde nurses: every thing must be done in his due place, sister.
   JOAN. Be but content a while; for, sure, I know
This journey will be happy. Oh, dear brother,
This night my sweet friend came to comfort me;
I saw him and embrac't him in mine arms.
   CLOWN. Why did you not hold him, and call me to help you?
   JOAN. Alas, I thought I had been with him still,
But when I wak't--
   CLOWN. Ah! pox of all loger-heads, then you were but in a dream all this while, and we may still go look him. Well, since we are come to court, cast your cats eyes about you, and either finde him out you dreamt on, or some other, for Ile trouble my self no further.

Enter Donobert, Cador, Edwin & Toclio .

See, see, here comes more courtiers; look about you; come, pray, view 'em all well; the old man has none of the marks about him, the other have both swords and feathers: what thinkest thou of that tall yong gentleman?
   JOAN. He much resembles him; but, sure, my friend,
Brother, was not so high of stature.
   CLOWN. Oh, beast, wast thou got a childe with a short thing too?
   DONOBERT. Come, come, Ile hear no more on't: go, lord Edwin,
Tell her, this day her sister shall be married
To Cador, Earl of Cornwal; so shall she
To thee, brave Edwin, if she'l have my blessing.
   EDWIN. She is addicted to a single life,
She will not hear of marriage.
   DONOBERT. Tush, fear it not: go you from me to her,
Use your best skill, my lord, and if you fail,
I have a trick shall do it: haste, haste about it.
   EDWIN. Sir, I am gone;
My hope is in your help more then my own.
   DONOBERT. And worthy Toclio, to your care I must
Commend this business
For lights and musick, and what else is needful.
   TOCLIO. I shall, my lord.
   CLOWN. We would intreat a word, sir. Come forward, sister. [ Exeunt Donobert, Toclio, Cador .
   EDWIN. What lackst thou, fellow?
   CLOWN. I lack a father for a childe, sir.
   EDWIN. How! a God-father?
   CLOWN. No, sir, we mean the own father: it may be you, sir, for any thing we know; I think the childe is like you.
   EDWIN. Like me! prithee, where is it?
   CLOWN. Nay, 'tis not born yet, sir, 'tis forth coming, you see; the childe must have a father: what do you think of my sister?
   EDWIN. Why, I think if she ne're had husband, she's a whore, and thou a fool. Farewell. [ Exit .
   CLOWN. I thank you, sir. Well, pull up thy heart, sister; if there be any law i'th' court, this fellow shall father it, 'cause he uses me so scurvily. There's a great wedding towards, they say; we'l amongst them for a husband for thee.

Enter Sir Nicodemus with a letter .

If we miss there, Ile have another bout with him that abus'd me. See! look, there comes another hat and feather, this should be a close letcher, he's reading of a love-letter.
   SIR NICODEMUS. Earl Cador's marriage, and a masque to grace it.
So, so.
This night shall make me famous for presentments.--
How now, what are you?
   CLOWN. A couple of great Brittains you may see by our bellies, sir.
   SIR NICODEMUS. And what of this, sir?
   CLOWN. Why, thus the matter stands, sir: there's one of your courtiers hunting nags has made a gap through another mans inclosure. Now, sir, here's the question, who should be at charge of a fur-bush to stop it?
   SIR NICODEMUS. Ha, ha, this is out of my element: the law must end it.
   CLOWN. Your worship says well; for, surely, I think some lawyer had a hand in the business, we have such a troublesom issue.
   SIR NICODEMUS. But what's thy business with me now?
   CLOWN. Nay, sir, the business is done already, you may see by my sisters belly.
   SIR NICODEMUS. Oh, now I finde thee: this gentlewoman, it seems, has been humbled.
   CLOWN. As low as the ground would give her leave, sir, and your worship knows this: though there be many fathers without children, yet to have a childe without a father were most unnatural.
   SIR NICODEMUS. That's true, ifaith, I never heard of a childe yet that e're begot his father.
   CLOWN. Why, true, you say wisely, sir.
   SIR NICODEMUS. And therefore I conclude, that he that got the childe is without all question the father of it.
   CLOWN. I, now you come to the matter, sir; and our suit is to your worship for the discovery of this father.
   SIR NICODEMUS. Why, lives he in the court here?
   JOAN. Yes, sir, and I desire but marriage.
   SIR NICODEMUS. And does the knave refuse it? Come, come, be merry, wench; he shall marry thee, and keep the childe too, if my knighthood can do any thing. I am bound by mine orders to help distressed ladies, and can there be a greater injury to a woman with childe, then to lack a father for't? I am asham'd of your simpleness: Come, come, give me a courtiers fee for my pains, and Ile be thy advocate my self, and justice shall be found; nay, Ile sue the law for it; but give me my fee first.
   CLOWN. If all the money I have i'th' world will do it, you shall have it, sir.
   SIR NICODEMUS. An angel does it.
   CLOWN. Nay, there's two, for your better eye sight, sir.
   SIR NICODEMUS. Why, well said! Give me thy hand, wench, Ile teach thee a trick for all this, shall get a father for thy childe presently, and this it is, mark now: You meet a man, as you meet me now, thou claimest marriage of me, and layest the childe to my charge; I deny it: push, that's nothing, hold thy claim fast, thy words carries it, and no law can withstand it.
   CLOWN. Ist possible?
   SIR NICODEMUS. Past all opposition; her own word carries it: let her challenge any man, the childe shall call him father; there's a trick for your money now.
   CLOWN. Troth, sir, we thank you, we'l make use of your trick, and go no further to seek the childe a father, for we challenge you, sir: sister, lay it to him, he shall marry thee, I shall have a worshipful old man to my brother.
   SIR NICODEMUS. Ha, ha, I like thy pleasantness.
   JOAN. Nay, indeed, sir, I do challenge you.
   CLOWN. You think we jest, sir?
   SIR NICODEMUS. I, by my troth, do I. I like thy wit, yfaith: thou shalt live at court with me; didst never here of Nicodemus Nothing? I am the man.
   CLOWN. Nothing? 'slid, we are out agen: thou wast never got with childe with nothing, sure.
   JOAN. I know not what to say.
   SIR NICODEMUS. Never grieve, wench, show me the man, and process shall fly out.
   CLOWN. 'Tis enough for us to finde the children, we look that you should finde the father, and therefore either do us justice, or we'l stand to our first challenge.
   SIR NICODEMUS. Would you have justice without an adversary? Unless you can show me the man, I can do you no good in it.
   CLOWN. Why, then I hope you'l do us no harm, sir; you'l restore my money.
   SIR NICODEMUS. What, my fee? marry, law forbid it!
Finde out the party, and you shall have justice,
Your fault clos'd up, and all shall be amended,
The childe, his father, and the law defended. [ Exit .
   CLOWN. Well, he has deserv'd his fee, indeed, for he has brought our suit to a quick end, I promise you, and yet the childe has never a father; nor we have no more mony to seek after him. A shame of all lecherous placcats! now you look like a cat had newly kitten'd; what will you do now, tro? Follow me no further, lest I beat your brains out.
   JOAN. Impose upon me any punishment, rather then leave me now.
   CLOWN. Well, I think I am bewitcht with thee; I cannot finde in my heart to forsake her. There was never sister would have abus'd a poor brother as thou hast done; I am even pin'd away with fretting, there's nothing but flesh and bones about me. Well, and I had my money agen, it were some comfort. Hark, sister, [ thunder ] does it not thunder?
   JOAN. Oh yes, most fearfully: what shall we do, brother?
   CLOWN. Marry, e'ene get some shelter, e're the storm catch us: away, let's away, I prithee.

Enter the Devil in mans habit, richly attir'd, his feet and his head horrid .

   JOAN. Ha, 'tis he! Stay, brother, dear brother, stay.
   CLOWN. What's the matter now?
   JOAN. My love, my friend is come; yonder he goes.
   CLOWN. Where, where? show me where; I'le stop him, if the devil be not in him.
   JOAN. Look there, look yonder!
Oh, dear friend, pity my distress,
For heaven and goodness, do but speak to me.
   DEVIL. She calls me, and yet drives me headlong from her.
Poor mortal, thou and I are much uneven,
Thou must not speak of goodness nor of heaven,
If I confer with thee; but be of comfort:
Whilst men do breath, and Brittains name be known,
The fatal fruit thou bear'st within thy womb
Shall here be famous till the day of doom.
   CLOWN. 'Slid, who's that talks so? I can see no body.
   JOAN. Then art thou blind or mad. See where he goes,
And beckons me to come; oh, lead me forth,
I'le follow thee in spight of fear or death. [ Exit .
   CLOWN. Oh brave! she'l run to the devil for a husband; she's stark mad, sure, and talks to a shaddow, for I could see no substance: well, I'le after her; the childe was got by chance, and the father must be found at all adventure. [ Exit .

SCENE II

Enter Hermit, Modestia, and Edwin.

   MODESTIA. Oh, reverent sir, by you my heart hath reacht
At the large hopes of holy piety,
And for this I craved your company,
Here in your sight religiously to vow
My chaste thoughts up to heaven, and make you now
The witness of my faith.
   HERMIT. Angels assist thy hopes.
   EDWIN. What meanes my love? thou art my promis'd wife.
   MODESTIA. To part with willingly what friends and life
Can make no good assurance of.
   EDWIN. Oh, finde remorse, fair soul, to love and merit,
And yet recant thy vow.
   MODESTIA. Never:
This world and I are parted now for ever.
   HERMIT. To finde the way to bliss, oh, happy woman,
Th'ast learn'd the hardest lesson well, I see.
Now show thy fortitude and constancy:
Let these thy friends thy sad departure weep,
Thou shalt but loose the wealth thou could'st not keep.
My contemplation calls me, I must leave ye.
   EDWIN. O, reverent sir, perswade not her to leave me.
   HERMIT. My lord, I do not, nor to cease to love ye;
I onely pray her faith may fixed stand;
Marriage was blest, I know, with heavens own hand. [ Exit .
   EDWIN. You hear him, lady, 'tis not a virgins state,
But sanctity of life, must make you happy.
   MODESTIA. Good sir, you say you love me; gentle Edwin,
Even by that love I do beseech you, leave me.
   EDWIN. Think of your fathers tears, your weeping friends,
Whom cruel grief makes pale and bloodless for you.
   MODESTIA. Would I were dead to all.
   EDWIN. Why do you weep?
   MODESTIA. Oh, who would live to see
How men with care and cost seek misery?
   EDWIN. Why do you seek it then? What joy, what pleasure
Can give you comfort in a single life?
   MODESTIA. The contemplation of a happy death,
Which is to me so pleasing that I think
No torture could divert me: What's this world,
Wherein you'd have me walk, but a sad passage
To a dread judgement-seat, from whence even now
We are but bail'd, upon our good abearing,
Till that great sessions come, when Death, the cryer,
Will surely summon us and all to appear,
To plead us guilty or our bail to clear?
What musick's this? [ Soft musick .

Enter two Bishops, Donobert, Gloster, Cador, Constancia, Oswold, Toclio .

   EDWIN. Oh, now resolve, and think upon my love!
This sounds the marriage of your beauteous sister,
Vertuous Constancia, with the noble Cador.
Look, and behold this pleasure.
   MODESTIA. Cover me with night,
It is a vanity not worth the sight.
   DONOBERT. See, see, she's yonder.
Pass on, son Cador, daughter Constancia,
I beseech you all, unless she first move speech,
Salute her not.--Edwin, what good success?
   EDWIN. Nothing as yet, unless this object take her.
   DONOBERT. See, see, her eye is fixt upon her sister;
Seem careless all, and take no notice of her:--
On afore there; come, my Constancia.
   MODESTIA. Not speak to me, nor dain to cast an eye,
To look on my despised poverty?
I must be more charitable;--pray, stay, lady,
Are not you she whom I did once call sister?
   CONSTANCIA. I did acknowledge such a name to one,
Whilst she was worthy of it, in whose folly,
Since you neglect your fame and friends together,
In you I drown'd a sisters name for ever.
   MODESTIA. Your looks did speak no less.
   GLOSTER. It now begins to work, this sight has moved her.
   DONOBERT. I knew this trick would take, or nothing.
   MODESTIA. Though you disdain in me a sisters name,
Yet charity, me thinks, should be so strong
To instruct e're you reject. I am a wretch.
Even follies instance, who perhaps have er'd,
Not having known the goodness bears so high
And fair a show in you; which being exprest,
I may recant this low despised life,
And please those friends whom I mov'd to grief.
   CADOR. She is coming, yfaith; be merry, Edwin.
   CONSTANCIA. Since you desire instruction, you shall have it.
What ist should make you thus desire to live
Vow'd to a single life?
   MODESTIA. Because I know I cannot flie from death.
Oh, my good sister, I beseech you, hear me:
This world is but a masque, catching weak eyes
With what is not our selves but our disguise,
A vizard that falls off, the dance being done,
And leaves Deaths glass for all to look upon;
Our best happiness here lasts but a night,
Whose burning tapers makes false ware seem right.
Who knows not this, and will not now provide
Some better shift before his shame be spy'd,
And knowing this vain world at last will leave him,
Shake off these robes that help but to deceive him?
   CONSTANCIA. Her words are powerful, I am amaz'd to hear her!
   DONOBERT. Her soul's inchanted with infected spells.
Leave her, best girl; for now in thee
Ile seek the fruits of age, posterity.--
Out o' my sight! sure, I was half asleep
Or drunk, when I begot thee.
   CONSTANCIA. Good sir, forbear. What say you to that, sister?
The joy of children, a blest mothers name!
Oh, who without much grief can loose such fame?
   MODESTIA. Who can enjoy it without sorrow rather?
And that most certain where the joy's unsure,
Seeing the fruit that we beget endure
So many miseries, that oft we pray
The heavens to shut up their afflicted day;
At best we do but bring forth heirs to die,
And fill the coffins of our enemy.
   CONSTANCIA. Oh, my soul!
   DONOBERT. Hear her no more, Constancia,
She's sure bewitcht with error; leave her, girl.
   CONSTANCIA. Then must I leave all goodness, sir: away,
Stand off, I say.
   DONOBERT. How's this?
   CONSTANCIA. I have no father, friend, no husband now;
All are but borrowed robes, in which we masque
To waste and spend the time, when all our life
Is but one good betwixt two ague-days,
Which from the first e're we have time to praise,
A second fever takes us: Oh, my best sister,
My souls eternal friend, forgive the rashness
Of my distemper'd tongue; for how could she,
Knew not her self, know thy felicity,
From which worlds cannot now remove me?
   DONOBERT. Art thou mad too, fond woman? what's thy meaning?
   CONSTANCIA. To seek eternal happiness in heaven,
Which all this world affords not.
   CADOR. Think of thy vow, thou art my promis'd wife.
   CONSTANCIA. Pray, trouble me no further.
   OMNES. Strange alteration!
   CADOR. Why do you stand at gaze, you sacred priests?
You holy men, be equal to the gods,
And consummate my marriage with this woman.
   BISHOP. Her self gives barr, my lord, to your desires
And our performance; 'tis against the law
And orders of the Church to force a marriage.
   CADOR. How am I wrong'd! Was this your trick, my lord?
   DONOBERT. I am abus'd past sufferance;
Grief and amazement strive which sense of mine
Shall loose her being first. Yet let me call thee daughter.
   CADOR. Me, wife.
   CONSTANCIA. Your words are air, you speak of want to wealth,
And wish her sickness, newly rais'd to health.
   DONOBERT. Bewitched girls, tempt not an old mans fury,
That hath no strength to uphold his feeble age,
But what your sights give life to: oh, beware,
And do not make me curse you.
   [ Kneel .] MODESTIA. Dear father,
Here at your feet we kneel, grant us but this,
That, in your sight and hearing, the good hermit
May plead our cause; which, if it shall not give
Such satisfaction as your age desires,
We will submit to you.
   CONSTANCIA. You gave us life;
Save not our bodies, but our souls, from death.
   DONOBERT. This gives some comfort yet: Rise with my blessings.--
Have patience, noble Cador, worthy Edwin;
Send for the hermit that we may confer.
For, sure, religion tyes you not to leave
Your careful father thus; if so it be,
Take you content, and give all grief to me. [ Exeunt .

SCENE III

Thunder and lightning; enter Devil .

   DEVIL. Mix light and darkness; earth and heaven dissolve,
Be of one piece agen, and turn to Chaos;
Break all your works, you powers, and spoil the world,
Or, if you will maintain earth still, give way
And life to this abortive birth now coming,
Whose fame shall add unto your oracles.
Lucina Hecate, dreadful Queen of Night,
Bright Proserpine, be pleas'd for Ceres love,
From Stigian darkness summon up the Fates,
And in a moment bring them quickly hither,
Lest death do vent her birth and her together. [ Thunder .
Assist, you spirits of infernal deeps,
Squint ey'd Erictho, midnight incubus,
Rise, rise to aid this birth prodigious.

Enter Lucina and the three Fates .

Thanks, Hecate; hail, sister to the gods!
There lies your way, haste with the Fates, and help,
Give quick dispatch unto her laboring throws,
To bring this mixture of infernal seed
To humane being; [ Exit Fates .
And to beguil her pains, till back you come,
Anticks shall dance and musick fill the room.-- [ Dance .
   DEVIL. Thanks, Queen of Shades.
   LUCINA. Farewel, great servant to th'infernal king.
In honor of this childe, the Fates shall bring
All their assisting powers of knowledge, arts,
Learning, wisdom, all the hidden parts
Of all-admiring prophecy, to fore-see
The event of times to come: his art shall stand
A wall of brass to guard the Brittain land.
Even from this minute, all his arts appears
Manlike in judgement, person, state, and years.
Upon his brest the Fates have fixt his name,
And since his birth place was this forrest here,
They now have nam'd him Merlin Silvester.
   DEVIL. And Merlins name in Brittany shall live,
Whilst men inhabit here or Fates can give
Power to amazing wonder; envy shall weep,
And mischief sit and shake her ebbone wings,
Whilst all the world of Merlins magick sings. [ Exit .

SCENE IV

Enter Clown .

   CLOWN. Well, I wonder how my poor sister does, after all this thundering; I think she's dead, for I can hear no tidings of her. Those woods yields small comfort for her; I could meet nothing but a swinherds wife, keeping hogs by the forestside, but neither she nor none of her sowes would stir a foot to help us; indeed, I think she durst not trust her self amongst the trees with me, for I must needs confess I offer'd some kindness to her. Well, I would fain know what's become of my sister: if she have brought me a yong cousin, his face may be a picture to finde his father by. So oh! sister Joan, Joan Go-too't, where art thou?
   [ Within .] JOAN. Here, here, brother, stay but a while, I come to thee.
   CLOWN. O brave! she's alive still, I know her voice; she speaks, and speaks cherfully, methinks. How now, what moon-calf has she got with her?

Enter Joan and Merlin with a book .

   JOAN. Come, my dear Merlin, why dost thou fix thine eye
So deeply on that book?
   MERLIN. To sound the depth
Of arts, of learning, wisdom, knowledge.
   JOAN. Oh, my dear, dear son,
Those studies fits thee when thou art a man.
   MERLIN. Why, mother, I can be but half a man at best,
And that is your mortality; the rest
In me is spirit; 'tis not meat, nor time,
That gives this growth and bigness; no, my years
Shall be more strange then yet my birth appears.
Look, mother, there's my uncle.
   JOAN. How doest thou know him, son? thou never saw'st him.
   MERLIN. Yet I know him, and know the pains he has taken for ye, to finde out my father.--Give me your hand, good uncle.
   CLOWN. Ha, ha, I'de laugh at that, yfaith. Do you know me, sir?
   MERLIN. Yes, by the same token that even now you kist the swinherds-wife i'th' woods, and would have done more, if she would have let you, uncle.
   CLOWN. A witch, a witch, a witch, sister: rid him out of your company, he is either a witch or a conjurer; he could never have known this else.
   JOAN. Pray, love him, brother, he is my son.
   CLOWN. Ha, ha, this is worse then all the rest, yfaith; by his beard he is more like your husband. Let me see, is your great belly gone?
   JOAN. Yes, and this the happy fruit.
   CLOWN. What, this hartichoke? A childe born with a beard on his face?
   MERLIN. Yes, and strong legs to go, and teeth to eat.
   CLOWN. You can nurse up your self, then? There's some charges sav'd for soap and caudle. 'Slid, I have heard of some that has been born with teeth, but never none with such a talking tongue before.
   JOAN. Come, come, you must use him kindly, brother;
Did you but know his worth, you would make much of him.
   CLOWN. Make much of a moncky? This is worse then Tom Thumb, that let a fart in his mothers belly; a childe to speak, eat, and go the first hour of his birth; nay, such a baby as had need of a barber before he was born too; why, sister, this is monstrous, and shames all our kindred.
   JOAN. That thus 'gainst nature and our common births
He comes thus furnisht to salute the world,
Is power of Fates, and gift of his great father.
   CLOWN. Why, of what profession is your father, sir?
   MERLIN. He keeps a hot-house i'th' Low Countries; will you see him, sir?
   CLOWN. See him? why, sister, has the childe found his father?
   MERLIN. Yes, and Ile fetch him, uncle. [ Exit .
   CLOWN. Do not uncle me, till I know your kindred: for my conscience, some baboon begot thee.--Surely, thou art horribly deceived, sister, this urchin cannot be of thy breeding; I shall be asham'd to call him cousin, though his father be a gentleman.

Enter Merlin and Devil .

   MERLIN. Now, my kinde uncle, see: the childe has found his father, this is he.
   CLOWN. The devil it is; ha, ha, is this your sweet-heart, sister? have we run through the countrey, haunted the city, and examin'd the court to finde out a gallant with a hat and feather, and a silken sword, and golden hangers, and do you now bring me to a ragamuffin with a face like a frying-pan?
   JOAN. Fie, brother, you mistake, behold him better.
   CLOWN. How's this? do you juggle with me, or are mine eyes matches? Hat and feather, sword, and hangers, and all! this is a gallant indeed, sister; this has all the marks of him we look for.
   DEVIL. And you have found him now, sir:
Give me your hand, I now must call you brother.
   CLOWN. Not till you have married my sister, for all this while she's but your whore, sir.
   DEVIL. Thou art too plain, Ile satisfie that wrong
To her, and thee, and all, with liberal hand:
Come, why art thou fearful?
   CLOWN. Nay, I am not afraid, and you were the devil, sir.
   DEVIL. Thou needst not; keep with thy sister still,
And Ile supply your wants, you shall lack nothing
That gold and wealth can purchase.
   CLOWN. Thank you, brother: we have gone many a weary step to finde you; you may be a husband for a lady, for you are far fetcht and dear bought, I assure you. Pray, how should I call your son, my cousin here?
   DEVIL. His name is Merlin.
   CLOWN. Merlin? Your hand, cousin Merlin; for your fathers sake I accept you to my kindred: if you grow in all things as your beard does, you will be talkt on. By your mothers side, cousin, you come of the Go-too'ts, Suffolk bred, but our standing house is at Hocklye i'th' Hole, and Layton-buzzard. For your father, no doubt you may from him claim titles of worship, but I cannot describe it; I think his ancestors came first from Hell-bree in Wales, cousin.
   DEVIL. No matter whence we do derive our name:
All Brittany shall ring of Merlin's fame,
And wonder at his acts. Go hence to Wales,
There live a while; there Vortiger the king
Builds castles and strong holds, which cannot stand,
Unless supported by yong Merlins hand.
There shall thy fame begin: wars are a breeding;
The Saxons practise treason, yet unseen,
Which shortly shall break out.--Fair love, farewel;
Dear son and brother, here must I leave you all,
Yet still I will be near at Merlins call. [ Exit .
   MERLIN. Will you go, uncle?
   CLOWN. Yes, Ile follow you, cousin.-- Well, I do most horribly begin to suspect my kindred; this brother in law of mine is the devil, sure, and though he hide his horns with his hat and feather, I spi'd his cloven foot for all his cunning. [ Exit .

SCENE V

Enter Ostorius, Octa, and Proximus .

   OSTORIUS. Come, come, time calls our close complots to action.
Go, Proximus, with winged speed flie hence,
Hye thee to Wales: salute great Vortiger
With these our letters; bid the king to arms,
tell him we have new friends, more forces landed
In Norfolk and Northumberland; bid him
Make haste to meet us; if he keep his word,
Wee'l part the realm between us.
   OCTA. Bend all thine art to quit that late disgrace
The Christian hermit gave thee; make thy revenge
Both sure and home.
   PROXIMUS. That thought, sir, spurs me on,
Till I have wrought their swift destruction. [ Exit .
   OSTORIUS. Go, then, and prosper. Octa, be vigilant:
Speak, are the forts possest? the guards made sure?
Revolve, I pray, on how large consequence
The bare event and sequel of our hopes
Joyntly consists, that have embark't our lives
Upon the hazzard of the least miscarriage.
   OCTA. All's sure: the queen your sister hath contrived
The cunning plot so sure, as at an instant
The brothers shall be both surpriz'd and taken.
   OSTORIUS. And both shall die; yet one a while must live,
Till we by him have gather'd strength and power
To meet bold Edol, their stern general,
That now, contrary to the kings command,
Hath re-united all his cashier'd troops,
And this way beats his drums to threaten us.
   OCTA. Then our plot's discover'd.
   OSTORIUS. Come, th'art a fool, his army and his life
Is given unto us: where is the queen my sister?
   OCTA. In conference with the prince.
   OSTORIUS. Bring the guards nearer, all is fair and good;
Their conference, I hope, shall end in blood. [ Exeunt .

SCENE VI

Enter Prince and Artesia .

   ARTESIA. Come, come, you do but flatter;
What you term love is but a dream of blood,
Wakes with enjoying, and with open eyes
Forgot, contemn'd, and lost.
   PRINCE. I must be wary, her words are dangerous.--
True, we'l speak of love no more, then.
   ARTESIA. Nay, if you will, you may;
'Tis but in jest, and yet so children play
With fiery flames, and covet what is bright,
But, feeling his effects, abhor the light.
Pleasure is like a building, the more high,
The narrower still it grows; cedars do dye
Soonest at top.
   PRINCE. How does your instance suit?
   ARTESIA. From art and nature to make sure the root,
And lay a fast foundation, e're I try
The incertain changes of a wavering skie.
Make your example thus.--You have a kiss,--
Was it not pleasing?
   PRINCE. Above all name to express it.
   ARTESIA. Yet now the pleasure's gone,
And you have lost your joys possession.
   PRINCE. Yet when you please, this flood may ebb again.
   ARTESIA. But where it never ebbs, there runs the main.
   PRINCE. Who can attain such hopes?
   ARTESIA. Ile show the way to it, give you
A taste once more of what you may enjoy. [ Kiss .
   PRINCE. Impudent whore!--
I were more false than atheism can be,
Should I not call this high felicity.
   ARTESIA. If I should trust your faith, alas, I fear,
You soon would change belief.
   PRINCE. I would covet martyrdom to make't confirm'd.
   ARTESIA. Give me your hand on that you'l keep your word?
   PRINCE. I will.
   ARTESIA. Enough: Help, husband, king Aurelius, help!
Rescue betraid Artesia!
   PRINCE. Nay, then 'tis I that am betraid, I see;
Yet with thy blood Ile end thy treachery.
   ARTESIA. How now! what troubles you? Is this you, sir,
That but even now would suffer martyrdom
To win your hopes, and is there now such terror
In names of men to fright you? nay, then I see
What mettle you are made on.
   PRINCE. Ha! was it but tryal? then I ask your pardon:
What a dull slave was I to be so fearful!--
Ile trust her now no more, yet try the utmost.--
I am resolved, no brother, no man breathing,
Were he my bloods begetter, should withhold
Me from your love; I'd leap into his bosom,
And from his brest pull forth that happiness
Heaven had reserved in you for my enjoying.
   ARTESIA. I, now you speak a lover like a prince!--
Treason, treason!
   PRINCE. Agen?
   ARTESIA. Help, Saxon princes: treason!

Enter Ostorius, Octa, etc .

   OSTORIUS. Rescue the queen: strike down the villain.

Enter Edol, Aurelius, Donobert, Cador, Edwin, Toclio, Oswold, at the other door .

   EDOL. Call in the guards: the prince in danger!
Fall back, dear sir, my brest shall buckler you.
   AURELIUS. Beat down their weapons!
   EDOL. Slave, wert thou made of brass, my sword shall bite thee.
   AURELIUS. Withdraw, on pain of death: where is the traitor?
   ARTESIA. Oh, save your life, my lord; let it suffice,
My beauty forc't mine own captivity.
   AURELIUS. Who did attempt to wrong thee?
   PRINCE. Hear me, sir.
   AURELIUS. Oh, my sad soul! was't thou?
   ARTESIA. Oh, do not stand to speak; one minutes stay
Prevents a second speech for ever.
   AURELIUS. Make our guards strong:
My dear Artesia, let us know thy wrongs
And our own dangers.
   ARTESIA. The prince your brother, with these Brittain lords,
Have all agreed to take me hence by force
And marry me to him.
   PRINCE. The devil shall wed thee first:
Thy baseness and thy lust confound and rot thee!
   ARTESIA. He courted me even now, and in mine ear
Sham'd not to plead his most dishonest love,
And their attempts to seize your sacred person,
Either to shut you up within some prison,
Or, which is worse, I fear, to murther you.
   OMNES BRITTAINS. 'Tis all as false as hell.
   EDOL. And as foul as she is.
   ARTESIA. You know me, sir?
   EDOL. Yes, deadly sin, we know you,
And shall discover all your villany.
   AURELIUS. Chester, forbear!
   OSTORIUS. Their treasons, sir, are plain:
Why are their souldiers lodg'd so near the court?
   OCTA. Nay, why came he in arms so suddenly?
   EDOL. You fleering anticks, do not wake my fury.
   OCTA. Fury!
   EDOL. Ratsbane, do not urge me.
   ARTESIA. Good sir, keep farther from them.
   PRINCE. Oh, my sick heart!
She is a witch by nature, devil by art.
   AURELIUS. Bite thine own slanderous tongue; 'tis thou art false.
I have observ'd your passions long ere this.
   OSTORIUS. Stand on your guard, my lord, we are your friends,
And all our force is yours.
   EDOL. To spoil and rob the kingdom.
   AURELIUS. Sir, be silent.
   EDOL. Silent! how long? till Doomsday? shall I stand by,
And hear mine honor blasted with foul treason,
The state half lost, and your life endanger'd,
Yet be silent?
   ARTESIA. Yes, my blunt lord, unless you speak your treasons.
Sir, let your guards, as traitors, seize them all,
And then let tortures and devulsive racks
Force a confession from them.
   EDOL. Wilde-fire and brimstone eat thee! Hear me, sir.
   AURELIUS. Sir, Ile not hear you.
   EDOL. But you shall. Not hear me!
Were the worlds monarch, Cesar, living, he
Should hear me.
I tell you, sir, these serpents have betraid
Your life and kingdom: does not every day
Bring tidings of more swarms of lowsie slaves,
The offal fugitives of barren Germany,
That land upon our coasts, and by our neglect
Settle in Norfolk and Northumberland?
   OSTORIUS. They come as aids and safeguards to the king.
   OCTA. Has he not need, when Vortiger's in arms,
And you raise powers, 'tis thought, to joyn with him?
   EDOL. Peace, you pernicious rat.
   DONOBERT. Prithee, forbear.
   EDOL. Away! suffer a gilded rascal,
A low-bred despicable creeper, an insulting toad,
To spit his poison'd venome in my face!
   OCTA. Sir, sir!
   EDOL. Do not reply, you cur; for, by the gods,
Tho' the kings presence guard thee, I shall break all patience,
And, like a lion rous'd to spoil, shall run
Foul-mouth'd upon thee, and devour thee quick.--
Speak, sir: will you forsake these scorpions,
Or stay till they have stung you to the heart?
   AURELIUS. Y'are traitors all. This is our wife, our queen:
Brother Ostorius, troop your Saxons up,
We'l hence to Winchester, raise more powers,
To man with strength the Castle Camilot.--
Go hence, false men, joyn you with Vortiger,
The murderer of our brother Constantine:
We'l hunt both him and you with dreadful vengance.
Since Brittain fails, we'l trust to forrain friends,
And guard our person from your traitorous ends. [ Exeunt Aurelius, Ostorius, Octa, Artesia, Toclio, Oswald .
   EDWIN. He's sure bewitcht.
   GLOSTER. What counsel now for safety?
   DONOBERT. Onely this, sir: with all the speed we can,
Preserve the person of the king and kingdom.
   CADOR. Which to effect, 'tis best march hence to Wales,
And set on Vortiger before he joyn
His forces with the Saxons.
   EDWIN. On, then, with speed for Wales and Vortiger!
That tempest once o'reblown, we come, Ostorius,
To meet thy traiterous Saxons, thee and them,
That with advantage thus have won the king,
To back your factions and to work our ruines.
This, by the gods and my good sword, I'le set
In bloody lines upon thy burgonet. [ Exeunt .

ACT IV

SCENE I

Enter Clown, Merlin, and a little antick Spirit .

   MERLIN. How now, uncle? why do you search your pockets so? Do you miss any thing?
   CLOWN. Ha! Cousin Merlin, I hope your beard does not overgrow your honesty; I pray, remember, you are made up of sisters thread; I am your mothers brother, whosoever was your father.
   MERLIN. Why, wherein can you task my duty, uncle?
   CLOWN. Your self or your page it must be, I have kept no other company, since your mother bound your head to my protectorship; I do feel a fault of one side; either it was that sparrowhawk, or a cast of Merlins, for I finde a covy of cardecu's sprung out of my pocket.
   MERLIN. Why, do you want any money, uncle? Sirrah, had you any from him?
   CLOWN. Deny it not, for my pockets are witness against you.
   SPIRIT. Yes, I had, to teach you better wit to look to it.
   CLOWN. Pray, use your fingers better, and my wit may serve as it is, sir.
   MERLIN. Well, restore it.
   SPIRIT. There it is.
   CLOWN. I, there's some honesty in this; 'twas a token from your invisible father, cousin, which I would not have to go invisibly from me agen.
   MERLIN. Well, you are sure you have it now, uncle?
   CLOWN. Yes, and mean to keep it now from your pages filching fingers too.
   SPIRIT. If you have it so sure, pray show it me agen.
   CLOWN. Yes, my little juggler, I dare show it. Ha, cleanly conveyance agen! ye have no invisible fingers, have ye? 'Tis gone, certainly.
   SPIRIT. Why, sir, I toucht you not.
   MERLIN. Why, look you, uncle, I have it now: how ill do you look to it! here, keep it safer.
   CLOWN. Ha, ha, this is fine, yfaith. I must keep some other company, if you have these slights of hand.
   MERLIN. Come, come, uncle, 'tis all my art, which shall not offend you, sir, onely I give you a taste of it to show you sport.
   CLOWN. Oh, but 'tis ill jesting with a mans pocket, tho'. But I am glad to see you cunning, cousin, for now will I warrant thee a living till thou diest. You have heard the news in Wales here?
   MERLIN. Uncle, let me prevent your care and counsel,
'Twill give you better knowledge of my cunning.
You would prefer me now, in hope of gain,
To Vortiger, King of the Welch Brittains,
To whom are all the artists summon'd now,
That seeks the secrets of futurity:
The bards, the druids, wizards, conjurers,
Not an auraspex with his whisling spells,
No capnomanster with his musty fumes,
No witch or juggler, but is thither sent,
To calculate the strange and fear'd event
Of his prodigious castle, now in building,
Where all the labors of the painful day
Are ruin'd still i'th' night, and to this place
You would have me go.
   CLOWN. Well, if thy mother were not my sister, I would say she was a witch that begot thee; but this is thy father, not thy mother wit. Thou hast taken my tale into thy mouth, and spake my thoughts before me; therefore away, shuffle thy self amongst the conjurers, and be a made man before thou comest to age.
   MERLIN. Nay, but stay, uncle, you overslip my dangers:
The prophecies and all the cunning wizards
Have certifi'd the king that this his castle
Can never stand, till the foundation's laid
With mortar temper'd with the fatal blood
Of such a childe whose father was no mortal.
   CLOWN. What's this to thee? If the devil were thy father, was not thy mother born at Carmarden? Diggon for that, then; and then it must be a childes blood, and who will take thee for a childe with such a beard of thy face? Is there not diggon for that too, cousin?
   MERLIN. I must not go: lend me your ear a while,
I'le give you reasons to the contrary.

Enter two Gentlemen .

   1 GENTLEMAN. Sure, this is an endless piece of work the king has sent us about!
   2 GENTLEMAN. Kings may do it, man; the like has been done to finde out the unicorn.
   1 GENTLEMAN. Which will be sooner found, I think, then this fiend begotten childe we seek for.
   2 GENTLEMAN. Pox of those conjurers that would speak of such a one, and yet all their cunning could not tell us where to finde him.
   1 GENTLEMAN. In Wales they say assuredly he lives; come, let's enquire further.
   MERLIN. Uncle, your perswasions must not prevail with me: I know mine enemies better then you do.
   CLOWN. I say, th'art a bastard then, if thou disobey thine uncle: was not Joan Go-too't, thy mother, my sister? If the devil were thy father, what kin art thou to any man alive but bailys and brokers? and they are but brothers in law to thee neither.
   1 GENTLEMAN. How's this? I think we shall speed here.
   2 GENTLEMAN. I, and unlook't for too: go ne're and listen to them.
   CLOWN. Hast thou a beard to hide it? wil't thou show thy self a childe? wil't thou have more hair then wit? Wil't thou deny thy mother, because no body knows thy father? Or shall thine uncle be an ass?
   1 GENTLEMAN. Bless ye, friend: pray, what call you this small gentlemans name?
   CLOWN. Small, sir? a small man may be a great gentleman; his father may be of an ancient house, for ought we know, sir.
   2 GENTLEMAN. Why? do you not know his father?
   CLOWN. No, nor you neither, I think, unless the devil be in ye.
   1 GENTLEMAN. What is his name, sir?
   CLOWN. His name is my cousin, sir, his education is my sisters son, but his maners are his own.
   MERLIN. Why ask ye, gentlemen? my name is Merlin.
   CLOWN. Yes, and a goshawk was his father, for ought we know; for I am sure his mother was a wind-sucker.
   2 GENTLEMAN. He has a mother, then?
   CLOWN. As sure as I have a sister, sir.
   1 GENTLEMAN. But his father you leave doubtful.
   CLOWN. Well, sir, as wise men as you doubt whether he had a father or no?
   1 GENTLEMAN. Sure, this is he we seek for.
   2 GENTLEMAN. I think no less: and, sir, we let you know
The king hath sent for you.
   CLOWN. The more childe he; and he had bin rul'd by me,
He should have gone before he was sent for.
   1 GENTLEMAN. May we not see his mother?
   CLOWN. Yes, and feel her too, if you anger her; a devilish thing, I can tell ye, she has been. Ile go fetch her to ye. [ Exit .
   2 GENTLEMAN. Sir, it were fit you did resolve for speed,
You must unto the king.
   MERLIN. My service, sir,
Shall need no strict command, it shall obey
Most peaceably; but needless 'tis to fetch
What is brought home: my journey may be staid,
The king is coming hither
With the same quest you bore before him; hark,
This drum will tell ye. [ Within drums beat a low march .
   1 GENTLEMAN. This is some cunning indeed, sir.

Florish . Enter Vortiger, reading a letter, Proximus, with drum and Soldiers, etc .

   VORTIGER. Still in our eye your message, Proximus,
We keep to spur our speed:
Ostorius and Octa we shall salute
With succor against Prince Uter and Aurelius,
Whom now we hear incamps at Winchester.
There's nothing interrupts our way so much
As doth the erection of this fatal castle,
That spite of all our art and daily labor,
The night still ruines.
   PROXIMUS. As erst I did affirm, still I maintain,
The fiend begotten childe must be found out,
Whose blood gives strength to the foundation;
It cannot stand else.

Enter Clown and Joan, Merlin .

   VORTIGER. Ha! Is't so?
Then, Proximus, by this intelligence
He should be found: speak, is this he you tell of?
   CLOWN. Yes, sir, and I his uncle, and she his mother.
   VORTIGER. And who is his father?
   CLOWN. Why, she, his mother, can best tell you that, and yet I think the childe be wise enough, for he has found his father.
   VORTIGER. Woman, is this thy son?
   JOAN. It is, my lord.
   VORTIGER. What was his father? Or where lives he?
   MERLIN. Mother, speak freely and unastonisht;
That which you dar'd to act, dread not to name.
   JOAN. In which I shall betray my sin and shame.
But since it must be so, then know, great king,
All that my self yet knows of him is this:
In pride of blood and beauty I did live,
My glass the altar was, my face the idol;
Such was my peevish love unto my self,
That I did hate all other; such disdain
Was in my scornful eye that I suppos'd
No mortal creature worthy to enjoy me.
Thus with the peacock I beheld my train,
But never saw the blackness of my feet;
Oft have I chid the winds for breathing on me,
And curst the sun, fearing to blast my beauty.
In midst of this most leaprous disease,
A seeming fair yong man appear'd unto me,
In all things suiting my aspiring pride,
And with him brought along a conquering power,
To which my frailty yielded; from whose embraces
This issue came; what more he is, I know not.
   VORTIGER. Some incubus or spirit of the night
Begot him then, for, sure, no mortal did it.
   MERLIN. No matter who, my lord; leave further quest,
Since 'tis as hurtful as unnecessary
More to enquire: go to the cause, my lord,
Why you have sought me thus?
   VORTIGER. I doubt not but thou knowst; yet, to be plain,
I sought thee for thy blood.
   MERLIN. By whose direction?
   PROXIMUS. By mine;
My art infalable instructed me,
Upon thy blood must the foundation rise
Of the kings building; it cannot stand else.
   MERLIN. Hast thou such leisure to enquire my fate,
And let thine own hang careless over thee?
Knowst thou what pendelous mischief roofs thy head,
How fatal, and how sudden?
   PROXIMUS. Pish!
Bearded abortive, thou foretel my danger!
My lord, He trifles to delay his own.
   MERLIN. No, I yield my self: and here before the king
Make good thine augury, as I shall mine.
If thy fate fall not, thou hast spoke all truth,
And let my blood satisfie the kings desires:
If thou thy self wilt write thine epitaph,
Dispatch it quickly, there's not a minutes time
'Twixt thee and thy death.
   PROXIMUS. Ha, ha, ha! [ A stone falls and kills Proximus .
   MERLIN. I, so thou mayest die laughing.
   VORTIGER. Ha! This is above admiration: look, is he dead?
   CLOWN. Yes, sir, here's brains to make morter on, if you'l use them. Cousin Merlin, there's no more of this stone fruit ready to fall, is there? I pray, give your uncle a little fair warning.
   MERLIN. Remove that shape of death. And now, my lord,
For clear satisfaction of your doubts,
Merlin will show the fatal cause that keeps
Your castle down and hinders your proceedings.
Stand there, and by an apparition see
The labor and end of all your destiny.
Mother and uncle, you must be absent.
   CLOWN. Is your father coming, cousin?
   MERLIN. Nay, you must be gone.
   JOAN. Come, you'l offend him, brother.
   CLOWN. I would fain see my brother i'law; if you were married, I might lawfully call him so.
Merlin strikes his wand . Thunder and lightning; two dragons appear, a white and a red; they fight a while, and pause .
   VORTIGER. What means this stay?
   MERLIN. Be not amaz'd, my lord, for on the victory,
Of loss or gain, as these two champions ends,
Your fate, your life, and kingdom all depends;
Therefore observe it well.
   VORTIGER. I shall: heaven be auspicious to us.
Thunder: the two dragons fight agen, and the white dragon drives off the red .
   VORTIGER. The conquest is on the white dragons part.
Now, Merlin, faithfully expound the meaning.
   MERLIN. Your grace must then not be offended with me.
   VORTIGER. It is the weakest part I found in thee,
To doubt of me so slightly. Shall I blame
My prophet that foretells me of my dangers?
Thy cunning I approve most excellent.
   MERLIN. Then know, my lord, there is a dampish cave,
The nightly habitation of these dragons,
Vaulted beneath where you would build your castle,
Whose enmity and nightly combats there
Maintain a constant ruine of your labors.
To make it more plain, the dragons, then,
Your self betoken and the Saxon king;
The vanquisht red is, sir, your dreadful emblem.
   VORTIGER. Oh, my fate!
   MERLIN. Nay, you must hear with patience, royal sir.
You slew the lawful king Constantius:
'Twas a red deed, your crown his blood did cement.
The English Saxon, first brought in by you
For aid against Constantius brethren,
Is the white horror who now, knit together,
Have driven and shut you up in these wilde mountains;
And though they now seek to unite with friendship,
It is to wound your bosom, not embrace it,
And with an utter extirpation
To rout the Brittains out, and plant the English.
Seek for your safety, sir, and spend no time
To build the airy castles; for Prince Uter,
Armed with vengeance for his brothers blood,
Is hard upon you. If you mistrust me,
And to my words crave witness, sir, then know,
Here comes a messenger to tell you so. [ Exit Merlin .

Enter Messenger .

   MESSENGER. My lord! Prince Uter!
   VORTIGER. And who else, sir?
   MESSENGER. Edol, the great general.
   VORTIGER. The great devil! they are coming to meet us?
   MESSENGER. With a full power, my lord.
   VORTIGER. With a full vengeance,
They mean to meet us; so! we are ready
To their confront. At full march, double footing,
We'l loose no ground, nor shall their numbers fright us:
If it be fate, it cannot be withstood;
We got our crown so, be it lost in blood. [ Exeunt .

SCENE II

Enter Prince Uter, Edol, Cador, Edwin, Toclio, with drum and Soldiers .

   PRINCE. Stay, and advice; hold, drum!
   EDOL. Beat, slave! why do you pause?
Why make a stand? where are our enemies?
Or do you mean we fight amongst our selves?
   PRINCE. Nay, noble Edol,
Let us here take counsel, it cannot hurt,
It is the surest garison to safety.
   EDOL. Fie on such slow delays! so fearful men,
That are to pass over a flowing river,
Stand on the bank to parly of the danger,
Till the tide rise, and then be swallowed.
Is not the king in field?
   CADOR. Proud Vortiger, the trator, is in field.
   EDWIN. The murderer and usurper.
   EDOL. Let him be the devil, so I may fight with him.
For heavens love, sir, march on! Oh, my patience!
Will you delay, untill the Saxons come
To aid his party? [ A tucket .
   PRINCE. There's no such fear: prithee, be calm a while.
Hark! it seems by this, he comes or sends to us.
   EDOL. If it be for parly, I will drown the summons,
If all our drums and hoarseness choke me not.

      Enter Captain .

   PRINCE. Nay, prithee, hear.--From whence art thou?
   CAPTAIN. From the King Vortiger.
   EDOL. Traitor, there's none such: alarum, drum; strike, slave,
Or, by mine honor, I will break thy head,
And beat thy drums heads both about thine ears.
   PRINCE. Hold, noble Edol,
Let's hear what articles he can inforce.
   EDOL. What articles or what conditions
Can you expect to value half your wrong,
Unless he kill himself by thousand tortures,
And send his carcase to appease your vengeance
For the foul murder of Constantius,
And that's not a tenth part neither.
   PRINCE. 'Tis true,
My brothers blood is crying to me now;
I do applaud thy counsel: hence, be gone!-- [ Exit Captain .
We'l hear no parly now but by our swords.
   EDOL. And those shall speak home in death killing words:
Alarum to the fight; sound, sound the alarum. [ Exeunt .

SCENE III

Alarum . Enter Edol, driving all Vortigers force before him, then Exit . Enter Prince Uter pursuing Vortiger .

   VORTIGER. Dost follow me?
   PRINCE. Yes, to thy death I will.
   VORTIGER. Stay, be advis'd;
I would not be the onely fall of princes,
I slew thy brother.
   PRINCE. Thou didst, black traitor,
And in that vengeance I pursue thee.
   VORTIGER. Take mercy for thy self, and flie my sword,
Save thine own life as satisfaction,
Which here I give thee for thy brothers death.
   PRINCE. Give what's thine own: a traitors heart and head,
That's all thou art right lord of. The kingdom
Which thou usurp'st, thou most unhappy tyrant,
Is leaving thee; the Saxons which thou broughtst
To back thy usurpations, are grown great,
And where they seat themselves, do hourly seek
To blot the records of old Brute and Brittains
From memory of men, calling themselves
Hingest-men, and Hingest-land, that no more
The Brittain name be known: all this by thee,
Thou base destroyer of thy native countrey.

Enter Edol .

   EDOL. What, stand you talking? [ Fight .
   PRINCE. Hold, Edol.
   EDOL. Hold out, my sword,
And listen not to king or princes word;
There's work enough abroad, this task is mine. [ Alarum .
   PRINCE. Prosper thy valour, as thy vertues shine. [ Exeunt .

SCENE IV

Enter Cador and Edwin .

   CADOR. Bright victory her self fights on our part,
And, buckled in a golden beaver, rides
Triumphantly before us.
   EDWIN. Justice is with her,
Who ever takes the true and rightful cause.
Let us not lag behinde them.

Enter Prince .

   CADOR. Here comes the prince. How goes our fortunes, sir?
   PRINCE. Hopeful and fair, brave Cador.
Proud Vortiger, beat down by Edols sword,
Was rescu'd by the following multitudes,
And now for safety's fled unto a castle
Here standing on the hill: but I have sent
A cry of hounds as violent as hunger,
To break his stony walls; or, if they fail,
We'l send in wilde fire to dislodge him thence,
Or burn them all with flaming violence. [ Exeunt .

SCENE V

Blazing star appears .

Florish tromp . Enter Prince Uter, Edol, Cador, Edwin, Toclio, with drum and Soldiers .

   PRINCE. Look, Edol:
Still this fiery exalation shoots
His frightful horrors on th'amazed world;
See, in the beam that's 'bout his flaming ring,
A dragons head appears, from our whose mouth
Two flaming flakes of fire stretch east and west.
   EDOL. And see, from forth the body of the star
Seven smaller blazing streams directly point
On this affrighted kingdom.
   CADOR. 'Tis a dreadful meteor.
   EDWIN. And doth portend strange fears.
   PRINCE. This is no crown of peace; this angry fire
Hath something more to burn then Vortiger;
If it alone were pointed at his fall,
It would pull in his blasing piramids
And be appeas'd, for Vortiger is dead.
   EDOL. These never come without their large effects.
   PRINCE. The will of heaven be done! our sorrow's this,
We want a mistick Pithon to expound
This fiery oracle.
   CADOR. Oh no, my lord,
You have the best that ever Brittain bred;
And durst I prophecy of your prophet, sir,
None like him shall succeed him.
   PRINCE. You mean Merlin?
   CADOR. True, sir, wonderous Merlin;
He met us in the way, and did foretell
The fortunes of this day successful to us.
   EDWIN. He's sure about the camp; send for him, sir.
   CADOR. He told the bloody Vortiger his fate,
And truely too, and if I could give faith
To any wizards skill, it should be Merlin.

Enter Merlin and Clown .

   CADOR. And see, my lord, as if to satisfie
Your highness pleasure, Merlin is come.
   PRINCE. See,
The comet's in his eye, disturb him not.
   EDOL. With what a piercing judgement he beholds it!
   MERLIN. Whither will heaven and fate translate this kingdom?
What revolutions, rise and fall of nations
Is figur'd yonder in that star, that sings
The change of Brittians state and death of kings?
Ha! He's dead already; how swiftly mischief creeps!
Thy fatal end, sweet prince, even Merlin weeps.
   PRINCE. He does foresee some evil, his action shows it,
For, e're he does expound, he weeps the story.
   EDOL. There's another weeps too. Sirrah, dost thou understand what thou lamentst for?
   CLOWN. No, sir, I am his uncle, and weep because my cousin weeps; flesh and blood cannot forbear.
   PRINCE. Gentle Merlin, speak thy prophetick knowledge
In explanation of this fiery horror,
From which we gather from thy mounful tears
Much sorrow and disaster in it.
   MERLIN. 'Tis true,
Fair prince, but you must hear the rest with patience.
   PRINCE. I vow I will, tho' it portend my ruine.
   MERLIN. There's no such fear.
This brought the fiery fall of Vortiger,
And yet not him alone: this day is faln
A king more good, the glory of our land,
The milde and gentle, sweet Aurelius.
   PRINCE. Our brother!
   EDWIN. Forefend it heaven!
   MERLIN. He at his palace royal, sir,
At Winchester, this day is dead and poison'd.
   CADOR. By whom? Or what means, Merlin?
   MERLIN. By the traiterous Saxons.
   EDOL. I ever fear'd as much: that devil Ostorius
And the damn'd witch Artesia, sure, has done it.
   PRINCE. Poison'd! oh, look further, gentle Merlin,
Behold the star agen, and do but finde
Revenge for me, though it cost thousand lives,
And mine the foremost.
   MERLIN. Comfort your self, the heavens have given it fully:
All the portentious ills to you is told.
Now hear a happy story, sir, from me
To you and to your fair posterity.
   CLOWN. Me thinks, I see something like a peel'd onion; it makes me weep agen.
   MERLIN. Be silent, uncle, you'l be forc't else.
   CLOWN. Can you not finde in the star, cousin, whether I can hold my tongue or no?
   EDOL. Yes, I must cut it out.
   CLOWN. Phu, you speak without book, sir, my cousin Merlin knows.
   MERLIN. True, I must tie it up. Now speak your pleasure, uncle.
   CLOWN. Hum, hum, hum, hum.
   MERLIN. So, so.--
Now observe, my lord, and there behold,
Above yon flame-hair'd beam that upward shoots,
Appears a dragons head, out of whose mouth
Two streaming lights point their flame-feather'd darts
Contrary ways, yet both shall have their aims:
Again behold, from the ignifirent body
Seven splendant and illustrious rays are spred,
All speaking heralds to this Brittain isle,
And thus they are expounded: The dragons head
Is the herogliphick that figures out
Your princely self, that here must reign a king;
Those by-form'd fires that from the dragons mouth
Shoot east and west, emblem two royal babes,
Which shall proceed from you, a son and daughter.
Her pointed constellation, northwest bending,
Crowns her a queen in Ireland, of whom first springs
That kingdoms title to the Brittain kings.
   CLOWN. Hum, hum, hum.
   MERLIN. But of your son thus fate and Merlin tells:
All after times shall fill their chronicles
With fame of his renown, whose warlike sword
Shall pass through fertile France and Germany;
Nor shall his conquering foot be forc't to stand,
Till Romes imperial wreath hath crown'd his fame
With monarch of the west, from whose seven hills,
With conquest and contributory kings,
He back returns to inlarge the Brittain bounds,
His heraldry adorn'd with thirteen crowns.
   CLOWN. Hum, hum, hum.
   MERLIN. He to the world shall add another Worthy,
And, as a loadstone, for his prowess draw
A train of marshal lovers to his court:
It shall be then the best of knight-hoods honor,
At Winchester to fill his castle hall,
And at his royal table sit and feast
In warlike orders, all their arms round hurl'd,
As if they meant to circumscribe the world. [ He touches the Clowns mouth with his wand .
   CLOWN. Hum, hum, hum: oh, that I could speak a little!
   MERLIN. I know your mind, uncle; agen be silent. [ Strikes agen .
   PRINCE. Thou speakst of wonders, Merlin; prithee, go on,
Declare at full this constellation.
   MERLIN. Those seven beams pointing downward, sir, betoken
The troubles of this land, which then shall meet
With other fate: war and dissension strives
To make division, till seven kings agree
To draw this kingdom to a hepterchy.
   PRINCE. Thine art hath made such proof that we believe
Thy words authentical: be ever neer us,
My prophet and the guide of all my actions.
   MERLIN. My service shall be faithful to your person,
And all my studies for my countries safety.
   CLOWN. Hum, hum, hum.
   MERLIN. Come, you are releast, sir.
   CLOWN. Cousin, pray, help me to my tongue agen; you do not mean I shall be dumb still, I hope?
   MERLIN. Why, hast thou not thy tongue?
   CLOWN. Ha! yes, I feel it now, I was so long dumb, I could not well tell whether I spake or no.
   PRINCE. Is't thy advice we presently pursue
The bloody Saxons, that have slain my brother?
   MERLIN. With your best speed, my lord;
Prosperity will keep you company.
   CADOR. Take, then, your title with you, royal prince,
'Twill adde unto our strength: long live King Uter!
   EDOL. Put the addition to't that heaven hath given you:
The dragon is your emblem, bear it bravely,
And so live long and ever happy, styl'd
Uter-Pendragon, lawful king of Brittain.
   PRINCE. Thanks, Edol, we imbrace the name and title,
And in our sheild and standard shall the figure
Of a red dragon still be born before us,
To fright the bloody Saxons. Oh, my Aurelius,
Sweet rest thy soul; let thy disturbed spirit
Expect revenge; think what it would, it hath:
The dragon's coming in his fiery wrath. [ Exeunt .

ACT V

SCENE I

Thunder, then musick .

Enter Joan fearfully, the Devil following her .

   JOAN. Hence, thou black horror! is thy lustful fire
Kindled agen? Not thy loud throated thunder
Nor thy adulterate infernal musick
Shall e're bewitch me more: oh, too too much
Is past already.
   DEVIL. Why dost thou fly me?
I come a lover to thee, to imbrace
And gently twine thy body in mine arms.
   JOAN. Out, thou hell-hound!
   DEVIL. What hound so e're I be,
Fawning and sporting as I would with thee,
Why should I not be stroakt and plaid withal?
Will't thou not thank the lion might devour thee,
If he shall let thee pass?
   JOAN. Yes, thou art he;
Free me, and Ile thank thee.
   DEVIL. Why, whither wouldst?
I am at home with thee, thou art mine own,
Have we not charge of family together?
Where is your son?
   JOAN. Oh, darkness cover me!
   DEVIL. There is a pride which thou hast won by me,
The mother of a fame, shall never die.
Kings shall have need of written chronicles
To keep their names alive, but Merlin none;
Ages to ages shall like sabalists
Report the wonders of his name and glory,
While there are tongues and times to tell his story.
   JOAN. Oh, rot my memory before my flesh,
Let him be called some hell or earth-bred monster,
That ne're had hapless woman for a mother!
Sweet death, deliver me! Hence from my sight:
Why shouldst thou now appear? I had no pride
Nor lustful thought about me, to conjure
And call thee to my ruine, when as at first
Thy cursed person became visible.
   DEVIL. I am the same I was.
   JOAN. But I am chang'd.
   DEVIL. Agen Ile change thee to the same thou wert,
To quench my lust.--Come forth, by thunder led,
My coajutors in the spoils of mortals. [ Thunder .

Enter Spirit .

Claspe in your ebon arms that prize of mine,
Mount her as high as palled Hecate;
And on this rock Ile stand to cast up fumes
And darkness o're the blew fac'd firmament:
From Brittain and from Merlin Ile remove her.
They ne're shall meet agen.
   JOAN. Help me some saving hand,
If not too late, I cry: let mercy come!

Enter Merlin .

   MERLIN. Stay, you black slaves of night, let loose your hold,
Set her down safe, or by th'infernal Stix,
Ile binde you up with exorcisms so strong,
That all the black pentagoron of hell
Shall ne're release you. Save your selves and vanish! [ Exit Spirit .
   DEVIL. Ha! What's he?
   MERLIN. The childe has found his father. Do you not know me?
   DEVIL. Merlin!
   JOAN. Oh, help me, gentle son.
   MERLIN. Fear not, they shall not hurt you.
   DEVIL. Relievest thou her to disobey thy father?
   MERLIN. Obedience is no lesson in your school;
Nature and kind to her commands my duty;
The part that you begot was against kinde,
So all I ow to you is to be unkind.
   DEVIL. Ile blast thee, slave, to death, and on this rock
Stick thee an eternal monument.
   MERLIN. Ha, ha, thy powers too weak; what art thou, Devil,
But an inferior lustful incubus,
Taking advantage of the wanton flesh,
Wherewith thou dost beguile the ignorant?
Put off the form of thy humanity,
And cral upon thy speckled belly, serpent,
Or Ile unclasp the jaws of Achoron,
And fix thee ever in the local fire.
   DEVIL. Traitor to hell! curse that I e're begot thee!
   MERLIN. Thou didst beget thy scourge: storm not, nor stir;
The power of Merlins art is all confirm'd
In the Fates decretals. Ile ransack hell,
And make thy masters bow unto my spells.
Thou first shall taste it.-- [ Thunder and lightning in the rock .
Tenibrarum princeps, devitiarum & infirorum deus, hunc incubum in ignis eterni abisum accipite, aut in hoc carcere tenebroso in sempeternum astringere mando.
    [ The rock incloses him .
So! there beget earthquakes or some noisom damps,
For never shalt thou touch a woman more.--
How chear you, mother?
   JOAN. Oh, now my son is my deliverer,
Yet I must name him with my deepest sorrow. [ Alarum afar off .
   MERLIN. Take comfort now: past times are ne're recal'd;
I did foresee your mischief, and prevent it.
Hark, how the sounds of war now call me hence
To aid Pendragon that in battail stands
Against the Saxons, from whose aid
Merlin must not be absent. Leave this soyl,
And Ile conduct you to a place retir'd,
Which I by art have rais'd, call'd Merlins Bower.
There shall you dwell with solitary sighs,
With grones and passions your companions,
To weep away this flesh you have offended with,
And leave all bare unto your aierial soul:
And when you die, I will erect a monument
Upon the verdant plains of Salisbury,
No king shall have so high a sepulchre,
With pendulous stones that I wil hang by art,
Where neither lime nor morter shalbe us'd,
A dark enigma to the memory,
For none shall have the power to number them,--
A place that I will hollow for your rest,
Where no night-hag shall walk, nor ware-wolf tread,
Where Merlins mother shall be sepulcher'd. [ Exeunt .

SCENE II

Enter Donobert, Gloster, and Hermit .

   DONOBERT. Sincerely, Gloster, I have told you all:
My daughters are both vow'd to single life,
And this day gone unto the nunnery,
Though I begot them to another end,
And fairly promis'd them in marriage,
One to Earl Cador, t'other to your son,
My worthy friend, the Earl of Gloster.
Those lost, I am lost: they are lost, all's lost.
Answer me this, then: Ist a sin to marry?
   HERMIT. Oh no, my lord.
   DONOBERT. Go to, then, Ile go no further with you;
I perswade you to no ill; perswade you, then,
That I perswade you well.
   GLOSTER. 'Twill be a good office in you, sir.

Enter Cador and Edwin .

   DONOBERT. Which since they thus neglect,
My memory shall lose them now for ever.--
See, see, the noble lords, their promis'd husbands!
Had fate so pleas'd, you might have call'd me father.
   EDWIN. Those hopes are past, my lord; for even this minute
We saw them both enter the monastery,
Secluded from the world and men for ever.
   CADOR. 'Tis both our griefs we cannot, sir:
But from the king take you the times joy from us:
The Saxon king Ostorius slain and Octa fled,
That woman-fury, Queen Artesia,
Is fast in hold, and forc't to re-deliver
London and Winchester (which she had fortifi'd)
To princely Uter, lately styl'd Pendragon,
Who now triumphantly is marching hither
To be invested with the Brittain crown.
   DONOBERT. The joy of this shall banish from my breast
All thought that I was father to two children,
Two stubborn daughters, that have left me thus.
Let my old arms embrace, and call you sons,
For, by the honor of my fathers house,
I'le part my estate most equally betwixt you.
   EDWIN, CADOR. Sir, y'are most noble!

Florish . Trompet . Enter Edol with drum and colours, Oswold bearing the standard, Toclio the sheild, with the red dragon pictur'd in'em, two Bishops with the crown, Prince Uter, Merlin, Artesia bound, Guard, and Clown .

   PRINCE. Set up our sheild and standard, noble soldiers.
We have firm hope that, tho' our dragon sleep,
Merlin will us and our fair kingdom keep.
   CLOWN. As his uncle lives, I warrant you.
   GLOSTER. Happy restorer of the Brittains fame,
Uprising sun, let us salute thy glory:
Ride in a day perpetual about us,
And no night be in thy thrones zodiack.
Why do we stay to binde those princely browes
With this imperial honor?
   PRINCE. Stay, noble Gloster:
That monster first must be expel'd our eye,
Or we shall take no joy in it.
   DONOBERT. If that be hindrance, give her quick judgement,
And send her hence to death; she has long deserv'd it.
   EDOL. Let my sentence stand for all: take her hence,
And stake her carcase in the burning sun,
Till it be parcht and dry, and then fley off
Her wicked skin, and stuff the pelt with straw
To be shown up and down at fairs and markets:
Two pence a piece to see so foul a monster
Will be a fair monopoly, and worth the begging.
   ARTESIA. Ha, ha, ha!
   EDOL. Dost laugh, Erictho?
   ARTESIA. Yes, at thy poor invention.
Is there no better torture-monger?
   DONOBERT. Burn her to dust.
   ARTESIA. That's a phoenix death, and glorious.
   EDOL. I, that's to good for her.
   PRINCE. Alive she shall be buried, circled in a wall.
Thou murdress of a king, there starve to death.
   ARTESIA. Then Ile starve death when he comes for his prey,
And i'th' mean time Ile live upon your curses.
   EDOL. I, 'tis diet good enough; away with her.
   ARTESIA. With joy, my best of wishes is before;
Thy brother's poison'd, but I wanted more. [ Exit .
   PRINCE. Why does our prophet Merlin stand apart,
Sadly observing these our ceremonies,
And not applaud our joys with thy hid knowledge?
Let thy divining art now satisfie
Some part of my desires; for well I know,
'Tis in thy power to show the full event,
That shall both end our reign and chronicle.
Speak, learned Merlin, and resolve my fears,
Whether by war we shal expel the Saxons,
Or govern what we hold with beauteous peace
In Wales and Brittain?
   MERLIN. Long happiness attend Pendragons reign!
What heaven decrees, fate hath no power to alter:
The Saxons, sir, will keep the ground they have,
And by supplying numbers still increase,
Till Brittain be no more. So please your grace,
I will in visible apparitions
Present you prophecies which shall concern
Succeeding princes which my art shall raise,
Till men shall call these times the latter days.
   PRINCE. Do it, my Merlin,
And crown me with much joy and wonder.

Merlin strikes . Hoeboys . Enter a king in armour, his sheild quarter'd with thirteen crowns . At the other door enter divers princes who present their crowns to him at his feet, and do him homage; then enters Death and strikes him; he, growing sick, crowns Constantine . Exeunt .

   MERLIN. This king, my lord, presents your royal son,
Who in his prime of years shall be so fortunate,
That thirteen several princes shall present
Their several crowns unto him, and all kings else
Shall so admire his fame and victories,
That they shall all be glad,
Either through fear or love, to do him homage;
But death (who neither favors the weak nor valliant)
In the middest of all his glories soon shall seize him,
Scarcely permitting him to appoint one
In all his purchased kingdoms to succeed him.
   PRINCE. Thanks to our prophet
For this so wish'd for satisfaction;
And hereby now we learn that always fate
Must be observ'd, what ever that decree:
All future times shall still record this story,
Of Merlin's learned worth and Arthur's glory. [ Exeunt Omnes .

FINIS.

---

---

THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN

by

SIR WALTER SCOTT

Introduction.
                              I.
Come Lucy! while 'tis morning hour
         The woodland brook we needs must pass;
So, ere the sun assume his power,
We shelter in our poplar bower,
Where dew lies long upon the flower,
         Though vanish'd from the velvet grass.
Curbing the stream, this stony ridge
May serve us for a silvan bridge;
         For here, compell'd to disunite,
               Round petty isles the runnels glide,
And chafing off their puny spite,
The shallows murmurers waste their might,
         Yielding to footstep free and light
               A dry-shod pass from side to side.

                              II.
Nay, why this hesitating pause?
And, Lucy, as thy step withdraws,
Why sidelong eye the streamlet's brim?
         Titania's foot without a slip,
Like, thine, though timid, light, and slim,
         From stone to stone might safely trip,
         Nor risk the glow-worm clasp to dip
That binds her slipper's silken rim.
Or trust thy lover's strength; nor fear
         That this same stalwart arm of mine,
Which could yon oak's prone trunk uprear,
Shall shrink beneath, the burden dear
         Of form so slender, light, and fine;
So! now, the danger dared at last,
Look back, and smile at perils past!

                              III.
And now we reach the favourite glade,
         Paled in copsewood, cliff, and stone,
Where never harsher sounds invade,
         To break affection's whispering tone,
Than the deep breeze that waves the shade,
         Than the small brooklet's feeble moan.
Come! rest thee on thy wonted seat;
         Moss'd is the stone, the turf is green,
A place where lovers best may meet
         Who would not that their love be seen.
The boughs, that dim the summer sky,
Shall hide us from each lurking spy,
         That fain would spread the invidious tale,
How Lucy of the lofty eye,
Noble in birth, in fortunes high,
She for whom lords and barons sigh,
         Meets her poor Arthur in the dale.

                              IV.
How deep that blush! -- how deep that sigh!
And why does Lucy shun mine eye?
Is it because that crimson draws
Its colour from some secret cause,
Some hidden movement of the breast
She would not that her Arthur guess'd?
O! quicker far is lovers' ken
Than the dull glance of common men,
And, by strange sympathy, can spell
The thoughts the loved one will not tell!
And mine, in Lucy's blush, saw met
The hues of pleasure and regret;
         Pride mingled in the sigh her voice,
               And shared with Love the crimson glow;
         Well pleased that thou art Arthur's choice,
               Yet shamed thine own is placed so low:
         Thou turn'st thy self-confessing cheek,
               As if to meet the breeze's cooling:
         Then, Lucy, hear thy tutor speak,
               For Love, too, has his hours of schooling.

                              V.
Too oft my anxious eye has spied
That secret grief thou fain wouldst hide,
The passing pang of humbled pride;
         Too oft, when through the splendid hall,
               The load-star of each heart and eye,
         My fair one leads the glittering ball,
         Will her stol'n glance on Arthur fall,
               With such a blush and such a sigh!
         Thou wouldst not yield, for wealth or rank,
               The heart thy worth and beauty won,
         Nor leave me on this mossy bank,
               To meet a rival on a throne:
         Why, then, should vain repinings rise,
         That to thy lover fate denies
         A nobler name, a wide domain,
         A Baron's birth, a menial train,
         Since Heaven assign'd him, for his part,
         A lyre, a falchion, and a heart?

                              VI.
My sword -- its master must be dumb;
         But, when a soldier names my name,
Approach, my Lucy! fearless come,
         Nor dread to hear of Arthur's shame.
My heart! 'mid all yon courtly crew
         Of lordly rank and lofty line,
Is there to love and honour true,
         That boasts a pulse so warm as mine?
They praised thy diamonds' lustre rare --
         Match'd with thine eyes, I thought it faded;
They praised the pearls that bound thy hair--
         I saw only the locks they braided;
They talk'd of wealthy dower and land,
         And titles of high birth the token --
I thought of Lucy's heart and hand,
         Nor knew the sense of what was spoken.
And yet, if rank'd in Fortune's roll,
         I might have learn'd their choice unwise,
Who rate the dower above the soul,
         And Lucy's diamonds o'er her eyes.

                              VII.
My lyre -- it is an idle toy,
         That borrows accents not its own,
Like warbler of Colombian sky,
         That sings in a mimic tone.
Ne'er did it sound o'er sainted well,
Nor boasts it aught of Border spell;
It strings no feudal slogan pour,
Its heroes draw no broad claymore;
No shouting clans applauses raise,
Because it sung their father's praise;
On Scottish moor, or English down,
It ne'er was graced with fair renown;
Norwon -- best meed to minstrel true --
One favouring smile from fair BUCCLEUCH!
By one poor streamlet sounds its tone,
And heard by one dear maid alone.

                              VIII.
But, if thou bid'st, these tones shall tell
Of errant knight, and damozelle;
Of a dread knot a Wizard tied,
In punishment of maiden's pride,
In notes of marvel and of fear,
That best may charm romantic ear.
For Lucy loves (like COLLINS, ill-starred name,
Whose lay's requital was that tardy fame,
Who bound no laurel round his living head,
Should hang it o'er his monument when dead)
For Lucy loves to tread enchanted strand,
And thread, like him, the maze of fairy land;
Of golden battlements to view the gleam,
And slumber soft by some Elysian stream;
Such lays she loves; and, such my Lucy's choice,
What other song can claim her Poet's voice?

Canto First.
                              I.
Where is the maiden of mortal strain
That may match with the Baron of Triermain?
She must be lovely, and constant, and kind,
Holy and pure, and humble of mind,
Blithe of cheer, and gentle of mood,
Courteous, and generous, and noble of blood,
Lovely as the sun's first ray
When it breaks the clouds of an April day;
Constant and true as the widow'd dove,
Kind as a minstrel that sings of love;
Pure as the fountain in rocky cave,
Where never sunbeam kiss'd the wave;
Humble as a maiden that loves in vain,
Holy as a hermit's vesper strain;
Gentle as a breeze that but whispers and dies,
Yet blithe as the light leaves that dance in its sighs;
Courteous as monarch the morn he is crown'd,
Generous as spring-dews that bless the glad ground;
Noble her blood as the currents that met
In the veins of the noblest Plantangenet:
Such must her form be, her mood and her strain,
That shall match with Sir Roland of Triermain.

                              II.
Sir Roland de Vaux he hath laid him to sleep,
His blood it was fever'd, his breathing was deep.
He had been pricking against the Scot,
The foray was long, and the skirmish hot;
His dinted helm and his buckler's plight
Bore token of a stubborn fight.
         All in the castle must hold them still,
Harpers must lull him to his rest
With the slow soft tunes he loves the best,
Till sleep sink down upon his breast
         Like the dew on a summer hill.

                              III.
It was the dawn of an autumn day;
The sun was struggling with a frost-fog grey,
That like a silvery crape was spread
Round Skiddaw's dim and distant head,
And faintly gleam'd each painted pane
Of the lordly halls of Triermain,
               When that Baron bold awoke.
Starting he woke, and loudly did call,
Rousing his menials in bower and hall,
               While hastily he spoke.

                              IV.
'Hearken, my minstrels! which of ye all
Touch'd his harp with that dying fall,
               So sweet, so soft, so faint,
It seem'd an angel's whisper'd call
               To an expiring saint?
And harken, my merry men! what time or where
               Did she pass, that maid with her heavenly brow,
With her look so sweet and her eyes so fair,
And her graceful step and her angel air,
And the eagle plume in her dark-brown hair,
               That pass'd from my bower e'en now?'

                              V.
Answer'd him Richard de Bretville -- he
Was chief of the Baron's minstrelsy:
'Silent, noble chieftain, we
               Have sat since midnight close,
When such lulling sounds as the brooklet sings
Murmur'd from our melting strings
         And hush'd you to repose.
         Had a harp-note sounded here
         It had caught my watchful ear,
Although it fell as faint and shy
As bashful maiden's half-form'd sigh,
         When she thinks her lover near.'
Answer'd Philip of Fasthwaite tall --
He kept guard in the outer hall:
'Since at eve our watch took post,
Not a foot has thy portal cross'd;
         Else had I heard the steps, though low
And light they fell, as when the earth receives,
In morn of frost, the wither'd leaves
         That drop when no winds blow.'

                              VI.
'Then come thou hither, Henry, my page,
Whom I saved from the sack of Hermitage,
When that dark castle, tower, and spire,
Rose to the skies a pile of fire.
         And redden'd all the Nine-stane Hill,
And the shrieks of death, that wildly broke
Through devouring flame and smothering smoke,
         Made the warrior's heart-blood chill.
The trustiest thou of all my train,
My fleetest courser thou must rein,
               And ride to Lyulph's tower,
And from the Baron of Treirmain
               Greet well that sage of power.
He is sprung from Druid sires,
And British bards that tuned their lyres
To Arthur's and Pendragon's praise,
And his who sleeps at Dunmailraise.
Gifted like his gifted race,
He the characters can trace,
Graven deep in elder time,
Upon Helvellyn's cliffs sublime;
Sign and sigil well doth he know,
And can bode of weal and woe,
Of kingdoms' fall, and fate of wars,
From mystic dreams and course of stars.
He shall tell if middle earth,
To that enchanting shape gave birth,
Of if t'was but an airy thing,
Such as fantastic slumbers bring,
Fram'd from the rainbow's varying dyes
Or fading tints of western skies.
For, by the Blessed Rood I swear,
If that fair form breathe vital air,
No other maiden by my side
Shall ever rest De Vaux's bride!'

                              VII.
The faithful Page he mounts his steed,
And soon he cross'd green Irthing's mead,
Dash'd o'er Kirkoswald's verdant plain,
And Eden barr'd his course in vain.
He pass'd red Penrith's Table Round,
For feats of chivalry renown'd.
Left Mayburgh's mound and stones of power,
By Druid's raised in magic hour,
And traced the Eamont's winding way,
Till Ulfo's lake beneath him lay.

                              VIII.
Onward he rode, the pathway still
Winding betwixt the lake and hill;
Till, on the fragment of a rock,
Struck from its base by lightning shock,
               He saw the hoary Sage;
The silver moss and lichen twined,
With fern and deer-hair check'd and lined,
               A cushion fit for age;
And o'er him shook the aspen-tree,
A restless, rustling canopy.
Then sprung young Henry from his selle,
               And greeted Lyulph grave;
And then his master's tale did tell,
               And then for counsel crave.
The Man of Years mused long and deep,
Of time's lost treasures taking keep,
And then, as rousing from a sleep,
               His solemn answer gave.

                              IX.
'That maid is born of middle earth,
               And may of man be won,
Though there have glided since her birth
               Five hundred years and one,
But where's the knight in all the north
That dare the adventure follow forth,
So perilous to knightly worth,
               In the valley of Saint John?
Listen, youth, to what I tell,
And bind it on thy memory well;
Nor muse that I commence the rhyme
Far distant 'mid the wrecks of time.
The mystic tale, by bard and sage,
Is handed down from Merlin's age.

                              X.
LYULPH'S TALE
'King Arthur has ridden from merry Carlisle
               When Pentecost was o'er:
He journey'd like errant-knight the while,
And sweetly the summer sun did smile
               On mountain, moss, and moor.
Above his solitary track
Rose Glaramara's ridgy back,
Amid whose yawning gulfs the sun
Cast umber'd radiance red and dun,
Though never sunbeam could discern
The surface of that sable tarn,
In whose black mirror you may spy
The stars, while noontide lights the sky.
The gallant King he skirted still
The margin of that mighty hill;
Rock upon rocks incumbent hung,
And torrents down the gullies flung,
Join'd the rude river that brawl'd on,
Recoiling now from crag and stone,
Now diving deep from human ken,
And raving down its darksome glen.
The Monarch judged this desert wild,
With such romantic ruin piled,
Was theatre by Nature's hand
For feat of high achievement plann'd.

                              XI.
'O rather he chose, that Monarch bold,
               On vent'rous quest to ride,
In plate and mail, by wood and wold,
Than, with ermine trapp'd and cloth of gold,
               In princely bower to bide:
The bursting crash of a foeman's spear
         As it shiver'd against his mail,
Was merrier music to his ear
         Than courtier's whisper'd tale:
And the clash of Caliburn more dear,
         When on the hostile casque it rung,
               Than all the lays
               To their monarch's praise
         That the harpers of Reged sung.
He loved better to rest by wood or river,
Than in bower of his bride, Dame Guenever,
For he left that lady, so lovely of cheer,
To follow adventures of danger and fear;
And the frank-hearted Monarch full little did wot
That she smiled in his absence, on brave Lancelot.

                              XII.
'He rode, till over down and dell
The shade more broad and deeper fell;
And though around the mountain's head
Flow'd streams of purple, and gold, and red,
Dark at the base, unblest by beam
Frown'd the black rocks, and roar'd the stream.
With toil the King his way pursued
By lonely Threlkeld's waste and wood,
Till on his course obliquely shone
The narrow valley of SAINT JOHN,
Down sloping to the western sky,
Where lingering sunbeams love to lie.
Right glad to feel those beams again,
The King drew up his charger's rein;
With gauntlet raised he screen'd his sight,
As dazzled with the level light,
And, from beneath his glove of mail,
Scann'd at his ease his the lovely vale,
While 'gainst the sun his armour bright
Gleam'd ruddy like the beacon's light.

                              XIII.
'Paled in by many a lofty hill,
The narrow dale lay smooth and still,
And, down its verdant bosom led,
A winding brooklet found its bed.
But, midmost of the vale, a mound
Arose with airy turrets crown'd,
Buttress, and rampire's circling bound
               And mighty keep and tower;
Seem'd some primeval giant's hand
The castle's massive walls had plann'd,
A ponderous bulwark to withstand
               Ambitious Nimrod's power.
Above the moated entrance slung,
The balanced drawbridge trembling hung,
               As jealous of a foe;
Wicket of oak, as iron hard,
With iron studded, clench'd, and barr'd,
And prong'd portcullis, join'd to guard
               The gloomy pass below.
But the grey walls, no banners crown'd,
Upon the watch-tower's airy round
No warder stood his horn to sound,
No guard beside the drawbridge was found,
And, where the Gothic gateway frown'd
               Glanced neither bill nor bow.

                              XIV.
'Beneath the castle's gloomy pride
In ample round did Arthur ride
Three times; nor living thing he spied,
               Nor heard a living sound,
Save that, awakening from her dream,
The owlet now began to scream,
In concert with the rushing stream,
               That wash'd the battled mound.
He lighted from his goodly steed,
And left him to graze on bank and mead;
And slowly he climb'd the narrow way
That reach'd the entrance grim and grey,
And he stood the outward arch below,
And his bugle-horn prepared to blow,
               In summons blithe and bold,
Deeming to rouse from iron sleep
The guardian of this dismal Keep,
               Which well he guess'd the hold
Of wizard stern, or goblin grim,
Or pagan of gigantic limb,
               The tyrant of the wold.

                              XV.
'The ivory bugle's golden tip
Twice touch'd the Monarch's manly lip,
               And twice his hand withdrew.
Think not but Arthur's heart was good!
His shield was cross'd by the blessed rood,
Had a pagan host before him stood
               He had charged them through and through;
Yet the silence of that ancient place
Sunk on his heart, and he paused a space
               Ere yet his horn he blew.
But, instant as its 'larum rung,
The castle gate was open flung,
Portcullis rose with crashing groan
Full harshly up its groove of stone;
And down the trembling drawbridge cast;
The vaulted arch before him lay,
With nought to bar the gloomy way,
And onward Arthur paced, with hand
On Caliburn's resistless brand.

                              XVI.
'An hundred torches, flashing bright,
Dispell'd at once the gloomy night
               That lour'd along the walls,
And show'd the King's astonish'd sight
               The inmates of the halls.
Nor wizard stern, nor goblin grim,
Nor giant huge of form and limb,
               Nor heathen knight, was there;
But the cressets, which odours flung aloft,
Show'd by their yellow light and soft,
               A band of damsels fair.
Onward they came, like summer wave
               That dances to the shore;
An hundred voices welcome gave,
               And welcome o'er and o'er!
An hundred lovely hands assail
The bucklers of the Monarch's mail,
And busy labour'd to unhasp
Rivet of steel and iron clasp,
One wrapp'd him in a mantle fair,
And one flung odours on his hair;
His short curl'd ringlets one smooth'd down,
One wreath'd them in a myrtle crown.
A bride upon her wedding-day
Was tended ne'er by troop so gay.

                              XVII.
'Loud laugh'd they all,-- the King, in vain,
With questions task'd the giddy train;
Let him entreat, or crave, or call,
'Twas one reply -- loud laugh'd they all.
Then o'er him mimic chains they fling,
Framed of the fairest flowers of spring.
While some of their gentle force unite
Onwards to drag the wondering knight;
Some, bolder, urge his pace with blows,
Dealt with the lily or the rose.
Behind him were in triumph borne
The warlike arms he late had worn.
Four of the train combined to rear
The terrors of Tintadgel's spear;
Two, laughing at their lack of strength,
Dragg'd Caliburn in cumbrous length;
One, while she aped a martial stride,
Placed on her brows the helmit's pride;
Then scream'd, 'twixt laughter and surprise,
To feel its depth o'erwhelm her eyes.
With revel-shout, and triumph-song,
Thus gaily march'd the giddy throng.

                              XVIII.
'Through many a gallery and hall
They led, I ween, their royal thrall;
At length, beneath a fair arcade
Their march and song at once they staid.
The eldest maiden of the band
               (The lovely maid was scarce eighteen)
Raised, with imposing air, her hand
And reverent silence did command,
               On entrance of their Queen,
And they were mute, -- But as a glance
They steal on Arthur's countenance
               Bewilder'd with surprise,
Their smother'd mirth again 'gan speak,
In archly dimpled chin and cheek,
               And laughter-lighted eyes.

                              XIX.
'The attributes of those high days
Now only live in minstrel lays;
For Nature, now exhausted, still
Was then profuse of good and ill.
Strength was gigantic, valour high,
And wisdom soar'd beyond the sky,
And beauty had such matchless beam
As lights not now a lover's dream.
Yet e'en in that romantic age,
               Ne'er were such charms by mortal seen,
As Arthur's dazzled eyes engage,
When forth on that enchanted stage,
With glittering train of maid and page,
               Advanced the castle's Queen!
While up the hall she slowly pass'd
Her dark eye on the King she cast,
               That flash'd expression strong;
The longer dwelt that lingering look,
Her cheek the livelier colour took,
And scarce the shame-faced King could brook
               The gaze that lasted long.
A sage, who had that look espied,
Where kindling passion strove with pride,
               Had whispered, "Prince, beware!
From the chafed tiger rend the prey,
Rush on the lion when at bay
Bar the fell dragon's blighted way,
               But shun that lovely snare!"

                              XX.
'At once, that inward strife suppress'd,
The dame approach'd her warlike guest,
With greeting in that fair degree,
Where female pride and courtesy
Are blended with such passing art
As awes at once and charms the heart.
A courtly welcome first she gave,
Then of his goodness 'gan to crave
               Construction fair and true
Of her light maidens' idle mirth
Who drew from lovely glens their birth,
Nor knew to pay to stranger worth
               And dignity their due;
Then she pray'd that he would rest
That night her castle's honour'd guest.
The Monarch meetly thanks express'd;
The banquet rose at her behest;
With lay and tale, and laugh and jest,
               Apace the evening flew.

                              XXI.
'The Lady sate the Monarch by,
Now in her turn abash'd and shy,
And with indifference seem'd to hear
They toys he whisper'd in her ear.
Her bearing modest was and fair,
Yet shadows of constraint were there,
That show'd an over-cautious care
               Some inward thought to hide;
Oft did she pause in full reply,
And oft cast down her large dark eye,
Oft check'd the soft voluptuous sigh
               That heav'd her bosom's pride.
Slight symptoms these, but shepherds know
How hot the mid-day sun shall glow
               From the midst of morning sky;
And so the wily Monarch guess'd
That this assumed restraint express'd
More ardent passions in the breast
               Than ventured to the eye.
Closer he press'd, while beakers rang,
While maidens laugh'd and minstrels sang,
               Still closer to her ear --
But why pursue the common tale?
Or wherefore show how knights prevail
               When ladies dare to hear?
Or wherefore, trace, from what slight cause
Its source one tyrant passion draws,
               Till, mastering all within,
Where lives the man that has not tried
How mirth can into folly glide,
               And folly into sin?

Canto Second.
Lyulph's Tale, Continued.
                              I.
'Another day, another day,
And yet another, glides away!
The Saxon stern, the pagan Dane,
Maraud on Britain's shores again.
Arthur, of Christendom the flower,
Lies loitering in a lady's bower;
The horn, that foemen wont to fear,
Sounds but to wake the Cumbrian deer,
And Caliburn, the British pride,
Hangs useless by a lover's side.

                              II.
'Another day, another day,
And yet another, glides away!
Heroic plans in pleasure drown'd,
He thinks not of the Table Round;
In lawless love dissolved his life,
He thinks not of his beauteous wife:
Better he loves to snatch a flower
From the bosom of his paramour,
Than from a Saxon knight to wrest
The honours of his heathen crest!
Better to wreathe, 'mid tresses brown,
The heron's plume her hawk struck down,
Than o'er the alter give to flow
The banners of a Paynim foe.
Thus, week by week, and day by day,
His life inglorious glides away:
But she, that soothes his dream, with fear
Beholds his hour of waking near!

                              III.
'Much force have mortal charms to stay
Our peace in Virtue's toilsome way;
But Guendolen's might far outshine
Each maid of merely mortal line.
Her mother was of human birth,
Her sire a Genie of the earth,
In days of old deem'd to preside
O'er lovers' wiles and beauty's pride,
By youths and virgins worshipp'd long
With festive dance and choral song,
Till, when the cross to Britain came,
On heathen alters died the flame.
Now, deep in Wastdale solitude,
The downfall of his rights he rued,
And, born of his resentment heir,
He train'd to guile that lady fair,
To sink in slothful sin and shame
The champions of the Christian name.
Well skill'd to keep vain thoughts alive,
And all to promise, nought to give;
The timid youth had hope in store,
The bold and pressing gain'd no more.
As wilder'd children leave their home
After the rainbow's arch to roam,
Her lovers barter'd fair esteem,
Faith, fame, and honour, for a dream.

                              IV.
'Her sire's soft arts the soul to tame
She practised thus, till Arthur came;
Then frail humanity had part,
And all the mother claim'd her heart.
Forgot each rule her father gave,
Sunk from a princess to a slave,
Too late must Guendolen deplore;
He, that has all, can hope no more!
Now must she see her lover strain,
At every turn, her feeble chain;
Watch, to new-bind each knot, and shrink
To view each fast-decaying link.
Art she invokes to Nature's aid,
Her vest to zone, her locks to braid;
Each varied pleasure heard her call,
The feast, the tourney, and the ball:
Her storied lore she next applies,
Taxing her mind to aid her eyes;
Now more than mortal wise, and then
In female softness sunk again;
Now, raptured, with each wish complying,
With feigned reluctance now denying:
Each charm she varied, to retain
A varying heart, and all in vain!

                              V.
'Thus in the garden's narrow bound,
Flank'd by some castle's Gothic round,
Fain would the artist's skill provide
The limits of his realms to hide.
The walks in labyrinths he twines,
Shade after shade with skill combines,
With many a varied flowery knot,
And copse, and arbour, decks the spot,
Tempting the hasty foot to stay,
And linger on the lovely way;
Vain art! vain hope! 'tis fruitless all!
At length we reach the bounding wall,
And, sick of flower and trim-dress'd tree,
Long for rough glades and forest free.

                              VI.
'Three summer months had scantly flown
When Arthur, in embarrass'd tone,
Spoke of his liegemen and his throne;
Said, all too long had been his stay,
And duties, which a monarch sway,
Duties, unknown to humbler men,
Must tear her knight from Guendolen.
She listen'd silently the while,
Her mood express'd in bitter smile;
Beneath her eye must Arthur quail,
And oft resume the unfinish'd tale.
Confessing, by his downcast eye,
The wrong he sought to justify.
He ceased. A moment mute she gazed,
And then her looks to heaven she rais'd;
One palm her temples veiled, to hide
The tear that sprung in spite of pride;
The other for an instant press'd
The foldings of her silken vest!

                              VII.
'At her reproachful sign and look,
The hint the Monarch's conscience took.
Eager he spoke -- "No, lady, no!
Deem not of British Arthur so,
Nor think he can deserter prove
To the dear pledge of mutual love.
I swear by sceptre and by sword,
As belted knight and Britain's lord,
That if a boy shall claim my care,
That boy is born a kingdom's heir;
But if a maiden Fate allows,
To choose that maid a fitting spouse,
A summer-day in lists shall strive
My knights, the bravest knights alive,
And he, the best and bravest tried,
Shall Arthur's daughter claim for bride."
He spoke, with voice resolved and high;
The lady deign'd him not reply.

                              VIII.
'At dawn of morn, ere on the brake
His matins did a warbler make,
Or stirr'd his wing to brush away
A single dewdrop from the spray,
Ere yet a sunbeam, through the mist,
The castle-battlements had kiss'd,
The gates revolve, the drawbridge falls,
And Arthur sallies from the walls.
Doff'd his soft garb of Persia's loom,
And steel from spur to helmet-plume,
His Lybian steed full proudly trode,
And joyful neigh'd beneath his load.
The Monarch gave a passing sigh
To penitence and pleasures by,
When, lo! to his astonish'd ken
Appear'd the form of Guendolen.

                              IX.
'Beyond the outmost wall she stood,
Attired like huntress of the wood:
Sandall'd her feet, her ankles bare,
And eagle-plumage deck'd her hair;
Firm was her look, her bearing bold,
And in her hand a cup of gold.
"Thou goest!" she said, "and ne'er again
Must we two meet, in joy or pain.
Full fain would I this hour delay,
Though weak the wish -- yet, wilt thou stay?
No! thou look'st forward. Still, attend!
Part we like lover and like friend."
She raised the cup -- "Not this the juice
The sluggish vines of earth produce;
Pledge we, at parting, in the draught
Which Genii love!" She said, and quaff'd;
And strange unwonted lustres fly
From her flush'd cheek and sparkling eye.

                              X.
'The courteous Monarch bent him low,
And, stooping down from saddlebow,
Lifted the cup, in act to drink.
A drop escaped the goblet's brink --
Intense as liquid fire from hell,
Upon the charger's neck it fell.
Screaming with agony and fright,
He bolted twenty feet upright!
The peasant still can show the dint
Where his hoofs lighted on the flint.
From Arthur's hand the goblet flew,
Scattering a shower of fiery dew,
That burn'd and blighted where it fell!
The frantic steed rush'd up the dell,
As whistles from the bow the reed;
Nor bit nor rein could check his speed
               Until he gain'd the hill;
Then breath and sinew fail'd apace
And, reeling from the desperate race,
               He stood, exhausted, still.
The Monarch, breathless and amazed,
Back on the fatal castle gazed:
Nor tower nor donjon could he spy,
Darkening against the morning sky;
But, on the spot where they once frown'd,
The lonely streamlet brawl'd around
A tufted knoll, where dimly shone
Fragments of rock and rifted stone.
Musing on this strange hap a while,
The King wends back to fair Carlisle;
And cares, that cumber royal sway,
Wore memory of the past away.

                              XI.
'Full fifteen years and more were sped,
Each brought new wreaths to Arthur's head.
Twelve bloody fields, with glory fought,
The Saxons to subjection brought:
Rython, the mighty giant, slain
By his good brand, relieved Bretagne:
The Pictish Gillamore in fight,
And Roman Lucius, own'd his might;
And wide were through the world renown'd
The glories of his Table Round.
Each knight who sought adventurous fame,
To the bold court of Britain came,
And all who suffer'd causeless wrong,
From tyrant proud, or faitour strong,
Sought Arthur's presence, to complain,
Nor there for aid implored in vain.

                              XII.
'For this the King, with pomp and pride,
Held solemn court at Whitsuntide,
               And summon'd Prince and Peer,
All who owed homage for their land
Or who craved knighthood from his hand,
Or who had succour to demand,
               To come from far and near.
At such high tide were glee and game
Mingled with feats of martial fame,
For many a stranger champion came
               In lists to break a spear;
And not a knight in Arthur's host,
Save that he trode on some foreign coast,
But at this Feast of Pentecost
               Before him must appear.
Ah, Minstrels! when the Table Round
Arose, with all its warriors crown'd,
There was a theme for bards to sound
               In triumph to their string!
Five hundred years are past and gone,
But Time shall draw his dying groan
Ere he behold the British throne
               Begirt with such a ring!

                              XIII.
'The heralds named the appointed spot,
As Caerleon or Camelot,
               Or Carlisle fair and free.
At Penrith, now, the feast was set,
And in fair Eamont's vale were met
               The flower of Chivalry.
There Galahad sate with manly grace,
Yet maiden meekness in his face;
There Morolt of the iron mace,
               And love-lorn Tristrem there:
And Dinadam with lively glance,
And Lanval with the fairy lance,
And Mordred with his look askance,
               Brunor and Bevidere.
Why should I tell of numbers more?
Sir Cay, Sir Banier, Sir Bore,
               Sir Carodac the keen,
The gentle Gawain's courteous lore,
Hector de Mares and Pellinore,
And Lancelot, that evermore
               Look'd stol'n-wise on the Queen.

                              XIV.
'When wine and mirth did most abound,
And harpers play'd their blithest round,
A shrilly trumpet shook the ground,
               And marshals cleared the ring;
A maiden, on a palfrey white,
Heading a band of damsels bright,
Paced through the circle, to alight
               And kneel before the King.
Arthur, with strong emotion, saw
Her graceful boldness check'd by awe,
Her dress, like huntress of the wold,
Her bow and baldric trapp'd with gold,
Her sandall'd feet, her ankles bare,
And the eagle-plume that deck'd her hair.
Graceful her veil she backward flung;
The King, as from his seat he sprung,
               Almost cried "Guendolen!"
But 'twas a face more frank and wild,
Betwixt the woman and the child,
Where less of magic beauty smiled
               Than of the race of men;
And in the forehead's haughty grace
The lines of Britain's royal race,
               Pendragon's, you might ken.

                              XV.
'Faltering, yet gracefully she said --
"Great Prince! behold an orphan maid,
In her departed mother's name,
A father's vow'd protection claim!
The vow was sworn in desert lone,
In the deep valley of Saint John."
At once the King the suppliant raised,
And kiss'd her brow, her beauty praised;
His vow, he said, should well be kept,
Ere in the sea the sun was dipp'd;
Then, conscious, glanced upon his queen;
But she, unruffled at the scene
Of human frailty, construed mild,
Look'd upon Lancelot, and smiled.

                              XVI.
'"Up! up! each knight of gallant crest,
         Take buckler, spear, and brand!
He that to-day shall bear him best
         Shall win my Gyneth's hand.
And Arthur's daughter, when a bride,
         Shall bring a noble dower;
Both fair Strath-Clyde and Reged wide,
         And Carlisle town and tower."
Then might you hear each valiant knight
         To page and squire that cried,
"Bring my armour bright, and my courser wight!
'Tis not each day that a warrior's might
         May win a royal bride."
Then cloaks and caps of maintenance
         In haste aside they fling;
The helmets glance, and gleams the lance,
         And the steel-weaved hauberks ring.
Small care had they of their peaceful array, --
         They might gather it that wolde;
For brake and bramble glitter'd gay
         With pearls and cloth of gold.

                              XVII.
'Within trumpet sound of the Table Round
         Were fifty champions free,
And they all arise to fight that prize,
         They all arise but three.
Nor love's fond troth, nor wedlock's oath,
         One gallant could withhold,
For priests will allow of a broken vow
         For penance or for gold.
But sigh and glance from ladies bright
         Among the troop were thrown,
To plead their right, and true-love plight,
         And 'plain of honor flown.
The knights they busied them so fast,
         With buckling spur and belt,
That sigh and look, by ladies cast,
         Were neither seen or felt.
From pleading, or upbraiding glance,
         Each gallant turns aside,
And only thought, "If speeds my lance,
         A queen becomes my bride!
She has fair Strath-Clyde, and Reged wide,
         And Carlisle tower and town;
She is the loveliest maid, beside,
         That ever heir'd a crown."
So in haste their coursers they bestride,
         And strike their visors down.

                              XVIII.
'The champions, arm'd in martial sort,
         Have throng'd into the list,
And but three knights of Arthur's court
         Are from the tourney miss'd.
And still these lovers' fame survives
         For faith so constant shown, --
There were two who loved their neighbors' wives,
         And one who loved his own.
The first was Lancelot de Lac,
         The second Tristrem bold,
The third was valiant Carodac,
         Who won the cup of gold,
What time, of all King Arthur's crew
         (Thereof came jeer and laugh)
He, as the mate of lady true,
         Alone the cup could quaff.
Though envy's tongue would fain surmise
         That, but for very shame,
Sir Carodac, to fight that prize,
         Had given both cup and dame;
Yet, since but one of that fair court
         Was true to wedlock's shrine,
Brand him who will with base report,
         He shall be free from mine.

                              XIX.
'Now caracoled the steeds in air,
Now plumes and pennons wanton'd fair,
As all around the lists so wide
In panoply the champions ride.
King Arthur saw, with startled eye,
The flower of chivalry march by,
The bulwark of the Christian creed,
The kingdom's shield in hour of need.
Too late he thought him of the woe
Might from their civil conflict flow;
For well he knew they would not part
Till cold was many a gallant heart.
His hasty vow he 'gan to rue,
And Gyneth then apart he drew;
To her his leading-staff resign'd,
But added caution grave and kind.

                              XX.
'"Thou see'st, my child, as promise-bound,
I bid the trump for tourney sound.
Take thou my warder, as the queen
And umpire of the martial scene;
But mark thou this: as Beauty bright
Is polar star to valiant knight,
As at her word his sword he draws,
His fairest guerdon her applause,
So gentle maid should never ask
Of knighthood vain and dangerous task;
And Beauty's eyes should ever be
Like the twin stars that soothe the sea,
And Beauty's breath shall whisper peace,
And bid the storm of battle cease.
I tell thee this, lest all too far
These knights urge tourney into war.
Blithe at the trumpet let them go,
And fairly counter blow for blow;
No striplings these, who succour need
For a razed helm or a falling steed.
But, Gyneth, when the strife grows warm,
And threatens death or deadly harm,
Thy sire entreats, thy king commands,
Thou drop the warder from thy hands.
Trust thou thy father with thy fate,
Doubt not he choose thee fitting mate;
Nor be it said, through Gyneth's pride
A rose of Arthur's chaplet died."

                              XXI.
'A proud and discontented glow
O'ershadow'd Gyneth's brow of snow;
         She put the warder by:
"Reserve thy boon, my liege," she said,
"Thus chaffer'd down and limited,
Debased and narrow'd, for a maid
         Of less degree than I.
No petty chief, but holds his heir
At a more honour'd price and rare
         Than Britain's King holds me!
Although the sun-burn'd maid, for dower,
Has but her father's rugged tower,
         His barren hill and lee.
King Arthur swore, By crown and sword,
As belted knight and Britain's lord,
That a whole summer's day should strive
His knights, the bravest knights alive!
Recall thine oath! and to her glen
Poor Gyneth can return agen;
Not on thy daughter will the stain,
That soils thy sword and crown, remain.
But think not she will e'er be bride
Save to the bravest, proved and tried;
Pendragon's daughter will not fear
For clashing sword or splinter'd spear,
               Nor shrink though blood should flow;
And all to well sad Guendolen
Hath taught the faithlessness of men,
That child of hers should pity, when
               Their meed they undergo."

                              XXII.
'He frown'd and sigh'd, the Monarch bold:
"I give what I may not withhold;
For not for danger, dread, or death,
Must British Arthur break his faith.
Too late I mark thy mother's art
Hath taught thee this relentless part
I blame her not, for she hath wrong,
But not to these my faults belong.
Use, then, the warder as thou wilt;
But trust me, that, if life be spilt,
In Arthur's love, in Arthur's grace,
Gyneth shall lose a daughter's place."
With that he turn'd his head aside,
Nor brook'd to gaze upon her pride,
As, with the truncheon raised, she sate
The arbitress of mortal fate;
Nor brook'd to mark, in ranks disposed,
How the bold champions stood opposed,
For shrill the trumpet-flourish fell
Upon his ear like passing bell!
Then first from sight of martial fray
Did Britain's hero turn away.

                              XXIII.
'But Gyneth heard the clangour high
As hears the hawk the partridge cry.
Oh, blame her not; the blood was hers
That at the trumpet's summons stirs!
And e'en the gentlest female eye
Might the brave strife of chivalry
               Awhile untroubled view;
So well accomplish'd was each knight,
To strike and to defend in fight,
Their meeting was a goodly sight,
               While plate and mail held true.
The lists with painted plumes were strown,
Upon the wind at random thrown,
But helm and breastplate bloodless shone,
It seem'd their feather'd crests alone
               Should this encounter rue.
And ever, as the combat grows,
The trumpet's cheery voice arose,
Like lark's shrill song the flourish flows,
Heard while the gale of April blows
               The merry greenwood through.

                              XXIV.
'But soon to earnest grew their game,
The spears drew blood, the swords struck flame,
And, horse and man, to ground there came
         Knights who shall rise no more!
Gone was the pride the war that graced,
Gay shields were cleft, and crests defaced ,
And steel coats riven, and helms unbraced,
               And pennons stream'd with gore.
Gone, too, were fence and fair array,
And desperate strength made deadly way
At random through the bloody fray,
And blows were dealt with headlong sway,
               Unheeding where they fell;
And now the trumpet's clamours seem
Like the shrill sea-bird's wailing scream,
Heard o'er the whirlpool's gulfing stream,
               The sinking seaman's knell!

                              XXV.
'Seem'd in this dismal hour, that Fate
Would Camlan's ruin antedate,
               And spare dark Mordred's crime;
Already gasping on the ground
Lie twenty of the Table Round,
               Of chivalry the prime.
Arthur, in anguish, tore away
From head and beard his tresses grey,
And she, proud Gyneth, felt dismay,
               And quaked with ruth and fear;
But still she deem'd her mother's shade
Hung o'er the tumult, and forbade
The sign that had the slaughter staid,
               And chid the rising tear.
Then Brunor, Taulas, Mador, fell,
Helias the White, and Lionel,
               And many a champion more;
Rochemont and Dinadam are down,
And Ferrand of the Forest Brown
               Lies gasping in his gore.
Vanoc, by mighty Morolt press'd
Even to the confines of the list,
Young Vanoc of the beardless face
(Fame spoke the youth of Merlin's race)
O'erpower'd at Gyneth's footstool bled,
His heart's-blood dyed her sandals red.
But then the sky was overcast,
Then howl'd at once a whirlwind's blast,
               And, rent by sudden throes,
Yawn'd in mid lists the quaking earth,
And from the gulf, tremendous birth!
               The form of Merlin rose.

                              XXIV.
'Sternly the Wizard Prophet eyed
The dreary lists with slaughter dyed,
               And sternly raised his hand:
"Madmen," he said, "your strife forbear;
And thou, fair cause of mischief, hear
               The doom thy fates demand!
         Long shall close in stony sleep
         Eyes for ruth that would not weep;
         Iron lethargy shall seal
         Heart that pity scorn'd to feel.
         Yet, because thy mother's art
         Warp'd thine unsuspicious heart,
And for love of Arthur's race,
Punishment is blent with grace,
Thou shalt bear thy penance lone
In the Valley of Saint John,
And this weird shall overtake thee;
Sleep, until a knight shall awake thee,
For feats of arms as far renown'd
As warrior of the Table Round.
Long endurance of thy slumber
Well may teach the world to number
All their woes from Gyneth's pride,
When the Red Cross champions died."

                              XXVII.
'As Merlin speaks, on Gyneth's eye
Slumber's load begins to lie;
Fear and anger vainly strive
Still to keep its light alive.
Twice, with effort and with pause,
O'er her brow her hand she draws;
Twice her strength in vain she tries,
From the fatal chair to rise;
Merlin's magic doom is spoken,
Vanoc's death must now be wroken.
Slow the dark-fringed eyelids fall,
Curtaining each azure ball,
Slowly as on summer eves
Violets fold their dusky leaves.
The weighty baton of command
Now bears down on her sinking hand,
On her shoulder droops her head;
Net of pearl and golden thread,
Bursting, gave her locks to flow
O'er her arm and breast of snow.
And so lovely seem'd she there,
Spell-bound in her ivory chair,
That her angry sire, repenting,
Craved stern Merlin for relenting,
And the champions, for her sake,
Would again the contest wake;
Till, in necromantic night,
Gyneth vanish'd from their sight.

                              XXVIII.
'Still she bears her weird alone,
In the Valley of Saint John;
And her semblance oft will seem,
Mingling in a champion's dream,
Of her weary lot to 'plain,
And crave his aid to burst her chain.
While her wondrous tale was new,
Warriors to her rescue drew,
East and west, and south and north,
From the Liffy, Thames, and Forth.
Most have sought in vain the glen,
Tower nor castle could they ken;
Not at every time or tide,
Nor by every eye, descried.
Fast and vigil must be borne,
Many a night in watching worn,
Ere an eye of mortal powers
Can discern those magic towers.
Of the persevering few,
Some from hopeless task withdrew,
When the read the dismal threat
Graved upon the gloomy gate.
Few have braved the yawning door,
And those few return'd no more.
In the lapse of time forgot,
Wellnigh lost is Gyneth's lot;
Sound her sleep as in the tomb,
Till waken'd by the trump of doom."
                End of Lyulph's Tale.

                              I.
Here pause my tale! for all too soon,
My Lucy, comes the hour of noon.
Already from thy lofty dome
Its courtly inmates 'gin to roam,
And each, to kill the goodly day
That God has granted them, his way
         Of lazy sauntering has sought;
         Lordlings and witlings not a few,
         Incapable of doing aught,
         Yet ill at ease with nought to do.
Here, is no longer place for me;
For, Lucy, thou wouldst blush to see
         Some phantom. fashionably thin,
         With limb of lath and kerchief'd chin,
         And lounging gape, or sneering grin,
Steal sudden on our privacy.
And how should I, so humbly born,
Endure the graceful spectre's scorn!
Faith! ill, I fear, while conjuring wand
Of English oak is hard at hand.

                              II.
Or grant the hour be all too soon
For Hessian boot and pantaloon,
And grant the lounger seldom strays
Beyond the smooth and gravell'd maze,
Laud we the gods, that Fashion's train
Holds hearts of more adventurous strain.
Artists are hers, who scorn to trace
Their rules from Nature's boundless grace,
But their right paramount assert
To limit her by pendant art,
Damning whate'er of vast and fair
Exceeds a canvas three feet square.
This thicket, for their gumption fit,
May furnish such a happy bit .
Bard, too, are hers, wont to recite
Their own sweet lays by waxen light,
Half in the salver's tingle drown'd,
While the chasse-cafè glides around;
And such may hither secret stray,
To labor an extempore:
Or sportsman, with his boisterous hollo,
May here his wiser spaniel follow;
Or stage-struck Juliet may presume
To choose this bower for tiring-room;
And we alike must shun regard,
From painter, player, sportsman, bard.
Insects that skim in Fashion's sky,
Wasp, blue-bottle, or butterfly,
Lucy, have all alarms for us,
For all can hum and all can buzz.

                              III.
But oh, my Lucy, say how long
We still must dread this trifling throng,
And stoop to hide, with coward art,
The genuine feelings of the heart!
No parent thine whose just command
Should rule their child's obedient hand;
Thy guardians, with contending voice
Press each his individual choice.
And which is Lucy's? Can it be
That puny fop, trimm'd cap-a-pie,
Who loves in the saloon to show
The arms that never knew a foe;
Whose sabre trails along the ground,
Whose legs in shapeless boots are drown'd;
A new Achilles, sure! the steel
Fled from his breast to fence his heel;
One, for the simple manly grace
That wont to deck our martial race,
         Who comes in foreign trashery
               Of tinkling chain and spur,
         A walking haberdashery,
               Of feathers, lace and fur:
In Rowley's antiquated phrase,
Horse-milliner of modern days?

                              IV.
         Or is it he, the wordy youth,
               So early train'd for statesman's part,
         Who talks of honour, faith, and truth,
               As themes that he has got by heart;
Whose ethics Chesterfield can teach,
Whose logic is from Single-speech;
Who scorns the meanest thought to vent,
Save in the phrase of Parliament;
Who, in a tale of cat and mouse,
Calls 'order' and 'divides the house,'
Who 'craves permission to reply,'
Whose 'noble friend is in his eye;'
Whose loving tender some have reckon'd
A motion, you should gladly second?

                              V.
What! neither? Can there be a third,
To such resistless swains preferr'd?
Oh why, my Lucy, turn aside,
With that quick glance of injured pride?
Forgive me, love, I cannot bear
That alter'd and resentful air.
Were all the wealth of Russell mine,
And all the rank of Howard's line,
All would I give for leave to dry
That dewdrop trembling in thine eye.
Think not I fear such fops can wile
From Lucy more than careless smile;
But yet if wealth and high degree
Give gilded counters currency,
Must I not fear, when rank and birth
Stamp the pure ore of genuine worth?
Nobles there are, whose martial fires
Rival the fame that raised their sires,
And patriots, skill'd through storms of fate
To glide and guard the reeling state.
Such, such there are: if such should come,
Arthur must tremble and be dumb,
Self-exiled seek some distant shore,
And mourn till life and grief are o'er.

                              VI.
What sight, what signal of alarm,
That Lucy clings to Arthur's arm?
Or is it, that the rugged way
Makes Beauty lean on lover's stay?
Oh, no! for on the vale and brake
Nor sight nor sounds of danger wake,
And this trim sward of velvet green
Were carpet for the Fairy Queen.
That pressure slight was but to tell
That Lucy loves her Arthur well,
And fain would banish from his mind
Suspicious fear and doubt unkind.

                              VII.
But wouldst thou bid the demons fly
Like mist before the dawning sky,
There is but one resistless spell--
Say, wilt thou guess, or must I tell?
'Twere hard to name, in minstrel phrase,
A laudaulet and four blood-bays,
But bards agree this wizard band
Can but be bound in Northern land.
'Tis there--nay, draw not back thy hand!
'Tis there this slender finger round
Must golden amulet be bound,
Which, bless'd with many a holy prayer,
Can change to rapture lover's care,
And doubt and jealousy shall die,
And fears give place to ecstasy.

                              VIII.
Now, trust me, Lucy, all too long
Has been thy lover's tale and song.
O, why so silent, love, I pray?
Have I not spoke the livelong day?
And will not Lucy deign to say
               One word her friend to bless.
I ask but one, a simple sound,
Within three little letters bound,
            O, let the word be Yes!

Introduction to Canto Third
                              I.
Long loved, long woo'd, and lately won,
My life's best hope, and now mine own!
Doth not this rude and Alpine glen
Recall our favourite haunts agen?
A wild resemblance we can trace,
Though reft of every softer grace,
As the rough warrior's brow may bear
A likeness to a sister fair.
Full well advised our Highland host,
That this wild pass on foot be cross'd,
While round Ben-Cruach's mighty base
Wheel the slow steeds and lingering chaise.
The keen old carle, with Scottish pride,
He praised his glen and mountains wide;
An eye he bears for Nature's face,
Ay, and for woman's lovely grace.
Even in such mean degree we find
The subtle Scot's observing mind;
For, nor the chariot nor the train
Could gape of vulgar wonder gain,
But when old Allan would expound
Of Beal-na-paish the Celtic sound,
His bonnet doff'd, and bow, applied
His legend to my bonny bride;
While Lucy blush'd beneath his eye,
Courteous and cautious, shrewd and sly.

                              II.
Enough of him. Now, ere we lose,
Plunged in the vale, the distant views,
Turn thee, my love! look back once more
To the blue lake's retiring shore.
On its smooth breast the shadows seem
Like objects in a morning dream,
What time the slumberer is aware
He sleeps, and all the vision's air:
Even so, on yonder liquid lawn,
In hues of bright reflection drawn,
Distinct the shaggy mountains lie,
Distinct the rocks, distinct the sky:
The summer-clouds so plain we note
That we might count each dappled spot:
We gaze and we admire, yet know
The scene is all delusive show.
Such dreams of bliss would Arthur draw
When first his Lucy's form he saw;
Yet sigh'd and sicken'd as he drew,
Despairing they could e'er prove true!

                              III.
But, Lucy, turn thee now, to view
               Up the fair glen, our destined way:
The fairy path that we pursue,
Distinguish'd but by greener hue,
               Winds round the purple brae,
While Alpine flowers of varied dye
For carpet serve, or tapestry.
See how the little runnels leap,
In threads of silver, down the steep,
               To swell the brooklet's moan!
Seems that the Highland Naiad grieves,
Fantastic while her crown she weaves,
Of rowan, birch, and alder leaves,
               So lovely, and so lone.
There's no illusion there; these flowers,
That wailing brook, these lovely bowers,
               Are, Lucy, all our own;
And since thine Arthur call'd thee wife,
Such seems the prospect of his life,
A lovely path, on-winding still,
By gurgling brook and sloping hill.
'Tis true, that mortals cannot tell
What waits them in the distant dell;
But be it hap, or be it harm,
We tread the pathway arm in arm.

                              IV.
And now, my Lucy, wot'st thou why
I could thy bidding twice deny,
When twice you pray'd I would again
Resume the legendary strain
Of the bold Knight of Triermain?
At length yon peevish vow you swore,
That you would sue to me no more,
Until the minstrel fit drew near,
And made me prize a listening ear.
But, loveliest, when thou first didst pray
Continuance of the knightly lay,
Was it not on the happy day
               That made thy hand mine own?
When, dizzied with mine ecstasy,
Nought past, or present, or to be,
Could I or think on, hear, or see,
               Save, Lucy, thee alone!
A giddy draught my rapture was,
As ever a chemist's magic gas.

                              V.
Again the summons I denied
In yon fair capital of Clyde:
My Harp -- or let me rather choose
The good old classic form -- my Muse,
(For Harp's an over-scutchèd phrase,
Worn out by bards of modern days)
My Muse, then -- seldom will she wake,
Save by dim wood and silent lake;
She is the wild and rustic Maid,
Whose foot unsandall'd loves to tread
Where the soft greensward is inlaid
               With varied moss and thyme;
And, lest the simple lily-braid
That coronets her temples fade,
She hides her still in greenwood shade
               To meditate her rhyme.

                              VI.
And now she comes. The murmur dear
Of the wild brook hath caught her ear,
               The glade hath won her eye;
She longs to join with each blithe rill
That dances down the Highland hill
               Her blither melody.
And now, my Lucy's way to cheer,
She bids Ben-Cruach's echoes hear
How closed the tale my love whilere
               Loved for its chivalry.
List how she tells, in notes of flame,
'Childe Roland to the dark tower came!'

Canto Third.
                              I.
Bewcastle now must keep the Hold,
         Speir-Adam's steeds must bide in stall,
Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold
         Must only shoot from battled wall;
And Liddesdale my buckle spur,
         And Teviot now may belt the brand,
Taras and Ewes keep nightly stir,
         And Eskdale foray Cumberland.
Of wasted fields and plunder'd flocks
         The Borderers bootless may complain;
They lack the sword of brave de Vaux,
         There comes no aid from Triermain.
That lord, on high adventure bound,
         Hath wander'd forth alone,
And day and night keeps watchful round
         In the valley of Saint John.

                              II.
When first began his vigil bold,
The moon twelve summer nights was old,
               And shone both fair and full;
High in the vault of cloudless blue,
O'er streamlet, dale, and rock, she threw
               Her light composed and cool.
Stretch'd on the brown hill's heathy breast,
               Sir Roland, eyed the vale;
Chief where, distinguish'd from the rest,
Those clustering rocks uprear'd their crest,
The dwelling of the fair distress'd,
               As told grey Lyulph's tale.
Thus as he lay, the lamp of night
Was quivering on his armour bright,
               In beams that rose, and fell,
And danced upon his buckler's boss
That lay beside him on the moss,
               As on a crystal well.

                              III.
Ever he watch'd, and oft he deem'd,
While on the mound the moonlight stream'd,
               It alter'd to his eyes;
Fain would he hope the rocks 'gan change
To butress'd walls their shapeless range,
Fain think, by transmutation strange,
               He saw grey turrets rise.
But scarce his heart with hope throbb'd high,
Before the wild illusions fly
               Which fancy had conceived,
Abetted by an anxious eye,
               That long'd to be deceived.
It was a fond deception all,
Such as, in a solitary hall,
               Beguiles the musing eye,
When, gazing on the sinking fire,
Bulwark, and battlement, and spire,
               In the red gulf we spy.
For, seen by moon of middle night,
Or by the blaze of noontide bright,
Or by the dawn of morning light,
               Or evening's western flame,
In every tide, at every hour,
In mist, in sunshine, and in shower,
               The rocks remain'd the same.

                              IV.
Oft has he traced the charmed mound,
Oft climb'd its crest, or paced it round,
               Yet nothing might explore,
Save that the crags so rudely piled,
At distance seen, resemblance wild
               To a rough fortress bore.
Yet still his watch the warrior keeps,
Feeds hard and spare, and seldom sleeps,
               And drinks but of the well:
Ever by day he walks the hill,
And when the evening gale is chill,
               He seeks a rocky cell,
Like hermit poor to bid his bead,
And tell his Ave and his Creed,
Invoking every saint at need,
               For aid to burst his spell.

                              V.
And now the moon her orb has hid,
And dwindled to a silver thread,
               Dim seen in middle heaven,
While o'er its curve careering fast,
Before the fury of the blast
               The midnight clouds are driven.
The brooklet raved, for on the hills
The upland showers had swoln the rills,
               And down the torrents came;
Mutter'd the distant thunder dread,
And frequent o'er the vale was spread
               A sheet of lightning flame.
DeVaux, within his mountain cave,
(No human step the storm durst brave)
To moody meditation gave
               Each faculty of soul,
Till, lull'd by distant torrent sound,
And the sad winds that whistled round,
Upon his thoughts, in musing drown'd,
               A broken slumber stole.

                              VI.
'Twas then was heard a heavy sound
         (Sound strange and fearful there to hear,
'Mongst desert hills, where, leagues around,
         Dwelt but the gorcock and the deer):
As, starting from his couch of fern,
Again he heard, in clangor stern,
         That deep and solemn swell, --
Twelve times, in measured tone, it spoke,
Like some proud minster's pealing clock,
               Or city's larum-bell, --
What thought was Roland's first when fell,
In that deep wilderness, the knell
               Upon his startled ear?
To slander warrior were I loth,
Yet must I hold my minstrel troth, --
               It was a thought of fear.

                              VII.
But lively was the mingled thrill
That chased that momentary chill,
               For Love's keen wish was there,
And eager Hope, and Valour high,
And the proud glow of Chivalry,
               That burn'd to do and dare.
Forth from the cave the warrior rush'd,
Long ere the mountain-voice was hush'd,
               That answer'd to the knell;
For long and far the unwonted sound,
Eddying in echoes round and round,
               Was toss'd from fell to fell;
And Glaramara answer flung,
And Grisdale-pike responsive rung,
And Legbert heights their echoes swung
               As far as Derwent's dell.

                              VIII.
Forth upon trackless darkness gazed
The Knight, bedeafen'd and amazed,
               Till all was hush'd and still.
Save the swoln torrent's sullen roar,
And the night-blast that wildly bore
               Its course along the hill.
Then on the northern sky there came
A light, as of reflected flame,
               And over Legbert-head,
As if by magic art controll'd,
A mighty meteor slowly roll'd
               Its orb of fiery red;
Thou wouldst have thought some demon dire
Came, mounted on that car of fire,
               To do his errand dread.
Far on the sloping valley's course,
On thicket, rock, and torrent hoarse,
Shingle and Scrae, and Fell and Force,
               A dusky light arose:
Display'd, yet alter'd was the scene;
Dark rock, and brook of silver sheen,
Even the gay thicket's summer green,
               In bloody tincture glows.

                              IX.
De Vaux had mark'd the sunbeams set,
At eve, upon the coronet
               Of that enchanted mound,
And seen but crags at random flung,
That, o'er the brawling torrent hung,
               In desolation frown'd.
What sees he by that meteor's lour?
A banner'd Castle, keep, and tower,
               Return the lurid gleam,
With battled walls and buttress fast,
And barbican and ballium vast,
And airy flanking towers, that cast
               Their shadows on the stream.
'Tis no deceit! distinctly clear
Crenell and parapet appear,
While o'er the pile that meteor drear
               Makes momentary pause;
Then forth its solemn path it drew,
And fainter yet and fainter grew
Those gloomy towers upon the view,
               As its wild light withdraws.

                              X.
Forth from the cave did Roland rush,
O'er crag and stream, through brier and bush;
               Yet far he had not sped
Ere sunk was that portentous light
Behind the hills, and utter night
               Was on the valley spread.
He paused perforce, and blew his horn,
And on the mountain-echoes borne
               Was heard an answering sound,
A wild and lonely trumpet-note;
In middle air it seem'd to float
               High o'er the battled mound;
And sounds were heard, as when a guard
Of some proud castle, holding ward,
               Pace forth their nightly round.
The valiant Knight of Triermain
Rung forth his challenge-blast again,
               But answer came there none;
And 'mid the mingled wind and rain,
Darkling he sought the vale in vain,
               Until the dawning shone;
And when it dawn'd, that wondrous sight,
Distinctly seen by meteor light --
               It all had pass'd away;
And that enchanted mount once more
A pile of granite fragments bore,
               As at the close of day.

                              XI.
Steel'd for the dead, De Vaux's heart
Scorn'd from his vent'rous quest to part
               He walks the vale once more;
But only sees, by night or day,
That shatter'd pile of rocks so grey,
               Hears but the torrent's roar.
Till when, through hills of azure borne,
The moon renew'd her silver horn,
Just at the time her waning ray,
Had faded in the dawning day,
               A summer mist arose;
Adown the vale the vapours float,
And cloudy undulations moat
That tufted mound of mystic note,
               As round its base they close.
And higher now the fleecy tide
Ascends its stern and shaggy side,
Until the airy billows hide
               The rock's majestic isle;
It seem'd a veil of filmy lawn,
By some fantastic fairy drawn
               Around enchanted pile.

                              XII.
The breeze came softly down the brook,
         And, sighing as it blew,
The veil of silver mist it shook,
And to De Vaux's eager look
         Renew'd that wondrous view.
For, though the loitering vapour braved
The gentle breeze, yet oft it waved
         Its mantle dewy fold;
And still, when shook that filmy screen,
Were towers and bastions dimly seen,
And Gothic battlements between
         Their gloomy length unroll'd.
Speed, speed, De Vaux, ere on thine eye
Once more the fleeting vision die!
         The gallant knight 'gan speed
As prompt and light as, when the hound
Is opening, and the horn is wound,
         Careers the hunter's steed.
Down the steep dell his course amain
         Hath rivall'd archer's shaft;
But ere the mound he could attain,
The rocks their shapeless form regain,
And, mocking loud his labour vain,
         The mountain spirits laugh'd.
Far up the echoing dell was borne
Their wild unearthly shout of scorn.

                              XIII.
Wroth wax'd the Warrior: 'Am I then
Fool'd by the enemies of men,
Like a poor hind, whose homeward way
Is haunted by malicious fay?
Is Triermain become your taunt,
De Vaux your scorn? False fiends, avaunt!'
A weighty curtal-axe he bare;
The baleful blade so bright and square,
And the tough shaft of heben wood,
Were oft in Scottish gore imbrued.
Backward his stately form he drew,
And at the rocks the weapon threw,
Just where one crag's projected crest
Hung proudly balanced o'er the rest.
Hurl'd with main force, the weapon's shock
Rent a huge fragment of the rock.
If by mere strength, 'twere hard to tell,
Or if the blow dissolved some spell,
But down the headlong ruin came,
With cloud of dust and flash of flame.
Down bank, o'er bush, its course was borne,
Crush'd lay the copse, the earth was torn,
Till staid at length, the ruin dread
Cumber'd the torrent's rocky bed,
And bade the water's high-swoln tide
Seek other passage for its pride.

                              XIV.
When ceased that thunder, Triermain
Survey'd the mound's rude front again;
And, lo! the ruin had laid bare,
Hewn in the stone, a winding stair,
Whose moss'd and fractured steps might lend
The means the summit to ascend;
And by whose aid the brave De Vaux
Began to scale these magic rocks,
               And soon a platform won,
Where, the wild witchery to close,
Within three lances' length arose
               The Castle of Saint John!
No misty phantom of the air,
No meteor-blazoned show was there;
In morning splendour, full and fair,
               The massive fortress shone.

                              XV.
Embattled high and proudly tower'd,
Shaded by pond'rous flankers, lower'd
               The portal's gloomy way.
Though for six hundred years and more
Its strength had brook'd the tempest's roar,
The scutcheon'd emblems which it bore
               Had suffer'd no decay:
But from the eastern battlement
A turret had made sheer descent,
And, down in recent ruin rent,
               In the mid-torrent lay.
Else, o'er the Castle's brow sublime,
Insults of violence or of time
               Unfelt had pass'd away.
In shapeless characters of yore,
The gate this stern inscription bore: --

                              XVI.
'Patience waits the destined day,
Strength can clear the cumber'd way.
Warrior, who hast waited long,
Firm of soul, of sinew strong,
It is given to thee to gaze
On the pile of ancient days.
Never mortal builder's hand
This enduring fabric plann'd;
Sign and sigil, word of power,
From the earth raised keep and tower.
View it o'er, and pace it round,
Rampart, turret, battled mound.
Dare no more! To cross the gate
Were to tamper with thy fate;
Strength and fortitude were vain,
View it o'er -- and turn again.'

                              XVII.
'That would I,' said the Warrior bold,
'If that my frame were bent and old,
And my thin blood dropp'd slow and cold
               As icicle in thaw;
But while my heart can feel it dance,
Blithe as the sparkling wine of France,
And this good arm wields sword or lance,
               I mock these words of awe!'
He said; the wicket felt the sway
Of his strong hand, and straight gave way,
And, with rude crash and jarring bray,
               The rusty bolts withdraw;
But o'er the threshold as he strode,
And forward took the vaulted road,
An unseen arm, with force amain,
The ponderous gate flung close again,
               And rusted bolt and bar
Spontaneous took their place once more,
While the deep arch with sullen roar
               Return'd their surly jar.
'Now closed is the gin and the prey within
               By the Rood of Lanercost!
But he that would win the war-wolf's skin
               May rue him of his boast.'
Thus muttering, on the Warrior went,
By dubious light down deep descent.

                              VIII.
Unbarr'd, unlock'd, unwatch'd, a port
Led to the Castle's outer court:
There the main fortress, broad and tall,
Spread its long range of bower and hall,
               And towers of varied size,
Wrought with each ornament extreme
That Gothic art, in wildest dream
               Of fancy, could devise;
But full between the Warrior's way
And the main portal arch, there lay
               An inner moat;
               Nor bridge nor boat
Affords De Vaux the means to cross
The clear, profound, and silent fosse.
His arms aside in haste he flings,
Cuirass of steel and hauberk rings,
And down falls helm, and down the shield,
Rough with the dints of many a field.
Fair was his manly form, and fair
His keen dark eye, and close curl'd hair,
When, all unarm'd, save that the brand
Of well-proved metal graced his hand,
With nought to fence his dauntless breast
But the close gipon's under-vest,
Whose sullied buff the sable stains
Of hauberk and of mail retains,
Roland De Vaux upon the brim
Of the broad moat stood prompt to swim.

                              XIX.
Accoutred thus he dared the tide,
And soon he reach'd the farther side,
               And enter'd soon the hold,
And paced a hall, whose wall so wide
Were blazon'd all with feats of pride,
               By warriors done of old.
In middle lists they counter'd here,
               While trumpets seem'd to blow;
And there, in den or desert drear'
               They quell'd gigantic foe,
Braved the fierce griffon in his ire,
Or faced the dragon's breath of fire.
Strange in their arms, and strange in face,
Heroes they seem'd of ancient race,
Whose deeds of arms, and race, and name,
Forgotten long by later fame,
               Were here depicted, to appal
Those of an age degenerate,
Whose bold intrusion braved their fate
               In this enchanted hall.
For some short space the venturous knight
With these high marvels fed his sight,
Then sought the chamber's upper end,
Where three broad easy steps ascend
               To an arch'd portal door,
In whose broad folding leaves of state
Was framed a wicket window-grate,
               And, ere he ventured more,
The gallant Knight took earnest view
The grated wicket-window through.

                              XX.
Oh, for his arms! Of martial weed
Had never mortal Knight such need!
He spied a stately gallery; all
Of snow-white marble was the wall,
               The vaulting, and the floor;
And, contrast strange! on either hand
There stood array'd in sable band
               Four maids whom Afric bore;
And each a bright Lybian tiger led,
Held by as bright and frail a thread
               As Lucy's golden hair, --
For the leash that bound these monsters dread
               Was but of gossamèr.
Each maiden's short barbaric vest
Left all unclosed the knee and breast,
               And limbs of shapely jet;
White was their vest and turban's fold,
On arms and ankles rings of gold
               In savage pomp were set;
A quiver on their shoulders lay,
And in their hand an assagay.
Such and so silent stood they there,
               That Roland wellnigh hoped
He saw a band of statues rare,
Station'd the gazer's soul to scare;
               But when the wicket oped,
Each grisley beast 'gan upward draw,
Roll'd his grim eye, and spread his claw,
Scented the air, and licked his jaw;
While these weird maids, in Moorish tongue,
A wild and dismal warning sung.

                              XXI.
'Rash adventurer, bear thee back!
         Dread the spell of Dahomay!
Fear the race of Zaharak,
         Daughters of the burning day!

'When the whirlwind's gusts are wheeling,
         Ours it is the dance to braid;
Zarah's sands in pillars reeling
         Join the measure that we tread,
When the moon has donn'd her cloak,
         And the stars are red to see,
Shrill when pipes the sad siroc,
         Music meet for such as we.

'Where the shatter'd columns lie,
         Showing Carthage once had been,
If the wandering Santon's eye
         Our mysterious rites hath seen, --
Oft he cons the prayer of death,
         To the nations preaches doom,
"Azrael's brand hath left the sheath!
Moslems, think upon the tomb!"

'Ours the scorpion, ours the snake,
         Our the hydra of the fen,
Ours the tiger of the brake,
         All that plague the sons of men.
Ours the tempest's midnight wrack,
         Pestilence that wastes by day:
Dread the race of Zaharak!
         Fear the spell of Dahomay!'

                              XXII.
Uncouth and strange the accents shrill
         Rung those vaulted roofs among,
Long it was ere, faint and still,
         Died the far-resounding song.
While yet the distant echoes roll,
The Warrior communed with his soul:
         'When first I took this venturous quest,
         I swore upon the rood,
Neither to stop, nor turn, nor rest,
         For evil or for good.
My forward path too well I ween,
Lies yonder fearful ranks between!
For man unarm'd, 'tis bootless hope
With tigers and with fiends to cope;
Yet, if I turn, what waits me there,
Save famine dire and fell despair?
Other conclusion let me try,
Since, choose howe'er I list, I die.
Forward, lies faith and knightly fame;
Behind, are perjury and shame.
In life or death I hold my word!'
With that he drew his trusty sword,
Caught down a banner from the wall,
And enter'd thus the fearful hall.

                              XXIII.
On high each wayward maiden threw
Her swarthy arm, with wild halloo --
On either side a tiger sprung:
Against the leftward foe he flung
The ready banner, to engage
With tangling folds the brutal rage;
The right-hand monster in mid air
He struck so fiercely and so fair,
Through gullet and through spinal bone,
The trenchant blade had sheerly gone.
His grisly brethren ramp'd and yell'd,
But the slight leash their rage withheld,
Whilst, 'twixt their ranks, the dangerous road
Firmly, though swift, the champion strode.
Safe to the gallery's bound he drew,
Safe pass'd an open portal through;
And when against pursuit he flung
The gate, judge if echoes rung!
Onward his daring course he bore,
While, mix'd with dying growl and roar,
Wild jubilee and loud hurra
Pursued him on his venturous way.

                              XXIV.
'Hurra, hurra! our watch is done!
We hail once more the tropic sun,
Pallid beams of northern day,
Farewell, farewell! Hurra, hurra!

'Five hundred years o'er this cold glen
Hath the pale sun come round agen;
Foot of man, till now, hath ne'er
Dared to cross the Hall of Fear.

'Warrior! thou, whose dauntless heart
Gives us from our ward to part,
Be as strong in future trial,
Where resistance is denial.

'Now for Afric's glowing sky,
Zwenga wide and Atlas high,
Zaharak and Dahomay!
Mount the winds! Hurra, hurra!'

                              XXV.
The wizard song at distance died,
         As if in ether borne astray,
While through the waste halls and chambers wide,
         The knight pursued his steady way,
Till to a lofty dome he came,
That flash'd, with such a brilliant flame,
As if the wealth of all the world
Were there in such confusion hurl'd.
For there the gold, in sandy heaps,
With duller earth, incorporate, sleeps;
Was there in ingots piled; and there
Coin'd badge of empery it bare;
Yonder, huge bars of silver lay,
Dimm'd by the diamond's neighbouring ray,
Like the pale moon in morning day;
And in the midst four maidens stand,
The daughters of some distant land.
Their hue was of the dark red dye,
That fringes oft a thunder sky;
Their hands palmetto baskets bare,
And cotton fillets bound their hair;
Slim was their form, their mien was shy,
To earth they bent the humbled eye,
Folded their arms, and suppliant kneel'd,
And thus their proffer'd gifts revealed.

                              XXVI.
CHORUS.
'See the treasures Merlin piled,
Portion meet for Arthur's child.
Bathe in wealth's unbounded stream,
Wealth that avarice ne'er could dream!'

FIRST MAIDEN.
'See these clots of virgin gold!
Sever'd from the sparry mould,
Nature's mystic alchemy
In the mine thus bade them lie;
And their orient smile can win
Kings to stoop, and saints to sin.'

SECOND MAIDEN
'See these pearls, that long have slept;
These were the tears by Naiads wept
For the loss of Marinel.
Tritons in the silver shell
Treasured them, till hard and white
As the teeth of Amphitrite."

THIRD MAIDEN
'Does a livelier hue delight?
Here are rubies blazing bright,
Here are emerald's fairy green,
And the topaz glows between;
Here their varied hues unite,
In the changeful chrysolite.'

FOURTH MAIDEN.
'Leave these gems of poorer shine,
Leave them all, and look on mine!
While their glories I expand,
Shade thine eyebrows with thy hand.
Mid-day sun and diamond's blaze
Blind the rash beholder's gaze.'

CHORUS
'Warrior, seize the splendid store;
Would 'twere all our mountains bore!
We should ne'er in future story
Read, Peru, thy perish'd glory!'

                              XXVII.
Calmly and unconcern'd, the knight
Waved aside the treasures bright: --
'Gentle maidens, rise, I pray!
Bar not thus my destined way.
Let these boasted brilliant toys
Braid the hair of girls and boys!
Bid your streams of gold expand
O'er proud London's thirsty land.
De Vaux of wealth saw never need,
Save to purvey him arms and steed,
And all the ore he deign'd to hoard
Inlays his helm, and hilts his sword.'
Thus gently parting from their hold,
He left, unmoved, the dome of gold.

                              XXVIII.
And now the morning sun was high,
De Vaux was weary, faint, and dry;
When, lo! a plashing sound he hears,
A gladsome signal that he nears
               Some frolic water-run;
And soon he reach'd a court-yard square,
Where, dancing in the sultry air,
Toss'd high aloft, fountain fair
               Was sparkling in the sun.
On right and left, a fair arcade,
In long perspective view display'd
Alleys and bowers, for sun and shade:
               But, full in front, a door,
Low-brow'd and dark, seem'd as it led
To the lone dwelling of the dead,
               Whose memory was no more.

                              XXIV.
Here stopp'd De Vaux an instant's space,
To bathe his parched lips and face,
               And mark'd with well-pleased eye,
Refracted on the fountain stream,
In rainbow's hues the dazzling beam
               Of that gay summer sky.
His senses felt a mild control,
Like that which lulls the weary soul,
               From contemplation high
Relaxing, when the ear receives
The music that the greenwood leaves
               Make to the breezes' sigh.

                              XXX.
And oft in such a dreamy mood,
               The half-shut eye can frame
Fair apparitions in the wood
As if the nymphs of field and flood
               In gay procession came.
Are these of such fantastic mould,
               Seen distant down the fair arcade,
These maids enlink'd in sister-fold,
               Who, late at bashful distance staid,
               Now tripping from the greenwood shade,
Nearer the musing champion draw,
And, in a pause of seeming awe,
               Again stand doubtful now?
Ah, that sly pause of witching powers
That seems to say, 'To please be ours,
               Be yours to tell us how.'
Their hue was of the golden glow
That suns of Candahar bestow,
O'er which in slight suffusion flows
A frequent tinge of paly rose;
Their limbs were fashion'd fair and free,
In nature's justest symmetry;
And, wreathed with flowers, with odours graced,
Their raven ringlets reach'ed the waist:
In eastern pomp, its gilding pale
The hennah lent each shapely nail,
And the dark sumah gave the eye
More liquid and more lustrous dye.
The spotless veil of misty lawn,
In studied disarrangement, drawn
               The form and bosom o'er,
To win the eye, or tempt the touch,
For modesty show'd all too much --
               Too much, yet promised more.

                              XXXI.
'Gentle knight, a while delay,'
Thus they sung, 'thy toilsome way,
While we pay the duty due
To our Master and to you.
Over avarice, over fear,
Love triumphant led thee here;
Warrior, list to us, for we
Are slaves to love, are friends to thee.
Though no treasured gems have we,
To proffer on the bended knee,
Though we boast nor arm nor heart,
For the assagay or dart,
Swains allow each simple girl
Ruby lip and teeth of pearl;
Or, if dangers more you prize,
Flatters find them in our eyes.

'Stay, then, gentle warrior, stay,
Rest till evening steal on day;
Stay, O stay! in yonder bowers
We will braid thy locks with flowers,
Spread the feast and fill the wine,
Charm thy ear with sounds divine,
Weave our dances till delight
Yield to languor, day to night.
Then shall she you most approve,
Sing they lays that best you love,
Soft thy mossy couch shall spread,
Watch thy thy pillow, prop thy head,
Till the weary night be o'er;
Gentle warrior, wouldst thou more?
Wouldst thou more, fair warrior? She
Is slave to love and slave to thee.'

                              XXXII.
O do not hold it for a crime
In the bold hero of my rhyme,
               For Stoic look,
               And meet rebuke,
He lack'd the heart or time;
As round the band of sirens trip,
He kiss'd one damsel's laughing lip,
And press'd another's proffer'd hand.
Spoke to them all in accents bland,
But broke their magic circle through;
'Kind maids,' he said, 'adieu, adieu!
My fate, my fortune, forward lies.'
He said, and vanish'd from their eyes;
But, as he dared that darksome way,
Still heard behind their lovely lay:
'Fair Flowers of Courtesy, depart!
Go, where the feelings of the heart
With the warm pulse in concord move;
Go, where virtue sanctions love!'

                              XXXIII.
Downward De Vaux through darksome ways
And ruin'd vaults has gone,
Till issue from their wilder'd maze,
         Or safe retreat, seem'd none;
         And e'en the dismal path he strays
               Grew worse as he went on.
For cheerful sun, for living air,
Foul vapours rise and mine-fires glare,
Whose fearful light the dangers show'd
That dogg'd him on that dreadful road.
Deep pits, and lakes of waters dun,
They show'd, but show'd not how to shun.
These scenes of desolate despair,
These smothering clouds of poison'd air,
How gladly had De Vaux exchanged,
Though 'twere to face yon tigers ranged!
               Nay, soothful bards have said
So perilous his state seem'd now,
He wish'd him under arbour bough
               With Asia's willing maid.
When, joyful sound! at distance near
A trumpet flourish'd loud and clear,
And as it ceased, a lofty lay
Seem'd thus to chide his lagging way.

                              XXXIV.
'Son of Honour, theme of story,
Think on the reward before ye!
Danger, darkness, toil despise;
'Tis ambition bids thee rise.

'He that would her heights ascend,
Many a weary step must wend;
Hand and foot and knee he tries;
Thus ambition's minions rise.

'Lag not now, though rough the way,
Fortune's mood brooks no delay;
Grasp the boon, that's spread before ye,
Monarch's power, and conqueror's glory!'

It ceased. Advancing on the sound,
A steep ascent the wanderer found,
               And then a turret stair:
Nor climb'd he far its steepy round
               Till fresher blew the air,
And next a welcome glimpse was given,
That cheer'd him with the light of heaven.
               At length his toil had won
A lofty hall with trophies dress'd
Where, as to greet imperial guest,
Four maidens stood, whose crimson vest
               Was bound with golden zone.

                              XXXV.
Of Europe seem'd the damsels all;
The first a nymph of lively Gaul,
Whose easy step and laughing eye
Her borrow'd air of awe belie;
               The next a maid of Spain,
Dark-eyed, dark-hair'd, sedate, yet bold;
White ivory skin and tress of gold,
Her shy and bashful comrade told
               For daughter of Almaine.
These maidens bore a royal robe,
With crown, with sceptre, and with globe,
               Emblems of empery;
The fourth a space behind them stood,
And leant upon a harp, in mood
               Of minstrel ecstasy.
Of merry England she, in dress
Like ancient British Druidess.
Her hair an azure fillet bound,
               And, in her hand display'd
A crown that did that fourth maiden hold,
But unadorn'd with gems and gold,
               Of glossy laurel made.

                              XXXVI.
At once to brave De Vaux knelt down
               These foremost maidens three,
And proffer'd sceptre, robe and crown,
               Liegedom and seignorie,
O'er many a region wide and fair,
Destined, they said, for Arthur's heir;
               But homage would he none:
'Rather,' he said, 'De Vaux would ride,
A warden of the Border-side,
In plate and mail, than, robed in pride,
               A monarch's empire own;
Rather, far rather, would he be
A free-born knight in England free,
               Than sit on despot's throne.'
So pass'd he on, when that fourth maid,
               As starting from a trance,
Upon the harp her finger laid;
Her magic touch the chords obey'd,
               Their soul awaked at once!

SONG OF THE FOURTH MAIDEN

'Quake to your foundations deep,
Stately towers, and banner'd keep,
Bid your vaulted echoes moan,
As the dreaded step they own.

'Fiends, that wait on Merlin's spell,
Hear the foot-fall! mark it well!
Spread your dusky wings abroad,
Boune ye for your homeward road!

'It is his, the first who e'er
Dared the dimal Hall of Fear;
His, who hath the snares defied
Spread by pleasure, wealth and pride.

'Quake to your foundations deep,
Bastion huge, and turret steep!
Tremble, keep! and totter, tower!
This is Gyneth's waking hour.'

                              XXXVII.
Thus while she sung, the venturous knight
Has reach'd a bower, where milder light
               Through crimson curtains fell;
Such soften'd shade the hill receives,
Her purple veil when twilight leaves
               Upon its western swell.
That bower, the gazer to bewitch,
Hath wondrous store of rare and rich
               As e'er was seen with eye;
For there with magic skill, I wis,
Form of each thing that living is
               Was limn'd in proper dye.
All seem'd to sleep -- the timid hare
On form, the stag upon his lair,
The eagle in her eyrie fair
               Between the earth and sky.
But what of pictured rich and rare
Could win De Vaux's eye-glance, where,
Deep slumbering in the fatal chair,
               He saw King Arthur's child!
Doubt, and anger, and dismay,
From her brow had pass'd away,
Forgot was that fell tourney-day,
               For, as she slept, she smiled:
It seem'd, that the repentant Seer
Her sleep of many a hundred year
               With gentle dreams beguiled.

                              XXXVIII.
That form of maiden loveliness,
               'Twixt childhood and 'twixt youth,
That ivory chair, that silvan dress,
The arms and ankles bare, express
               Of Lyulph's tale the truth.
Still upon her garment's hem
Vanoc's blood made purple gem,
And the warder of command
Cumber'd still her sleeping hand;
Still her dark locks dishevell'd flow
From net of pearl o'er breast of snow;
And so fair the slumberer seems,
That De Vaux impeach'd his dreams,
Vapid all and void of might,
Hiding half her charms from sight.
Motionless a while he stands,
Folds his arms and clasps his hands,
Trembling in his fitful joy,
Doubtful how he should destroy
               Long-enduring spell;
Doubtful, too, when slowly rise
Dark-fringed lids of Gyneth's eyes,
               What these eyes shall tell.
'Saint George! Saint Mary! can it be,
That they will kindly look on me!'

                              XXXIX.
Gently, lo! the warrior kneels,
Soft that lovely hand he steals.
Soft to kiss, and soft to clasp --
But the warder leaves his grasp;
               Lightning flashes, rolls the thunder!
Gyneth startles from her sleep,
Totters tower, and trembles keep,
               Burst the castle-walls asunder!
Fierce and frequent were the shocks, --
               Melt the magic halls away;
But beneath their mystic rocks,
In the arms of bold De Vaux,
               Safe the princess lay;
Safe and free from magic power,
Blushing like the rose's flower
               Opening to the day;
And round the champion's brow's were bound
The crown that Druidess had wound,
               Of the green laurel-bay.
And this was what remain'd of all
The wealth of each enchanted hall,
               The garland and the dame:
But where should warrior seek the meed,
Due to high worth for daring deed,
Except from love and fame!

CONCLUSION.

               I.
My Lucy,, when the maid is won,
The minstrel's task, thou know'st, is done.
               And to require of bard
That to his dregs the tale should run,
               Were ordinance too hard.
Our lovers, briefly be it said,
Wedded as lovers wont to wed,
               When tale or play is o'er;
Lived long and blest, loved fond and true,
And saw a numerous race renew
               The honours that they bore.
Know, too, that when a pilgrim strays,
In morning mist or evening maze,
               Along the mountain lone,
That fairy fortress often mocks
His gaze upon the castled rocks
               Of the Valley of Saint John;
But never man since brave De Vaux
               The charmed portal won.
'Tis now a vain illusive show,
That melts whene'er the sunbeams glow
               Or the fresh breeze hath blown.

                              II.
But see, my love, where far below
Our lingering wheels are moving slow,
               The whiles, up-gazing still,
Our menials eye our steepy way,
Marvelling, perchance, what whim can stay
Our steps, when eve is sinking grey,
               On this gigantic hill.
So think the vulgar: Life and time
Ring all their joys in one dull chime
               Of luxury and ease;
And, O! beside these simple knaves,
How many better born are slaves
               To such coarse joys as these!
Dead to nobler sense that glows
When nature's grander scenes unclose!
But, Lucy, we will love them yet,
The mountain's misty coronet,
               The greenwood, and the wold;
And love the more that of their maze
Adventure high of other days
               By ancient bards is told,
Bringing, perchance, like my poor tale,
Some moral truth in fiction's veil:
Nor love them less, that o'er the hill
The evening breeze, as now, comes chill; --
               My love shall wrap her warm,
And, fearless of the slippery way
While safe she trips the heathy brae,
               Shall hang on Arthur's arm.

---

---

VIVIEN

by

ALAN SEEGER

Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools
Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled
Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world.
Her robes were gauzes--gold and green and gules,
All furry things flocked round her, from her hand
Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet.
Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat
Beside a fountain in Broceliande.
Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot
Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here,
Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas,
Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . .
But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere,
Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees.

---

---

GAWAIN AND THE LADY OF AVALON

by

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX

Came tidings unto Caerleon,
   Where Arthur kept Shrovetide,
How, far away in Avalon,
   A scaly dragon's pride,
With visage like a woman's, wan,
   Wasted the country-side.

Arthur let cry through all his land,
   "Who curses me for wrong?"
Then flowed there in on every hand
   The stream of loyal song,
"If right could make a king's throne stand,
   Then Arthur's would stand long."

When Arthur's praise was duly sung,
   A way-worn maiden came,
And said, with duteous faltering tongue,
   "Ye are not much to blame,
My liege, for we were very young,
   Though ye forgat our game.

"We played at guessing thoughts," she said.
   "Ye did not guess aright.
Ye sware to give me one to wed,
   To be my lord and knight.
Now twenty years, methinks, are fled,
   And ye forget our plight."

The dew was on her raven hair
   And her blue glistering eye;
No dust on foot or ankle bare,
   Though all the land was dry;
And every knight was ready there
   To wed with her or die.

"But I," she said, "am dowerless,
   And comfortless of men,
And sojourn in the wilderness,
   And in the dragon's den."
Pale looks were plentiful, I guess,
   About the Table then.

Lancelot looked in her pleading face,
   And sighed, "If I were free;"
Quoth Tristram as he left the place,
   "His answer serves for me."
Galahad said something of God's grace;
   She said, "I choose not thee."

Geraint bowed over Enid's veil;
   His visage was more white.
Lamorack buckled up his mail,
   And looked into the night.
Gawain, whose face was always pale,
   Seemed ruddy in the light.

She laid her little hand in his,
   He chose to let it stay;
She put her rosy cheek to his,
   He did not turn away;
She put her cherry lips to his,
   Which were as dim as clay.

He spake, as soon as it was time,
   Of pleasant ways of love,
That rules the sweetly-ordered chime
   Of stars and saints above,
And bade the minstrels sing the rhyme
   Of the true turtle-dove;

And bade them call the holy priest
   To knit the twain in one.
She said, "I keep my marriage-feast
   Not here, at Avalon."
None knew why all men as she ceased
   Trembled in Caerleon.

"Where shall we find a priest to wait
   And bless the marriage-bed?
And if your house be desolate,
   How shall your guests be fed?
And who will guide them to our gate?"
   The courteous bridegroom said.

"The dragon's scales of woven glass
   Will light my banquet well;
Iscariot will sing the mass,
   And Pilate toll the bell;
And all my marriage guests will pass
   Over the mouth of hell.

"I go to the great wilderness,
   And to the dragon's lair,
Where the great hills are harbourless,
   And the sharp rocks are bare;
And if thou pity my distress,
   Then thou wilt meet me there.

"But sit thou with thy master here
   For three days yet," saith she;
"Then shalt thou ride in desert drear,
   Three days alone to me;
The seventh day with lordly cheer
   Our marriage-feast shall be."

She kissed Sir Gawain on the mouth,
   He kissed her on the hand;
Then she departed to the south,
   Between the sea and sand,
Leaving behind a bitter drouth
   In all King Arthur's land.

Thereat the King was full of woe,
   The princes of dismay.
A bolder man had feared to go,
   But Gawain feared to stay,
And parted in a storm of snow,
   Alone, on the third day.

The seventh day, by Grammarie,
   And by the dragon's power,
He saw beside a leaden sea
   A rosy granite tower,
That fronted to a sunny lea,
   Blood-red with wild windflower.

Thereon went many quick and dead,
   And some who do not die;
Each wore a garland on the head,
   Each laughed within the eye.
No flower was bent beneath their tread,
   No dewy leaf brushed dry.

They passed within the granite gate,
   And there was room for all;
Gawain could see his lady wait,
   In green and purple pall.
As he lit down, the cloud of fate
   Went up from Arthur's hall.

Beneath Gawain his feet seemed lame,
   He stumbled and he fell;
There lived for him a subtle flame
   In every crushed wind-bell.
She said, "No marvel, for ye came
   Over the mouth of hell."

He saw an altar to the west,
   He saw the incense sink,
And in the bag on the priest's breast
   He heard the silver chink.
One stood to serve in purple vest,
   Whose hands were washed in ink.

Black serpents round the altar ran,
   But Judas chanted well,
And sweetly rang his sacristan
   The silver sacring bell;
And so the marriage rite began,
   Over the pit of hell.

Sweet gusts of music from below
   Lifted the lady's veil;
Soft sudden flakes of rosy snow
   Flecked the black serpent's mail.
'Mid happy faces all aglow
   The bridegroom's face was pale.

The altar sank beneath the floor,
   Arose the marriage feast,
Sweeter and merrier and more
   The melody increased;
None started as grim graveworms tore
   The sacristan and priest.

In shifting many-coloured light,
   Too bright to look upon,
You saw the guests, you saw the knight,
   Where that wild radiance shone;
You did not see the lady bright
   Who reigns in Avalon.

Yet all, as though beneath her eye,
   Were busy to rejoice;
And now the music mounted high
   To glorify her choice,
Who felt the dragon sliding by,
   And heard the lady's voice.

A moment not a guest was seen
   Within the marriage room;
A moment, and the magic sheen
   Faded in magic gloom,
Through which, half seen, the fairy queen
   Scattered a sweet perfume.

Gawain bent low for courtesie,
   And thanked her for her grace;
He laid his hand upon her knee
   And looked into her face,
And wondered if he did not see
   The dragon in her place.

The lady his weak hand hath ta'en,
   And bidden him be of cheer;
He asked her, "Is the dragon slain?"
   She said, "He is not here.
The dragon will not waste again
   In Arthur's golden year."

Arose a happy fairy sound,
   As of a little well
By the first break of spring unbound;
   Cool flowers began to swell
From underneath the burning ground,
   To veil the mouth of hell.

The moon above the misty lea
   Hung like a globe of fire,
Whereby Gawain a hag might see
   In ghastly gay attire,
Whose wrinkled face flushed horribly
   With jubilant desire.

He knew her, for she held the hand
   He gave to one more fair;
He knew her by the magic band
   His lady used to wear,
With jewels from an unknown land
   Bound in her raven hair.

Fondly she lisped, "My honey knight,
   It needs not to rehearse
Wherefore I lifted up the blight,
   And took away the curse,
Because ye took me in God's sight
   For better and for worse.

"Though thou be very fair to see,
   And I a loathly crone,
Yet what is that to thee and me
   Before King Arthur's throne?
And when I hunger after thee,
   I hunger for mine own."

Gawain, the knight of courtesie,
   Bowed down his stately head,
And said, "Sweet wife, most certainly
   We in God's sight are wed,"
As he drew back the canopy
   Over the bridal bed.

Full still he lay till break of day
   In counterfeited bliss,
Nor turned his loyal cheek away
   From any loathly kiss,
And saw the while the lightnings play,
   And heard her serpents hiss.

There lay beside Gawain at morn
   A maiden undefiled,
As rosy as the blooming thorn
   When eves in May are mild;
As tender as the babe unborn,
   To life scarce reconciled.

Her brow was veiled with woven brass,
   And bonds were on the hands,
Which held an emerald hourglass
   Wherein few golden sands;
Her feet seemed quivering to pass
   Into untravelled lands.

She kissed her husband thick and fast
   On lip and brow and cheek,
Her captive arms round him she cast,
   And then she tried to speak,
Until the love came out at last,
   Although the voice was weak.

"Wilt have by day a lovely may,
   By night a loathly crone,
That other men may see and say,
   His bride becomes a throne;
Or have me foul for them by day,
   And fair for thee alone?"

He thought, "Whate'er my choice may be,
   I cannot choose but ill,
For she by slight of Grammarie
   Would fool my simple skill."
He said, "This is too hard for me,
   Use your own gentle will."

Oh, sweetly smiled the lady then,
   And sweetly laughed the lea,
Sweet roses veiled the dragon's den;
   "Henceforth my face shall be
Fair when I will for other men,
   And all day long for thee!"

She laughed, "'Tis well ye did not play
   When Arthur lost the game,
For you have guessed aright to-day
   The wish of every dame."
"Yet," said Gawain, "I cannot say
   My lady's lovesome name."

The colours of the dragon's mail
   Flashed in the dewy grass;
The lady's face flushed red and pale,
   "And I had hoped, alas!
That thou shouldst rend the brazen veil,
   And loose the bonds of glass.

"Ah! woe is me, it may not be,
   And I have loved thee so;
But henceforth thou shalt never see
   My footprints where I go,
To wake the flowers upon the lea,
   And kiss away the snow."

He smiled farewell, her colour rose;
   She cried aloud, "For shame!
I sojourn seven years with those
   Who do not ask my name.
Hence with thee and thy painted shows;
   Hence by the road ye came!

"Go home and boast in Caerleon,
   Below thy courtly breath,
About the bonny bride ye won,
   For whom hell hungereth!
But come no more to Avalon,
   For that will be thy death."

Low fell the veil of woven brass,
   On heavy eyelids bound;
On folded hands the bonds of glass
   Clanked softly without sound;
And so Gawain beheld her pass
   Over the dewy ground.

---

---

THE FAREWELL OF GANORE

by

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX

Ganore was standing at the convent gate
With Lancelot, and she held him by the hand,
And in the fierce noon of a harvest day
They both looked forth upon a wasted land;
And Queen Ganore was in her royal state
Of widowhood, as when she kept at bay
The rabble, when they hungered for her death,
Saying, "Surely Arthur will not come again
Till that lewd sorceress be foully slain."
But she had stood for her own life and fame
Until from Lyonnesse Sir Lancelot came,
Unblenching, though old memories choked her breath.
Lancelot was travel-stained, and all his face
Was flushed, and clouded by an eager doubt;
His eyes were heavy with the tears of grace,
And, bending to his love, he faltered out
Penitent words, with stifled sobs between,
"Alas, and yet again alas, my Queen,
That ever we met and one another knew;
For all the ill that reckless hate can do,
My loyal, scrupulous love hath done to you;
For through my loyal love your lord is slain,
Your lord and mine, who bred me up to knight;
And on your womanhood is come a stain
Of treason, which no oaths will e'er wash white,
And all your joy is hidden out of sight.
But I will leave my realm of Lyonnesse
In peace, for Galahad my chaste son to rule;
And in the wilderness my sad heart school
To worship God, and pray for you aright;
Because this world is very pitiless,
To make us buy with sin its brief delight."
   Trembling he spoke, and looking up to her,
But she stood upright, looking far away,
With a hot glory on her golden head;
Her scarcely sunken cheek was flushed full fair,
Not at his words, but at the fierce sun ray:
Then, bending on him eyes which were not red,
With lofty, motherly regard, she said,
Smoothing his tangled curls with soft cool hand,
"Yea, and is Lyonnesse a peaceful land?
God give you comfort of it, as you grow
Sadly to heaven, in your bleak hermitage,
For surely Britain shall sit down in woe,
Since Arthur died with all his baronage.
Farewell, my friend, whom I shall see no more,
For even in heaven we shall dwell apart
Where God, who came between us heretofore,
Seals up within himself weak heart from heart."
   She took him, and she kissed him on the brow,
And bade him go in peace to keep his vow,
And saw him ride away, and did not start,
But listened till his echoing tramp had died
Upon the granite of the bleak hillside;
Then, when she knew that Lancelot would not hear,
She loosed her voice and made complaint aloud.
The nuns behind her shivered in much fear,
Seeing her stand beneath a thundercloud
Which suddenly had overshadowed her;
But where they stood the arch of heaven was clear,
And from the cloud an icy wind, which fell
From heaven to probe the fiery heart of hell,
Through underground, deep-echoing caverns bore
The lamentation of the Queen Ganore:--
   "Alone for evermore.
I watched him, and he did not turn his head,
And I shall be alone till I am dead;
Alone for evermore.
And I would weep a little ere I die,
And all the fountain of my tears is dry,
Which heretofore
With many vain desires my true love fed,
While I believed the oaths that Lancelot swore;
But now I do not weep, I feel no pain;
I tell myself aloud my lord is slain,
I tell myself my love is gone away,
Never to come again;
And find no passionate true word to say,
But only this unmeaning cuckoo cry,
Alone until I die.

   "Surely these words are sharp enough to slay
One who did once love well,
Or scourge me out of the bleak, desolate day
Into meek clositer cell;
But I, I loiter still outside the door,
Alone for evermore.
Through me the fiery river of life hath flowed
Hot and clear with love and sin;
Through me and over me, and I have glowed
Body and soul therein.
And then I was not molten in that heat
Nor broken; I was wise and it was sweet.
And now the river hath gone by,
And left me cold and dark and dry,
Cast on a slimy bank accursed.
Also I know that this is not the worst;
But each day will be drearier till I die.
Arthur could weep for me, why cannot I?
O Arthur, O my perfect knight,
And thou didst pity me,
Not knowing that I loved thee even then,
Who love thee now much more, not pitying thee,
Since now thou judgest in God's tender light
Rightly of me and men.
Yes, God will make you understand
Those bitter things I would not say,
Thinking it easier, kinder to deceive.
But now you will not grieve
Where you are sitting by the glassy sea,
On a great ivory throne at God's right-hand,--
God's hand who cut you off from me,
Who made me of such different clay.
I love thee much too well to weep for thee,
Who art gone home,--gone home to thy reward,
Arthur, my Arthur once, my gentle lord.

   "I have desired and I have not attained;
And I have given and I have not received;
And I have lived and nought is gained
Of all those goodly things my youth believed.
I have lived, do I say?
And yet I have to live
Long, very long, before I pass away,
Before my beauty and my strength decay,--
My strength, which hath been helpful heretofore;
My beauty, which no knights shall worship more.
I asked of Arthur what he could not give;
I gave what Lancelot could not repay.
My God, what shall I say?
And Arthur asked of me
To live in dreams, hoping what shall not be;
And Arthur asked in vain.
Because we asked how many have been slain!
Wilt thou require their blood of me?
And Lancelot is parted now in pain,
Because I am less sorrowful than he,
And still could have been happy out of thee;
But thou, it seems, dost otherwise ordain.
And unto earth is sunshine after rain,
But unto us no gladness after pain,
Or none that may endure,
None that is pure.
But when the storm is past,
The sky laughs without stain;
While sorrow doth our spirits overcast
With clouds that do not wash them white again.
Yet how shall I complain
That Arthur loved too little, I too much;
That Lancelot's hot love shrivelled at the touch
Of thy disdain?
Yea, how shall I complain
Of thee, my God, with whom I hope to reign?
For this is all of thee.
I made thee not, thou madest me.
Doubtless I might have striven against the stream,
Labouring to live in Arthur's knightly dream.
He might have folded me in arms of love
More closely, though his eyes were set above.
But not by us the river of our woe
Was fed with vain desires, or learned to flow
Through flowery mountains to a barren plain;
And since we drifted many have been slain,
And very many homes are desolate;
And yet, behold, I curse thee not, O God!
Though men curse me;
Because I do not think it is in hate
That we are beaten down before thy rod,
Which flowers, though late.
And I am tired, and it is rest to wait;
And one grief comes to drive another out,
And turbulent desire is purged by doubt;
And this too is of thee,
To bring us very low and set us free.
For Arthur verily is dead,
So I am not in bondage to his bed;
And Lancelot is gone to keep his vow;
I am not debtor unto any now.
I do not think that I shall tarry here,
To teach these pitiful nuns to hold me dear;
But I will out into the wilds, and know
If Lancelot and the priests have told me true,
If I in very deed am fallen so low
That I should be as they,
Whose very hearts are grey;
And yet Christ is their spouse, they say,
Whose mercy I need too."

   And then she paused in her lament, and sighed,
And spake again, "Men only have I tried,
And they have shallow hearts, and so have I.
I will away from them before I die,
And be a little child and taste the summer-tide.
I will away; the sunny world is wide,--
And desolate," her aching heart replied.

   Yet not the less she bade the nuns farewell
In courteous words, and covered up her pride,
Saying, "O my sisters, it is yours to hide
For ever in your Husband's wounded side.
Yet He, you know, ere he was crucified,
Went forth into the wilderness to dwell,
And taste, before the Cross, the might of Hell;
And I must meet Him there, and there be tried."
Nor knew she whether she spake truth, or lied,
Of some fierce trial which she thought to bide.
So the nuns kissed her, and they shut the door,
Who neither on that day nor any more
Beheld again the beauty of Ganore.
But, as one stealing silently from thrall,
The Queen went softly by the cloister-wall,
Where the green moss deadened her light footfall.
Turning away from the waste harvest-lands,
Which at that time were desolate with war,
Upon whose edge the quaint peaked convent stands
Upon a little knoll of jutting moor,
Jutting into a sea of yellow corn,
Bounded by a grey scoop of granite shore,
Too thinly veiled by withered bents forlorn,
Where Lancelot had ridden, but Ganore
Would have died rather than have followed him.
And round the knoll the fringe of copse was dim
With tangled glades she had not trod before,
And she passed into them, and was content;
For through the copse a leaping river went,
Tawny between the purple-lichened rocks:
Ripe iris-heads were green among the bent,
And here and there a spike of foxglove grew,
Where through the twisted oaks the sun broke through;
And overhead was a soft noise of flocks,
Feeding on purple, overarched with blue.
So she went stumbling softly through the shade,
By a green path made rough with roots and stones,
Where still, I think, the fly of summer drones,
But no queen stumbles upward through the glade.
But then a dreamy queen went fingering
At reddening berries and at fading flowers,
Kissing them often as she wandered on,
In happy memory of those early hours,
Unclouded by the grim dreams of the King,
When she and Lancelot had often gone
Together, in glad lowland woods, in May;
And all that happiness was past away
For ever, and she knew it, but a sleep
Was on her soul; she saw quaint shadows play
Under the leaves, and she forgot to weep;
And something in her heart began to pray,
And magnify God's mother, queen of spring
And harvest, in a little childish lay,
For very gladness of that glorious day.
And from the birckenshaw a milk-white doe
Kissed the Queen's feet, who went on pilgrimage;
Then fluttering out of her fair woodland cage,
Her eyes took wing, seeing a great lake glow
In azure set between two golden hills,
Golden with furze and fading birch below;
Above was purple heath, which fed the rills
That leapt in silver round the rocky head,
With double cirque of green encompassed;
Where grey turf hung between grey crags of stone,
But in the light the grass was golden green.
Then at her left Ganore espied a crone,
Branded as bondmaid to the Holy Grail,
Who wore her white hair woven for a veil,
Crowned with gold rays, for she too was a queen,
And sat upon the black coils of a snake,
And her blue feet hung down in the blue lake,
Nailed to an iron cross, but did not bleed;
And backwards she was spelling out a creed.
But higher up she saw a white flock feed,
And upon each there were three locks of red,
And in the figure of the cross they fed;
Their shepherd was a boy in gay attire
Of many colours, with a crook of gold;
He lay as haply fifteen summers old,
But where his face should be there was a fire,
Whence came a carolling how the stars should pale
Before the radiance of the Holy Grail.
Ganore beheld, and did not think it strange,
For all these sights were fixed in the bright day,
And seemed as if they could not pass away,
But had been uncontaminate by change
Since the world was, abiding in one stay.
Wherefore Ganore, beholding, only sighed,
"How many of the Table would have died,
And held the forfeit of life's earthly bliss
Too cheap a purchase for a sight like this!"
But to the shepherd-boy the old Queen cried,
"When wilt thou take her captive to the Grail?"
But from the fire there came a sighing wail,
"How can I, for her love is crucified?"
Whereat Ganore fled up the steep hillside
Towards the right, but one of that fair flock
Leapt from the shadow of a brambly rock,
And thenceforth went before her for a guide;
But when Ganore laid hand upon its head,
Her hand, and all the wool it touched, were red.
So they pushed on together through the brake,
And ever as they clomb Ganore looked down
Over the steep green slope to the blue lake,
And marvelled, "How if once my steps should slide!"
And thought she saw far off the old Queen frown.
But when they won the crest of that glad slope,
Ganore was disappointed of her hope
To look upon new lands and a new sky;
Only she saw an upward stretching moor,
Where in the treacherous peat the black pools lie,
And no heath grew thereon, but rushes hoar:
And these were autumn hued, and all the green
Was moss, wherethrough the still moor waters run.
And as she journeyed on, the lonely queen
Looked up into the sky, and missed the sun,
And missed the shapely peaks of splintered rock,
And missed the shepherd with his magic flock,
And shuddered in the wailing evening wind,
And saw the country gleam below, behind,
In the warm brilliance of the sun's broad ray;
And said, "Alas for those who walk on high,
Because for them the sun makes haste to set!"
And then she spake again, "O God, forget
My sin, and give me light before I die,"
For the chill purple air was full of death;
Nor knew she how one little ridge of clay
Shut out the glorious deathbed of the day.
And then she went a little further on,
Hanging her head because the light was gone,
And stumbled in the reeds, and caught her breath;
For suddenly she stood against the sky,
And close beneath her lay a breadth of sea,
Plashing against a space of weedy shore,
Still dripping from the ebbing waves, and bright
With bars of purple, flecked with ruddier gold,
For on the left the thunderclouds were rolled
Each upon each, to slumber through the night,
And through their curtains glared the fiery sun.
But in the east, upon the right, Ganore
Saw a dim purple clinging round the sea,
Like a dim veil that clings about a nun;
And a soft rose flushed the chill middle sky,
And in the rose, the young moon rode on high;
But Queen Ganore fell down, and bent the knee,
Trembling alone at God's great majesty.
Then she went down, slowly with knocking knees,
Catching at tufts of grass and stunted trees,
By a dry watercourse, and heard the breeze
Hiss over the steep slope of loose dry stone,
And crossed her bleeding hands, and bowed her head:
"If I die here,--what matter were I dead!
None will lament for me, I am alone."
But she died not, but gained the lonely shore,
And saw the white sheep skipping on before,
And waxed more hopeful following where it led
Still to the west, and it was twilight now,
And in the twilight every rocky brow
Showed sharp and clear against the ghost of day,
Against clear hungry spiritual grey.
But, with the sun, the wind had died away;
So all was peace, and you could scarcely hear
The loving plash of the returning tide,
As though some tender angel hovering near
Made all things to forget their strength and pride.
And so in peace, Ganore turned round a rock
Sharply, and she was in a little bay,
Fronting the perfect circle of the west;
And on the sands a little shallop lay
Ready to float upon the ebb to sea,
Wherein was neither anchor, helm, nor oar,
But one fair sail of purple wrought with gold,
And in the sheets a little crimson fold,
Wherein a scroll in silver words to say,
"For the espousals of the Queen Ganore."
Whereat the queen was troubled when she read,
And knew that she was taken in the bay,
For now on either side the full sea rolled;
So she, adventuring on the mystery,
Sat in the boat, and took upon her knee
The patient firstling of the magic flock,
And waited, bowing down her black veiled head
Over her white hands folded on her breast,
And after her long journey took sweet rest,
Where, on the solitary, rock-bound shore,
The balmy night came down upon Ganore.

---

---

CAMELFORD

by

DOUGLAS B. W. SLADAN

          Camelford--Camelot

                        I.

Not Camelot the towered--the goodly town 
   Upon the shining rive, whither passed
   The Lady of Shalott, when fallen at last
A victim to her spell, slow-wafted down!
Not Camelot the towered, the glittering crown
   Of all King Arthur's cities! Yet thou hast
   Thy legend of the King--how Modred massed
His traitor legions, where the waters brown
Run neath the Bridge of Slaughter, how the King,
   With Launcelot dishonoured, Tristram slain
And half of his Round-table following
   Dead or apostate--triumphed; then was ta'en;
Stricken to death, by bold Sir Bedivere
To Dozmary and passed upon the mere.

 

          Camelford--Slaughter Bridge

                        II.

In the soft prelude of an August night
   We sallied forth from Camelford in quest
   Of where his last great battle in the west
Brought death to Athur. Grey the gloaming light
Ere we were in the valley of the fight,
   A spot by Nature framed for fierce contest,
   With ridge commanding ridge, and crest on crest,
On either side a little river, bright
   With waving sedge and darting trout. The bridge
      Was wreathed with blackhaired spleenwort and wild flowers,
   And the rank grass beneath the lowest bridge
      Guarded a stone, in characters not ours,
   Claimed by the country-folk with wondering eyes
   To tell that Arthur underneath it lies.

---

Legends/Sagas

---

---

PASTORAL OF GALAHAD

by

ELINOR SWEETMAN

The blackthorn-flower hath fallen away--
The blackthorn-flower that wise men say
Keeps wild and variable skies
As long as it may stay:
But here's the gorse, and here's the whin,
And here the pearlèd may appears,
And poison-weeds of satin skin
Through every bank prick long green ears
To hear the cuckoo-cries.

By early field and coppice dark,
One cometh singing like the lark;
His limbs with silver plates are clad
More bright than beechen-bark;
And bathed in mist, half sun, half steam,
The yokels made their clumsy bow,
Or pull aside their smoking team
To murmur kneeling in the plough:
"Here cometh Galahad."

And Galahad hath stayed his song
To help the labouring hinds along,
And prayed them, pitying the dumb,
To spare both goad and thong;
And blessed them all, and wandered forth
Through pasture purpled o'er with thyme,
And cried unto the fragrant earth,
And louder than the minster chime:
"Laudate Dominum!"

For earth is soft with summer's dole:
Each worn-out mare hath got a foal
To suck her weariness away,
And make old bruises whole;
And deep in grass may weaklings rest
Beside the milky mother-things;
The starling by his hidden nest
Like a low sound of bubbling springs
Chuckles the livelong day.

"I thank Thee, Lord," Sir Galahad said,
"Thy sinless earth is happy made."
By day, by night, his thrilling voice
Ringeth through sun and shade.
At eve he picks the flowering thorn
To scourge therewith his shoulders bare;
The flowers fly off, the flesh is torn,
Yet ever more he sings in prayer:
"Rejoice, my heart, rejoice."

Now with the full-leaved Whitsuntide
The truant knights to Camelot ride,
That they may keep the festival
By noble Arthur's side.
And some are bronzed by wind and sun,
And some are seamed with blows and care,
And all are full of speech; but none
The record of his soul lays bare
Within that courtly hall.

Eleven at the Table Round
With gemmy carcanets are crowned:
The twelfth hath flowers of woodroffe wild
Around his forehead bound.
He cometh singing like the lark--
He entereth gay with garlands green--
"Art shepherd-clown or chapel-clerk,
O knight?" said Guinevere the queen
To Galahad undefiled.

"Why Galahad this joyous mien?
O Galahad where hast thou been?
Hath prayed and fasted all the Lent? ¹
What vision hast thou seen?"
But Galahad throws his garland down:
"O king, O knights, no monk am I;
Nor yet, my queen, a shepherd-clown;
In wanderings 'neath the open sky
Mine idle days were spent.

"In grassy ways I set my feet;
I tuned mine ears to chirp and bleat;
I saw a sickle-moon at birth
Over the young green what.
I sate among the kindly beasts
And knew them seasonably glad;
Of balsam-herbs I made my feasts;
A happier man than Galahad
Was never seen on earth.

"My heart was glad for that I knew
The fallen bole had greened anew,
And sucking things were glad and mad
And gambolled in the dew;
For when new leaves come round the bole,
And every beast hath young unto her,
O king, within the loneliest soul
Are silent place all in flower!"
Answereth Galahad.

"Shame! shame!" cry then the Table Round,
"What! never a blow, and never a wound?
And never a holy image kissed
In crypts beneath the ground?"
Saith Galahad: "I think no shame;
The story of the Lord of all
When first on Christmas night He came
Beginneth with a pastoral:
Even your captain, Christ.

"Have ye not heard of ass and ox
That warmed the stable in the rocks?
Have ye not read of them that kept
Night-watches o'er their flocks?
And shall His humble virgin knight
With herds and shepherds scorn to dwell,
If He who leads all heaven's might
To battle with the crews of hell,
By beasts of burden slept?

"I am not less a soldier sealed,
Because in life of tilth and field
I saw the light, I heard the call,
That God Himself revealed.
But king, hast thou a perilous quest,
And would'st thou doubt which knight to send?
Mine arm is strong, my heart at rest--
Behold the man!"
                         Here hath an end
Sir Galahad's pastoral.

---

1 The text reads feasted , but fasted is obviously intended.

---

---

PASTORAL OF LANCELOT

by

ELINOR SWEETMAN

The field was green, and green the elder-bough;
The land all burnished with unopened bud
Let the large light and wholesome wind blow through
Its airy glades and ragged underwood,
Where now with boisterous breath the early year
Like a young child in lusty hardihood
Stretched out its growing days; the roughcoat steer
Trampled his plashy meadow to a slough,
Or drank his fill at pools of melted snow.

Behold them riding two and two abreast
Along the path that leads from Merlin's hall!
Through the bare copse and o'er the lone hill-crest--
Lancelot, and Galahad, and Percival,
Tristram, and Bors, and many a knight beside,
All sealed in Christ to seek the San Graäl
Wherein men's sinful souls are purified;
All Arthur's Table Round, all Camelot's best
Perilous pilgrims of a holy quest.

Down in the reeds, where marshy ways divide,
Two mournful eyes stare out the stems between;
It is the faun that aye at Easter-tide
Pipes up the sap in boughs and rushes green.
Poor waif of lost and luscious years gone by,
To whom sweet earth hath place of joyance been,
What should he know of doleful Calvary?
Of Jewish spear, or of the Riven Side
That fills the chalice of the Crucified?

He pipeth, and the meadow heareth him,
He calls the little grasses by their name,
He pipeth till the sluices overbrim,
And the green life shoots up like altar-flame;
He pipeth as the knights come trampling nigh--
But now his sweetest song is hushed in shame,
And he is sorrowful he knows not why;
For these have Sabbath at their hearts, and dim
Seems the wild voice beside the river-rim.

Anon he pipes again, and April hears,
And muffles up the parted knights in mist,
And weeps in meadows all her moon of tears,
And bids her warm winds whisper what they list.
Lo! now were holy pilgrimage to pass
Where leaf laps leaf, and bough with bough hath kissed,
Well might it pause: so murmurous is the grass--
So deep--so thick!--Sir Lancelot by the meres,
Hears the wild waters roaring in his ears.

For all life sings, and singing it sucks down
The noble heart of Arthur's noblest knight;
A little soulless faun hath willed him drown
Deep, deep in mounting waves of Spring delight.
"O Lancelot," sigh the branches overhead,
"Come rest awhile: the Grail is not in sight."
"O Lancelot," lisp the grasses, "make thy bed
Here on the kindly earth; forget renown
And thy sick soul of all but dream discrown."

Sir Lancelot lieth in the lone green-wood,
Sir Lancelot wrestleth in the tall grass-spears:
Fain would he think upon the Holy Rood,
And Christ's red cup, and sweet Saint Mary's tears;
But then come memories of the balmy lips
And the soft eyelids that are Guinevere's--
He dreams, and as he dreams, wild apple dips
Her brooding boughs, and flowers of milk and blood
Between his strong convulsèd heart and God.

And times he saith: "Why must man aye forego?
And why is life a nobler thing through pain?"
And times: "Since love's sweet apple hangs so low,
Shall I not strongly grasp and count it gain?"
And thousand times he yearneth for the Grail,
And God's own blood to cleanse his life from stain;
And prays against his love to no avail.
Love's immortality hath root in woe:
All human tragedies do prove it so.

Three cups of life are proffered to his taste:
One is the chalice of forbidden bliss;
But though his lonely spirit lieth waste
In wish thereof, he is too great for this.
One is the chalice of the San Graäl:
For this he is too base: no lip may kiss
The cup wherefrom the pure apostles all
Drank, when their loving Saviour blessed it last,
Save that of meekest men, and maidens chaste.

One cup is left to him: the cup of pain.
O bitter wine! can life be nourished so?
Pain and renouncement ever; these remain
When vision is all too high, and dream too low.
Drink deep, Sir Lancelot, this draught is blest;
Then back to Camelot through young April go;
Though thou hast failed upon a higher quest,
Yet none the less God's chalice shalt thou drain,
And in thine ear the faun will pipe in vain.

But who shall glimpse the Holy Grail of God?
Not Lancelot, bravest man, and sternest knight,
Nor Tristram, nor the hundred more who rode
From Camelot gates that April morning bright.
Yet Galahad still trusteth in his heart,
And of the mystic chalice hopeth sight;
In fast and prayer his days are spent apart;
And wheresoe'er his step hath touched the sod
Spring lily-tuft and angus-castus bud.

Hardby his chapel-cave a blasted thorn
Withdrew in pain from earth its roots accurst:
Long leafless years in agony outworn,
Had left it lone, and naked, and athirst,
With limbs that evermore did rot and twist;
And none to pass that way at even durst;
But Galahad beholding, thought: "The Christ
On some such wood as this was sure up-borne."
And prayed among its shadows night and morn.

Now as he kneeleth underneath the spray,
One cometh stumbling like a hunted beast
That all day long hath kept the hounds at bay,
And falleth blindly on a place of rest.
With hands that grasp the tree this other lies
Like some new growth of its contorted breast;
But can wood breathe or hath it anguished eyes?
And Galahad for pity cannot pray,
Nor "Rise thou noble knight" to Lancelot say.

But from an incorrupted heart he cries:
"O Christ Who camest not to call the just
But sinners, and for them did'st agonise;
Bethink Thee man was moulded out of dust,
Nor lay this sin unto my brother's charge."
Again he cries with tears: "In Thee I trust!"
And eyes through fast and vigil over-large
He raiseth meekly to the evening skies,
As he would pierce the floors of paradise.

Behold! those glorious clouds above the wood
Are stirred with pinions of an angel-quire,
And in their midst, the Chalice of the Blood
The blessed Grail of Galahad's desire.
Impelled and pressed by deathless charity,
Bathes men and angels with a bloom of fire,
Wherein the holy seraphs move, and dye
More deeply red their vesture crimson-hued,
Baptising all things from its burning flood.

O blessed are the pure! They shall not fail
To see the Lord their God as in a glass;
Their souls have eyes, their flesh is but a veil--
Thus Galahad found grace above. Alas
For Arthur's greatest lying at his feet!
The faun is shrivelled like a wisp of grass,
Withered by passage of the Paraclete,
When Lancelot lifteth up his forehead pale--
Sir Lancelot hath not seen the Holy Grail.

---

---

A FAMOUS PREDICTION OF MERLIN,
THE BRITISH WIZARD,
WRITTEN ABOVE A THOUSAND YEARS AGO,
AND RELATING TO THE YEAR 1709
WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY T. N. PHILOMATH
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1709

by

JONATHAN SWIFT

Last year was published a paper of predictions, pretended to be written by one Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; but the true design of it was to ridicule the art of astrology, and expose its professors as ignorant, or impostors. Against this imputation, Dr. Partrige hath learnedly vindicated himself in his Almanack for that year.

For a farther defence of this famous art, I have thought fit to present the world with the following prophecy. The original is said to be of the famous Merlin, who lived about a thousand years ago: And the following translation is two hundred years old; for it seems to be written near the end of Henry the Seventh's reign. I found it in an old edition of Merlin's Prophecies; imprinted at London by Johan Haukyns, in the year 1530. Page 39. I set it down word for word in the old orthography, and shall take leave to subjoin a few explanatory notes.

SEVEN and TEN addyd to NINE,
Of Fraunce hir Woe thys is the Sygne,
Tamys Rivere twys y-frozen,
Walke sans wetyng Shoes ne Hosen,
Then cometh foorthe, Ich understonde,
From Toune of Stoffe to fattyn Londe,
An herdie Chiftan, woe the Morne
To Fraunce, that evere he was borne.
Then shall the Fyshe beweyle his Bosse;
Nor shal grin Berrys make up the Losse.
Yonge Symnele shall again miscarrye:
And Norways Pryd again shall marrey.
And from the Tree where Blosums fele,
Ripe Fruit shall come, and all is wele.
Reaums shall daunce honde in honde,
And it shall be merye in old Inglonde.
Then old Inglonde shall be no more,
And no Man shall be sorie therefore.
Geryon shall have three Hedes agayne,
Till Hapsburge makyth them but twayne.

Explanatory Notes
Seven and Ten . This line describes the year when these events shall happen. Seven and ten make seventeen, which I explain seventeen hundred, and this number added to nine makes the year we are now in; for it must be understood of the natural year, which begins the first of January.

Tamys Ryvere twys , &c. The River Thames frozen twice in one year, so as men to walk on it, is a very signal accident; which perhaps hath not fallen out for several hundred years before; and is the reason why some astrologers have thought that this prophecy could never be fulfilled; because they imagined such a thing could never happen in our climate.

From Toune of Stoffe , &c. This is a plain designation of the Duke of Marlborough. One kind of stuff used to fatten land is called Marle , and every body knows, that Borough is a name for a town; and this way of expression is after the usual dark manner of old astrological predictions.

Then shall the Fyshe , &c. By the Fish is understood the Dauphin of France, as the Kings eldest sons are called: It is here said, he shall lament the loss of the Duke of Burgundy, called the Bosse, which is an old English word for Hump-shoulder or Crook-back , as that Duke is known to be: And the prophecy seems to mean, that he should be overcome, or slain. By the Grin Berrys , in the next line, is meant the young Duke of Berry, the Dauphin's third son, who shall not have valour or fortune enough to supply the loss of his eldest brother.

Yonge Symnele , &c. By Symnele is meant the pretended Prince of Wales; who, if he offers to attempt any thing against England, shall miscarry as he did before. Lambert Symnel is the name of a young man noted in our histories for personating the son (as I remember) of Edward the Fourth.

And Norways Pryd , &c. I cannot guess who is meant by Norways Pride , perhaps the reader may, as well as the sense of the two following lines.

Reaums shall , &c. Reaums , or as the word is now, Realms , is the old name for Kingdoms : And this is a very plain prediction of our happy union, with the felicities that shall attend it. It is added, that Old England shall be no more, and yet no man shall be sorry for it. And, indeed, properly speaking, England is now no more; for the whole island is one kingdom, under the name of Britain.

Geryon shall &c. This prediction, though somewhat obscure is wonderfully adapt. Geryon is said to have been a king of Spain, whom Hercules slew. It was a fiction of the poets, that he had three heads, which the author says he shall have again. That is, Spain shall have three kings; which is now wonderfully verified: For, besides the King of Portugal, which properly is part of Spain, there are now two rivals for Spain; Charles and Philip. But Charles being descended from the Count of Hapsburgh, founder of the Austrian family, shall soon make those heads but two; by overturning Philip, and driving him out of Spain.

Some of these predictions are already fulfilled; and it is highly probable the rest may be in due time: And, I think, I have not forced the words, by my explication, into any other sense than what they will naturally bear. If this be granted, I am sure it must be also allowed, that the author (whoever he were) was a person of extraordinary sagacity; and that astrology brought to such perfection as this, is, by no means, an art to be despised; whatever Mr. Bickerstaff, or other merry gentlemen are pleased to think. As to the tradition of these lines, having been writ in the original by Merlin; I confess, I lay not much weight upon it: But it is enough to justify their authority, that the book from whence I have transcribed them, was printed 170 years ago, as appears by the title-page. For the satisfaction of any gentleman, who may be either doubtful of the truth, or curious to be informed; I shall give order to have the very book sent to the printer of this paper, with directions to let any body see it that pleases; because I believe it is pretty scarce.

---

---

QUEEN YSEULT

by

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

CANTO 1

Of the birth of Sir Tristram, and how he voyaged into Ireland

In the noble days were shown
Deeds of good knights many one,
Many worthy wars were done.

It was time of scath and scorn
When at breaking of the morn
Tristram the good knight was born.

He was fair and well to see
As his mother's child might be:
Many happy wars had he;

Slew Moronde the knight alone,
Whence was all the ill begun
That on Blancheflour was done.

For long since Queen Blancheflour
Took a knight to paramour,
Who had served her well of yore.

And across the waters dim
And by many a river's rim
Went Queen Blancheflour with him.

Many a bitter path she went,
Many a stone her feet had rent,
But her heart was well content.

"Lo!" she said, "I lady free
Took this man for lord of me
Where the crowned saints might see.

"And I will not bid him go,
Not for joyance nor for woe,
Till my very love he know."

When he kissed her as they went,
All her heart was well content,
For the love that she him meant.

Now this knight was called Roland,
And he had within his hand
Ermonie the happy land.

So five months in Ermonie
Dwelt they in their pleasure free;
For they knew not what should be.

Then came Moronde with his men,
Warring with her lord again.
All her heart was bitter then.

But she said: "If this be so,
Tho' I die, he shall not know."
And she kissed and bade him go;

And he wept and went from her.
Then was all the land astir
With a trouble in the air.

When Roland the knight was gone,
Praise of men his warriors won
Warring well before the sun.

But Moronde the evil knight
Smote him falsely in the fight,
Slew him basely out of sight.

Then was weeping long and sore:
For the great love they him bore
All men wept but Blancheflour.

But she took her golden ring
And a fair sword of the king
Wrought with many a carven thing.

With no crown about her head,
Thinking wild thoughts of the dead,
Evermore she fled and fled.

Far within the forest fair,
A great anguish came on her
Till a strong manchild she bare.

And she fain had suckled him,
There beneath the lindens dim,
Round a fountain's weedy brim.

But too soon came death to take
All her beauty for his sake;
And ere death she moaned and spake.

"Ah, fair child," the lady said,
"For this anguish that it had
All thy mother's heart is dead.

"Sweet, I would not live to see
Any sorrow rest on thee,
Better thou hadst died with me.

"Only thou art still too fair
For that smile I cannot bear
In such eyes as Roland's were.

"Now, fair child, mine own wert thou
(And she kissed the small soft brow)
But for death that takes me now.

"And a bitter birth is thine;
But no man can stain thy line
With a shame that was not mine.

"Thou art pure and princely born;
Fairer name was never worn,
Past the touch of any scorn.

"Now thy grief has come on me,
As I prayed that it might be
Lest some woe should rest on thee."

Wept the low voice musical;
"Now that mine has given thee all,
Better love thy love befall.

"Purer prayers be round thy sleep,
Truer tears than these that drip
On thy tender cheek and lip.

"Now, dear child, of all on earth
Thou art yet the fairest birth
For the pain thy life was worth.

"Sweetest name and sweetest heart,
Now I see thee as thou art
I have had the better part.

"For the grief my love has had,
May the sweet saints keep thee glad
Tho' thy birth were strange and sad.

"Now, dear child" (her thin voice strove
Thro' the drawn dry sobs to move),
"Leave I thee to Christ's own love."

So she died in that dark place,
With the anguish in her face;
Mary took her into grace.

On the robe was sown her name,
Where a fine thread white as flame
Thro' the coloured samite came.

For on skirt and hem between
Wrought she letters white and green
"This is Blancheflour the Queen."

There men found her as they sped,
Very beautiful and dead,
In the lilies white and red.

And beside her lying there,
Found a manchild strong and fair
Lain among the lilies bare.

And they thought it were ill fate,
If the child, for fear or hate,
They should leave in evil state.

So they took him lying there,
Playing with the lady's hair,
For his face was very fair.

And so tenderly he played,
Half asmile and half afraid,
With her lips and hair, I said,

That the strong men for his sake
Could have wept for dear heartache
At the murmurs he did make.

And the strongest lightly stept
Forth to where the mother slept;
Stooping over her, he wept.

Lightly bowed above the child
The large face whose might was mild
With black-bearded lips that smiled.

Then he took it of his grace,
Bowed him where she lay in place,
Put to hers the little face.

Then they softly buried her
Where the greenest leaves did stir,
With some white flowers in her hair.

And for the sweet look he had,
Weeping not but very sad,
Tristram by his name they bade.

"For he looks upon her so,
Pity where he should not grow
All the piteous thing to know."

And they took the sword and ring
That were of Roland the king,
Wrought with many a carven thing.

So they bred him as they knew;
And a noble child he grew,
Like a tree in sun and dew.

Ere he was ten summers old
All the sorrow they him told,
Showed the sword and ring of gold.

Kissed the boy both sword and ring;
"As my father was a king,
I will wreak this bitter thing."

Kissed the boy both ring and sword;
"As my mother to her lord,
Fast I cling to this my word."

So he grew in might and grace,
With her look about his face:
All men saw his royal race.

But when twenty years were done
At the rising of the sun
Tristram from his place was gone.

Forth with warriors is he bound
Over many a change of ground,
To have wreak of Sir Moronde.

When he came to Ermonie,
Bare upon the earth bowed he,
Kissed the earth with kisses three.

To the city men him bring,
Where the herald stood to sing
"Largesse of Moronde the king!"

To the king came Tristram then,
To Moronde the evil man,
Treading softly as he can.

Spake he loftily in place:
A great light was on his face:
"Listen, king, of thy free grace.

"I am Tristram, Roland's son;
By thy might my lands were won,
All my lovers were undone.

"Died by thee Queen Blancheflour,
Mother mine in bitter hour,
That was white as any flower.

"Tho' they died not well aright,
Yet, for thou art belted knight,
King Moronde, I bid thee fight."

A great laughter laughed they all,
Drinking wine about the hall,
Standing by the outer wall.

But the pale king leapt apace,
Caught his staff that lay in place
And smote Tristram on the face.

Tristram stood back paces two,
All his face was reddened so
Round the deep mark of the blow.

Large and bright the king's eyes grew:
As knight Roland's sword he drew,
Fiercely like a pard he flew.

And above the staring eyes
Smote Moronde the king flatwise,
That men saw the dear blood rise.

At the second time he smote,
All the carven blade, I wot,
With the blood was blurred and hot.

At the third stroke that he gave,
Deep the carven steel he drave,
Thro' King Moronde's heart it clave.

Well I ween his wound was great
As he sank across the seat,
Slain for Blancheflour the sweet.

Then spake Tristram, praising God;
In his father's place he stood
Wiping clean the smears of blood,

That the sword, while he did pray,
At the throne's foot he might lay;
Christ save all good knights, I say.

Then spake all men in his praise,
Speaking words of the old days,
Sweeter words than sweetest lays.

Said one, "Lo the dead queen's hair
And her brows so straight and fair;
So the lips of Roland were."

For all praised him as he stood,
That such things none other could
Than the son of kingly blood.

Round he looked with quiet eyes;
"When ye saw King Moronde rise,
None beheld me on this wise."

At such words as he did say,
Bare an old man knelt to pray;
"Christ be with us all to-day.

"This is Tristram the good lord;
Knightly hath he held his word,
Warring with his father's sword."

Then one brought the diadem,
Clear and golden like pure flame;
And his thanks did grace to them.

Next in courteous wise he bade
That fair honour should be had
Of the dear queen that was dead.

So in her great sorrow's praise
A fair tomb he bade them raise
For a wonder to the days.

And between its roof and floor
Wrote he two words and no more,
Wrote Roland and Blancheflour .

That was carven sharp in gold,
For a great praise to behold,
Where the queen lay straight and cold,

All was graven deep and fine,
In and out, and line with line,
That all men might see it shine.

So far off it sprang and shone,
Ere ten paces one had gone,
Showing all the sorrow done.

And the pillars, that upbore
The large roof for evermore,
In wrought flowers her sweet name wore:

Points of stone carved gently all,
Wrought in cusp and capital,
Climbing still to creep and fall.

And in many a tender nook,
Traced soft as running brook,
Shone her face's quiet look.

And above they wrought to lie
King Roland all white on high,
With the lady carven by.

Very patient was her face,
Stooping from its maiden place
Into strange new mother-grace.

Parted lips and closing eyes,
All the quiet of the skies
Fills her beauty where she lies.

On her hair the forest crown
Lets the sliding tresses down,
Touched ere dark with golden brown;

Both with carven hands uplift,
Praying softly as at shrift,
So it stood a kingly gift.

And when all was graven fair
Tristram came, and standing there
Kissed his mother's tender hair.

Then he bade them take for King
His true father in each thing,
Him who saved the sword and ring.

So they hearkened to his word,
And they took to be their lord
Him who kept the ring and sword.

Then by many painful ways,
With a noble thought in chase,
Tristram journeyed many days.

Towards the Cornwall king he bore,
Since an oath of love he swore
For the name of Blancheflour,

That King Mark, her brother true,
He would honour as he knew;
This was he I tell to you.

When he stood in Cornwall there,
Mark beheld him standing bare,
And he knew his sister's hair.

All these things to Mark he told,
To the king so lean and cold,
And he showed her ring of gold.

Then wept all the valiant men,
Wept King Mark upon him then,
Thinking what a grief had been.

Then was Tristram belted knight,
For his happy hand in fight.
Then spake Mark in all men's sight:

"For the love my sister won,
I will honour as I can
This her son, the loved man.

"And this praise I give him here:
He shall go to bring anear
My new bride with noble cheer.

"For strange things are said in place
Of the wonder of her face
And her tender woman's grace."

Spake the king so lean and cold:
"She hath name of honour old,
Yseult queen, the hair of gold.

"All her limbs are fair and strong,
And her face is straight and long,
And her talk is as a song.

"And faint lines of colour stripe
(As spilt wine that one should wipe)
All her golden hair corn-ripe;

"Drawn like red gold ears that stand
In the yellow summer land;
Arrow-straight her perfect hand,

"And her eyes like river-lakes
Where a gloomy glory shakes
Which the happy sunset makes.

"Her shall Tristram go to bring,
With a gift of some rich thing
Fit to free a prisoned king."

As Sir Mark said, it was done;
And ere set the morrow's sun,
Tristram the good knight was gone.

Forth to Ireland bade he come,
Forth across the grey sea-foam,
All to bring Queen Yseult home.

CANTO 2

Of Queen Yseult, and of the voyage to Cornwall

Day by day and year by year
In the quiet chambers here
Grew the lady white and dear.

Day by day and week by week
Grew the glory of her cheek
Till it seemed to breathe and speak.

Day by day and night by night
Grew she in her mother's sight,
Maiden Yseult dear and white.

Ever as her face grew fair
In a light of growing hair
Grew the tresses bright and bare.

For no crown the maiden had,
But with tresses golden-glad
Was her perfect body clad.

And no gems the maiden wore
But the bright hair evermore
All her warm white limbs before.

Ah, dear saints, to see her face
Many would have died in place,
She was wonderful for grace.

Wept for love her mother fair,
Wept for utter love of her,
Kissing soft her maiden hair.

Many maidens have men seen,
But on earth has never been
Any maiden like the queen.

So did all her love endure
In a life most sweet and sure,
Very beautiful and pure.

For her mother and the king
Sang she many a maiden thing,
Standing at their feet to sing.

Unto her came Tristram then,
Sailing straight with many men
For King Mark her love to win.

And most royal gifts he bare,
Robes for any queen to wear,
And great jewels for her hair.

And he brought a royal ring
Such as noble knight should bring,
Wedding her for Mark the king.

Very courteously he spake,
That for holy honour's sake
Maiden Yseult should him take.

So the king bade send for her;
And she came before them there,
Clothed upon with golden hair.

And Sir Tristram for her sight
Praisèd all the saints aright
As men would for happy fight.

And he would have died in place
But for love and knightly grace
That he saw that maiden face.

And he knelt with heart aflame,
Took her robe in sight of them,
Kissed the skirt and kissed the hem.

Ah, dear saints, how well it were,
Thought he, to die knightly there
For that lady's golden hair.

And he thought it very good
He should perish where she stood
Crowned upon with maidenhood.

And his whole heart for her sake
With a large delight did ache
Till it seemed to burn and break.

And he thought it well and meet,
Lain before that lady sweet,
To be trodden by her feet.

And so loved he her least tress,
That his heart strange thoughts did bless
Of its deep unworthiness.

For no nearer would he be
Her he lovèd loyally
With a bright humility.

And he thought him, loving her,
Of sweet words he used to hear,
Lancelot and Guinevere.

And what love some men might see,
So in under-breath spake he,
"Now I know what things they be."

Then the king spake gravely all,
And his large voice in the hall
Ever seemed to grow and fall.

Then the queen spake softlier,
And it seemèd him to bear
A new trouble in the air.

Answered Yseult maidenwise;
Great hot tears grew thro' his eyes,
That he could not speak or rise.

Knowing not what words she said
Seemed to beat upon his head
Noise that vex't him, being dead.

But he spake in courteous wise
So that all the knights did rise
With a light in their grave eyes.

And the king with straight grey hairs
Laid Sir Tristram's hand in hers
As the bridal manner bears.

And her mother that had skill
In all herbs that sain or heal
Arrow-wound or fever ill,

Gave a secret drink of might
That she bade her maiden bright
Drink upon the bridal night.

"For it is a mighty thing,
And great love to both shall bring
If thou drink with Mark the king."

So was Yseult brought to ship,
There she kissed her mother's lip
And sat softly down to weep.

Forth to Cornwall back they come,
Over all the grey salt foam
Brought they maiden Yseult home.

So came Yseult from her own;
Wept the grave king on his throne,
And her mother wept alone.

Now the days grew bright and long,
And her voice the men among
Warmed their spirits like a song.

And the men at oar that rowed,
Seeing Yseult where she trode
For her dear face praisèd God.

For they said, "Was never man
Since the world's great hap began
Such a lady to him wan."

So they spake between their oars,
Rowing level by green shores,
Sloped about with great grey moors.

And when days were full of spring
Tristram prayed her well to sing
In their ears some happy thing.

So the lady sang to them,
And all faces grew aflame,
And on all great glory came.

So the lady sang alway,
And the men rose up to pray,
For her face shone bright as day.

So her song the lady kept,
And their souls to Godwards leapt,
And with pride the meanest wept.

When Queen Yseult's song had end,
All they bowed with head and hand,
Speaking soft in whispers bland.

But with all the summer heat
That about them burned and beat
Sore athirst was Yseult sweet.

For she sang so loud and long
To the rowers rowing strong
That she thirsted in her song.

Than bade Tristram bring her wine
In her chalice carven fine,
Rich with many a tender line.

So the chaliced wine was brought,
And the drink of power that wrought
Change in face and change in thought.

And the wine was fierce and sweet,
But the lady, drinking it,
Shuddered to her hands and feet.

But the drink her mother gave
In the carven chalice brave
Like warm gold did float and wave.

And Sir Tristram, courteous-wise,
With a smile about his eyes
Pledged the queen in knightly guise.

As they drank in love and truth,
Lo, there grew in heart and mouth
As a hot and bitter drouth.

Then he bent towards her there,
And he knew that she was fair,
And he stooped and kissed her hair.

And Queen Yseult, painèd sore
For the love that him she bore,
As she kissed him, trembled more.

At their hearts it stirred and crept,
Round their hearts it grew and leapt,
Till they kissed again and wept.

So was their great love begun,
Sitting silent in the sun,
Such a little thing was done.

And Queen Yseult, weeping still,
Tristram had to do his will
That his list she should fulfil.

Tristram had her body fair,
And her golden corn-ripe hair,
And her golden ring to wear.

So he took the golden ring
That was of Sir Mark the king,
As to serve her in each thing.

And his mother's Yseult had
To keep wisely as he bade;
So they sware it, low and glad.

So they slept the night long there,
And above their faces bare
Flowed and glowed the golden hair.

So to Cornwall did they come
All across the flowing foam,
So was brought Queen Yseult home.

So King Mark his bride hath got
That he little knew, I wot,
When his heart with wine was hot.

And men said, "Great pity is
He such queen should ever kiss,
Little were his need, I wis."

But they knew not what had been,
And with smiles and moans between
On Sir Tristram looked the Queen.

So they brought her by his hold
To the king so lean and cold,
Yseult queen, the hair of gold.

CANTO 3

How Sir Tristram and Queen Yseult loved each other by the space of three years

All that night and all thro' day
Many minstrels bade men play
That the king's great praise they say.

So they sang in court and hall,
But it only grieved them all
Such a bride should him befall.

For none wist what had been done,
Yseult's maidens all but one
Said their queen a bride were gone.

Many days this love grew old,
While abode the hair of gold
By the king so lean and cold.

And such love their love did bless
They had much of happiness
And their hope grew never less.

And at morning when she leant
From her lattice in content
Over him her face was bent.

And on kingly summer eves
When much light is in the leaves,
Had they joy of all that lives.

Sometimes in the garden place,
When much light was in her face,
Would he sing of her great grace.

So she leant to hear his song,
Heard him in the leaves among
Singing in the sweet French tongue.

"This was love that Yseult wan,
That to any maid or man
Spake she courteous as she can.

"This was praise that Yseult had,
That her happiness made glad
Man or maiden that was sad.

"Now this Yseult ever knew
That such love about her grew
As kept all men pure like dew.

"And this Yseult had but one
To love well beneath the sun
Till her very love were done."

And he praised her as he can
For the love that him began
That she loved none other man.

And he praised her without fear,
Like a songbird singing clear,
Lady Yseult white and dear.

Singing where he saw her stand,
"Is none like her in the land,
Golden hair and arrow hand."

And such praises would he sing,
Harping high before the king,
And of many a happy thing.

And men praised him by his name,
But her brows were all aflame
That she from the banquet came.

And she walked alone and said,
"Of such knight was never read."
So that summer they were glad.

But when snows were thick about
Yseult sent for Tristram out
Soft dry leaves of melilote.

That was for a sign to stand
That he came to take her hand
In the happy garden land.

For he sent her words to see,
"Yseult, of thy courtesy,
Have now pity as of me,

"For my love is barren here."
To him came an answer clear
Of the lady white and dear.

So that when his love had got
Those dry leaves of melilote,
He the pain remembered not.

But he saw not where to go,
Lest his feet some man should know,
For the ways were marred with snow.

So his bitter doubt he wrote,
And she sent him for his doubt
The same leaves of melilote.

And he marvelled; but he said,
"Tho' I die, her rede be read."
And for help of Love he prayed.

And it seemèd well to go
By the court where slept he now,
Right against her in the snow.

And at night she came and spake,
"Tristram, as for love's true sake,
All my pleasure bid me take."

And he sware her will to do,
And she smiled that it was so;
"I shall hear thee thro' the snow."

A great wonder took him there,
For her face was very fair
Under all her gathered hair.

And more near and soft she stept,
And both arms about him crept,
That for bitter love he wept.

All his heart was drawn in two
That he wist not what to do;
And she kissed him, thinking so.

Then she raised him tenderly,
Bore him lightly as might be,
That was wonderful to see.

So they passed by trail and track,
Slowly, in the night all black,
And she bore him on her back.

As they twain went on along,
Such great love had made her strong,
All her heart was full of song.

Pausing, she breathed sharply there;
And about her, bowed and bare,
Flashed and fell the golden hair.

Pausing, round her body sweet
Rolled the ripe hair to her feet;
Forth she bare him as was meet.

Thro' the court all white and wide
Straight across from side to side
Bare she him in patient pride.

She was hurt with snow and stone,
Came no sob nor any moan.
That with bare feet had she gone.

And when all her pain was great,
Smiling in such evil state
Did she walk beneath his weight.

And his heart yearned sharp for her,
And he would not breathe or stir
For a pain of bitter fear.

Till she stood on the strewn floor
Right within the chamber door,
With the weight of love she bore.

When he stood beside her there
Smiling, she drew back the hair
From her throat and bosom fair.

All her neck was strained and red;
Then soft words to him she said,
Leaning on his face her head.

And his kisses on her hair
And her throat and shoulders bare
Fierce and bitter kisses were.

Then he wept for anger sweet,
Flung him down to touch her feet
And to kiss them as was meet.

And above him while she stood,
Stains upon her red as blood;
Then she kissed him as he would.

So great love that time had they;
And would God that I could say
All their love by year and day.

Now three years this thing had been,
And no wrath was them between,
For the love he bare the queen.

Till a knight they loved of old
To Sir Mark this marvel told,
To the king so lean and cold.

A great shadow took his face,
Somewhat low he spake in place
And flushed red in little space.

Then his hands began to stir,
Plucking at his face and hair,
Shameful things he spake of her.

Sware he by his fathers dead
(Then his thin face was not red),
"She shall bear the steel," he said.

So he bade to wreak his thought
She should bear the white steel hot;
But the nobles hearkened not.

Then most shameful things he spake
That the nobles for his sake
Seemèd not their sense to take.

And she spake where men might see,
"Thou, Sir Mark, that shamest me,
None I gave my hand but thee.

"And if other ever were
(And a great scorn made her fair)
It was he that standeth there."

Then great laughter laughèd all,
For against the outer wall
Evil-clad he stood in hall.

And the men for very shame
Spake her quit of ill defame,
And Sir Mark bade praise her name.

But for love he bare her so
Softly bade she Tristram go;
Thence to both was wail and woe.

So he went from her apace;
And she dwelt by Mark in place
With a trouble in her face.

CANTO 4

How Sir Tristram came to Brittany

So much grief for him was made,
All the land was changed and sad,
But Queen Yseult nothing said.

Then came Tristram the good knight
From his lady's noble sight,
All athirst for toil and fight.

So he went by many ways
Thro' strange lands by many days,
And in wars he won him praise.

Then for love of Lancelot
And the praise his love had got
Came the knight to Camelot.

There beheld he Guinevere,
All her face like light was clear,
That men shook for loving fear.

And more smooth than steel or glass
All her happy forehead was,
Thro' her eyes some dream did pass.

And he thought of Yseult now,
"For this lady's eyes and brow
She might stand with her, I trow."

But the king and Lancelot
For the great praise he had got
Did him welcome as they mote.

So long time he dwelt with them,
In his fight was found no blame
That he won a noble name.

All men for his sake were glad,
But in thought he ever had
The gold hair that Yseult clad.

And he thirsted for one tress,
Praising her in humbleness.
Men him called of Lyonesse,

For that so his birth had been.
And when many months were seen
Took he farewell of the queen.

Farewell of the king he took,
And set sail with heavy look,
For this time he could not brook.

All his heart so weary was
And so worn with love, alas!
With great love in bitter case,

That he thirsted thence to be,
So they sailed the blowing sea
Till they came to Brittany.

He was shent in evil plight,
As one soiled with storm and fight,
Yet he stood a perfect knight.

For his face was fair and strong,
And his body straight along,
And his deep speech like a song,

And his eyes were clear and sad
As the bitter love they had,
Men for him great marvel made.

And they told him how their lord
Died in war with hand on sword,
Died and held his knightly word.

So his daughter had their land,
Yseult of the white snow-hand,
Pale and still they saw him stand.

Then as one in pain he stirred,
Speaking low some loving word
In a voice that no man heard.

And a great smile overtook
All the trouble of his look,
And he neither breathed nor spoke.

When he came by her in place,
He beheld her small sweet face
And pure eyes of patient grace.

All her face was hushed and dim
As her courcet's pearlèd rim
With a maiden fear of him.

And in courteous wise she bade
That fair honour should be had
Of the knight so pale and sad.

So he dwelt beside her long,
In his heart he would no wrong,
But she drew it like a song;

Some dim song at waking heard
When the tender gloom is stirr'd
With the joy of some sweet bird.

So he gladly dwelt by her
In the grey great castle there,
And she grew a lady fair.

And she mused of him alone,
Musing when the day was done
By the ranges of black stone,

Till her eyes grew strange and deep,
And it seemed they could not sleep
Tho' men saw she did not weep.

And all men that saw her loved
For her quiet eyes approved
All her changes when she moved;

And each day by her he came
For the love of her sweet name
And her love who bare the same.

And as days were come and gone,
With no laughter and no moan,
Love grew up ere doubt was done.

Deep in her sweet soul she kept
All the tender pain that slept
So far down, she never wept.

But in all her heart she said,
"If such care for me he had,
Certes I were dear and glad."

And it fell one gentle day
In the greenest week of May,
That her sorrow went away.

For the day was nearly done,
And among the woods alone
Was Sir Tristram softly gone.

All about the woods were green,
Walked he in the leaves between,
Thinking sweetly of the queen.

What great love he won of her,
And he thirsted for her here,
Arrow hand and golden hair.

Her old praises did he sing,
Hidden in the happy spring
Sang he many a bitter thing.

And the leaves about him shook,
For great weeping overtook
All his voice and quiet look.

And the snow-hand of her grace
Sought him in the garden place,
With a doubt in her sweet face.

And she heard his singing low,
Clear glad words she seemed to know,
And she loved him, singing so.

"This was praise that Yseult wan,
That to any maid or man
Spake she courteous as she can.

"This was praise that Yseult had,
That her happiness made glad
Man or maiden that was sad."

And hereat the sorrow broke
Thro' the happy words he spoke,
And the quick tears marred his look.

But the lady whiter grew,
White as fear and pale as dew,
So his voice her spirit drew.

For she fain would comfort him,
And she shook in heart and limb,
And her eyes were hot and dim.

"Ah," she said, "our love is so
That he will not speak of woe,
And I dare not come to know.

"For I would not any change
Came to make this old life strange,
Or throw love beyond its range.

"Yet indeed he sang my name."
And a slow blush overcame
Her bowed face with maiden flame.

"And he spake sweet things of me
For pure love and courtesy
Where none else had cared to see.

"I that am but simple maid
Shall he give me love," she said,
"With men's praise to crown his head?

"Yet I ween he sang my name,"
And again the glorious shame
All her sweet face overcame.

Then he met her, grave and mild,
And the maiden lips that smiled
Trembled as a chidden child.

And his heart went up for her,
Till each thought that harboured there
Rose as pure as any prayer.

And he wist that it were well
In her quiet love to dwell;
So their marriage-time befell.

For in love to her he spake
And was troubled for her sake,
And the grief her love might make.

And in quiet maiden wise,
While a light fled thro' her eyes
Faster than a shadow flies,

Spake she to him, very low,
Then a fear did overflow
All her heart lest he should know.

But the knight her soft love knew,
And her spirit sweet and true
Where the love lay light as dew.

And such grave pure speech he made
That to listen bowed her head
With still joy of that was said.

And the maiden love snow-pure
In her heart should well endure,
Like a fair tree planted sure.

For she loved him as the light,
And was fairest in his sight
As a lake the noon keeps bright.

So their day of love was glad,
And his face nor proud nor sad,
So his maiden bride he had.

And great joy was thro' the land
When in love the twain should stand,
Tristram and the sweet snow-hand.

Then much grief for him was made,
All the land was changed and sad,
But the cold king's heart was glad.

So came Tristram the good knight
From his lady's noble sight,
All athirst for toil and fight.

And great praise he won him there,
So that all men spake him fair
For the wondrous name he bare.

And when Yseult heard them speak
Died the pain that kept her weak,
Died the sorrow from her cheek.

Forth to Camelot he came,
Riding silent as in shame
Thro' the noises of his fame.

When was made his welcome there,
He beheld Queen Guinevere,
All her face like light was clear.

Thro' her eyes a dream did pass,
And more smooth than steel or glass
All her happy forehead was.

So he thought, "For eyes and brow
She might stand by Yseult now,
Yet were mine as fair, I trow."

All men for his sake were glad,
But in thought he ever had
The gold hair that Yseult clad.

And he thirsted for her eyes
As a bird that bleeds and flies
For the fountain where it dies.

And he yearned to touch her hand,
As a river drawn thro' sand
Thirsts to reach the smooth green land.

And he pined to kiss her mouth,
As a rose in dewless drouth
For the warm rains of the south.

So for thirst of her sweet look
And the hair that shone and shook,
Night or day he could not brook.

Ere a leaf had left its tree,
Sailed he all the blowing sea
Till he came to Brittany.

CANTO 5

Of the bridal night of Sir Tristram and the Lady Yseult aux Blanches Mains

So at night the maidens came;
And they called her by her name,
And she followed without shame.

And the singing-maidens there
Led the bride with tresses bare,
Singing bridal songs of her.

Purple flowers, blue and red,
On the rushes round the bed
Strewed they for her feet to tread.

But about the bed they set
Large white blossoms, white and wet,
Crowns the fairest they could get.

Her blue robe along the hem
Coloured like a lily's stem,
She put off and gave to them.

And she bade the fairest girl
All her soft hair comb and curl
With a comb of jet and pearl.

By the mirrored steel she stood,
Thinking gently as she could
Sweet new thoughts of womanhood.

In his eyes that she would please
Will she seem the queen of these,
With the hair swept round her knees?

Then the tallest maiden came,
Called her softly by her name;
And she lay down without shame.

Then came Tristram softly in;
Long he stood without, I ween,
Thinking old thoughts of the queen.

Sweet old thoughts he could not say,
How in other times he lay
By Queen Yseult till the day.

Softly to the bed he came;
But between the taper's flame
A fair face looked out at them.

He lay down and dreamed: but she
Lay and looked towards the sea;
And a bitter dream dreamt he.

But he stood away and said:
"Lo, an evil rede were read
If I had her maidenhead.

"One that I love more than her
Dwells across the water fair,
Yseult of the golden hair.

"And for love that she has worn
Men will smite her face with scorn,
Shame that such a queen were born!

"Lo, to both much ill were done,
For this Yseult, loving one,
Loves but him below the sun.

"And great shame will overtake
All her beauty for my sake
If her maidenhood I break.

"And this thing shall never be
That for maiden love for me
Men should shame her as they see.

"For some men will say, 'Behold,
Yseult queen, the hair of gold
Was his paramour of old.'

"And for love I loved before
Shall they call her paramour."
So he musèd long and sore.

And the maiden in his sight
Lay beside him, very bright,
Like a sleeper, straight and white.

Then he thought him, lying there,
Of Queen Yseult's golden hair
And the brows of Guinevere.

Spake the snow-hand maidenly,
"Tristram, for thy courtesy
Think thou no scorn to kiss me."

A great tremble took his heart,
Many memories made him start,
Listening as he lay apart.

Sidelong to him crept she close,
Pale as any winter rose
When the air is grey with snows.

For she heard him start and stir,
And drew ever near and near
Lest his heart were wrath with her.

But his eyes grew very dim,
And a tremble went thro' him
Shuddering over heart and limb.

For pure love of her he wept
As in fear she crept and crept
Slowly, lest perchance he slept.

Soft as lighteth bird on bough
Thrice he kissed her, breathing low,
Kissed her mouth and maiden brow.

And in under breath said he
When his face she could not see,
"Christ look over her and me."

Low sweet words of love she said
With her face against his head
On the pillows of the bed.

Then a pleasure bright and mild
Smoothed her sweet face, and she smiled,
Sleeping as a maiden child.

And his hands for love of her
From the throat and shoulders bare
Parted off the ruffling hair.

Then he kissed her hair and head
For the sweet words she had said;
And in kissing her he prayed.

Praying in his heart he spake,
That for Mary's maiden sake
Christ would keep his faith awake.

And the sweet saints knew aright
That he bore him well in fight,
Warring ever in their sight.

And the Mother pitied him,
For he shook in heart and limb,
Lying in the chamber dim.

And he bowed his body fair
Down athwart the window there,
Weeping for the golden hair.

It was wonderful to see
That he wept so bitterly
With his face to the blown sea.

As he turned and softly stept,
Lest perchance she had not slept,
Bitterly he wept and wept.

She lay out before him there,
All her body white and bare
Overswept with waves of hair.

There she rested, breathing low,
Purer than the naked snow,
Beautiful to see and know.

In her sleep she spake and prayed;
And for those dear words she said,
He came softly to the bed.

And in love he would not hide,
Praying between pain and pride,
Laid him softly at her side.

So from evening till the day
At her side in love he lay;
Slept no child as pure as they.

So her love had all it would,
All night sleeping as she could,
Sleeping in her maidenhood.

CANTO 6

How Queen Yseult kept her ring

Days are come and days are gone
Over Cornwall many a one,
Since her ordeal was done.

Mark was tender with his fear,
Lest some worse thing he should hear,
And bade all men honour her.

So Queen Yseult's days were fair,
And her maidens, waiting bare,
Combed and crowned the golden hair.

But King Mark would keep apart,
Lest her eyes should make him start,
Full of envy was his heart.

And his face grew long and lean
And his lips more pale, I ween,
Hiding harsh words of the queen.

And in bitter speech he said,
When much wine had filled his head,
A bad prayer that she were dead.

So the court began to stir,
And the maidens gathered near,
Whispered secret things of her.

And most bitter pain she had,
Painèd thro' her speeches glad,
Till her heart grew faint or mad.

In the pleasure that she made
At the revels the king bade,
Wild and wandering words she said.

And at night when all the room
Spread about her black and dumb,
She lay gazing thro' the gloom.

All old comfort she forgot,
And her throat and lips grew hot,
And her large eyes moistened not.

Then she thought the grave were cold,
And spake soft her name of old,
"Yseult, queen, the hair of gold."

And she wept for that one thing,
For she looked upon the king,
And drew forth her golden ring.

Slept King Mark upon the bed,
Thick hot wine had filled his head,
Some fierce word in sleep he said.

She had thought long since to hear
Speech of Tristram spoken clear,
That his life was kept for her.

And when any knight came nigh
To her place for courtesy,
Saw she Tristram standing by.

And when songs of her were sung,
Heard his voice the leaves among
Singing in the sweet French tongue.

And when harpers harped anew,
Very pale and faint she grew
Like a lily dead in dew.

So she held him dead and lain
Out beyond the water-plain,
Naked under sun and rain.

In the dark she rose to weep,
"Long wet tendrils clasp and creep
Where the good knight lies asleep."

No one heard the words she said
On the pillows of the bed,
Praise and prayer for Tristram dead.

No one saw her girdle slip,
Saw her loosen it to weep,
Thinking how he touched her lip.

Heavily her robe sank white,
Heavily her hair sank bright,
Rustling down in the dead night.

And her breast was loosened so
From the hunger of its woe,
Where the samite rustled low.

Clothèd queenlike sate she there,
Sate she in the moonlight bare,
Golden light and golden hair.

To much evil was she brought,
Very bitter things she thought
Thro' her quiet lips said naught.

And the sweet saints pitied her
As they saw the weeping hair,
And the face so very fair.

At her side no queen might stand,
Was none like her in the land,
Golden hair and arrow hand.

Then she prayed, if any heard,
And the air about her stirr'd
As the motions of a bird.

And she thought an angel came,
Poised his wings of painted flame,
And spoke bitterly her name.

For she bowed before his look,
And her heart such trembling took,
That her limbs with weeping shook.

Then she rose and did not pray,
Far off sounds she heard at play
Blown about a windy bay.

Down athwart the window bright
Leant she into the dead light,
Wept for Tristram the good knight.

The deep sky and sharp grey crag,
Black with many a jut and jag,
The pale stream where stirred the flag,

All the long white lines of sea,
All the long white slope of lea,
In the moonlight watchèd she.

Then again she sank to weep,
In the rushes rustling deep,
Flung a white and golden heap,

And she thought, "The world is wide,
Somewhere I might flee and hide,
So the king should ease his pride.

"And thereafter will he know
All the chance of this our woe,
And repent him, hearing so.

"He will say in all men's sight
That this Yseult had not right,
Who took Tristram for her knight.

"If King Mark should weep," said she,
Thinking what a woe might be,
"Shall not all men pity me?

"For none ever," soft she said,
"Any truer woman had
Than this Tristram that is dead.

"All things had my lord of me,
Love and help and mercy free,
And my thought his thought to be."

So her heart was comforted
Of the bitter pain it had,
As she lay down on the bed.

And the saints sent sleep to her,
In the moonlight very fair,
Golden light and golden hair.

She remembered that old night
When across the courts all white
Bare she Tristram the good knight.

And she smiled with pride anon,
As came to her one by one
All the mercies she had done.

How for very love she bore
Things no woman knew before,
And would bear for evermore.

And a dumb great smile smiled she,
And it deepened still to see,
Till she laughed low laughters three.

And she said, "This love put by
(In a holy voice and high)
Shall not perish tho' I die.

"And when men shall praise him dead
(Both her cheeks flushed royal-red)
All my story shall be said.

"For I shall not blush to know
(And she rose up, speaking so)
That men speak of this my woe.

"For that I love Tristram well
(And her voice rang like a bell)
Is no shame for them to tell.

"Since indeed no shame it were
(Said she, shaking back her hair)
That one loved him thrice as fair.

"For such knight was never seen
(Spake most loftily the Queen)
Since a noble man has been.

"For the wars he warred of old
(Straight she drew the hair of gold)
In all people will be told.

"So by Tristram the good knight
(All her face was full of light)
Shall I stand in all men's sight.

"Hair and eyes and smile and speech
(Soft she wove it, plait and pleach)
Gave I to Sir Tristram each.

"Men would praise me oft in place
(Wondrous was her lighted face)
For my smile and spoken grace.

"Many singers sang of me
(Stately stood she, as a tree)
For pure heart and courtesy.

"Thought and grace and loving heart
(She looked up with lips apart)
All I gave to be his part.

"Now there is no more to say
(Said she softly as one may)
Tho' I die for him ere day."

And she knew the measures bland,
"Is none like her in the land,
Golden hair and arrow hand."

All day long the eager light
Was a trouble in her sight,
And the festal lamps by night.

Then the king soft speeches made,
Half in hate and half afraid,
And she loathed the words he said,

Tho' she hearkened not a whit;
And a sorrow vexed her wit,
Ever turning over it.

And her pride was made most weak,
And a shadow blind and meek
Took her brows and altered cheek.

And old thoughts about her came
When the dais was all aflame
With large lights, each day the same.

And she wist not what to say
Could not move her lips to pray
For the heart that beat alway.

And she paused before her glass,
For so tight the girdle was
By her breast, she could not pass.

And she thought, "If he should come
Back across the grey salt foam
I were altered in his doom.

"Nay," she said, "for love were there,
And the corn-ripe golden hair,
Tho' the face should be less fair."

Then she smiled, and faintlier
Came the silken courtly stir;
But the king's eyes hated her.

And their straight cold look she knew,
And again more faint she grew
Than a lily dead in dew.

So she saw days go and come,
And at night in the old room
Lay she gazing thro' the gloom.

---

---

THE DAY BEFORE THE TRIAL

by

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

King Arthur says being alone.
Now the day comes near and near
I feel its hot breath, and see it clear,
How strange it is and full of fear;
And I grow old waiting here,
Grow sick with pain of Guenevere,
My wife, that loves not me.
So strange it seems to me, so new
To have such shame between us two,
I dare not hold this Mador true
Nor false, because his words ran thro'
My blood with all the shame they drew
And burnt me to the bone; I knew
That some such tale would be
For all these years she grew more fair,
More sweet her low sweet speeches were,
More long and heavy grew her hair,
Not such as other women wear;
But ever as I looked on her
Her face seemed fierce and thin.
I felt half sick, and on my head
The gold crown seemed not gold but lead;
Strange words I heard that no man said,
Strange noises where all noise was dead;
Was it pure blood that made her red
From brows to rounded chin?
Sometimes I knew she loved me not;
Down to my hands the blood went hot
In a dull hate of Launcelot
For all the praise of her he got,
Being so pure of sin.
For he was clean as any maid,
And on his head God's hand was laid
As on a maiden's; so men said;
But I, a woman's hands there weighed
Instead of God's upon my head,
No maid was I, to see
The white Sangreal borne up in air,
To touch at last God's body fair,
To feel strange terror stir my hair
As a slow light went past; but here
I had to my honours year by year,
I had the name of king to bear,
And watch the eyes of Guenevere,
My wife, who loves not me.

---

---

JOYEUSE GARDE

by

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

The sun was heavy; no more shade at all
Than you might cover with a hollow cup
There was in the south chamber; wall by wall,
Slowly the hot noon filled the castle up.
One hand among the rushes, one let play
Where the loose gold began to swerve and droop
From his fair mantle to the floor, she lay;
Her face held up a little, for delight
To feel his eyes upon it, one would say.
Her grave shut lips were glad to be in sight
Of Tristram's kisses; she had often turned
Against her shifted pillows in the night
To lessen the sore pain wherein they burned
For want of Tristram; her great eyes had grown
Less keen and sudden, and a hunger yearned
Her sick face through, these wretched years agone.
Her eyes said "Tristram" now, but her lips held
The joy too close for any smile or moan
To move them; she was patiently fulfilled
With a slow pleasure that slid everwise
Even into hands and feet, but could not build
The house of its abiding in her eyes,
Nor measure any music by her speech.
Between the sunlight came a noise of flies
To pain sleep from her, thick from peach to peach
Upon the bare wall's hot red level, close
Among the leaves too high for her to reach.
So she drew in and set her feet, and rose
Saying "Too late to sleep; I pray you speak
To save me from the noises, lest I lose
Some minute of this season; I am weak
And cannot answer if you help me not,
When the shame catches on my brow and cheek."
For in the speaking all her face grew hot,
And her mouth altered with some pain, I deem
Because her word had stung like a bad thought
That makes us recollect some bitter dream.
She bowed to let him kiss her, and went on:
"All things are changed so, will this day not seem
Most sad and evil when I sit alone
Outside your eyes? will it not vex my prayer
To think of laughter that is twin to moan,
And happy words that make not holier?
Nathless I had good will to say one thing,
Though it seems pleasant in the late warm air
To ride alone and see the last of spring.
I cannot lose you, Tristram; (a weak smile
Moved her lips and went out) men say the king
Hath set keen spies about for many a mile,
Quick hands to get them gold, sharp eyes to see
Where your way swerves across them. This long while
Hath Mark grown older with his hate of me,
And now his hand for lust to smite at us
Plucks the white hairs inside his beard that he
This year made thicker. Seeing this he does
I pray you note that we may meet with him
At riding through the branches growth, and then
Our wine grow bitter at the golden rim
And taste of blood and tears, not sweet to drink
As this new honey wherein juices swim
Of fair red vintage."
Her voice done, I think
He had no heart to answer; yet some time
The noon outside them seem to throb and sink,
Wrought in the quiet to a rounded rhyme.
Then "certes," said he, "this were harm to both
If spears grew thick between the beech and lime,
Or amid reeds that let the river south,
Yet so I think you might get help of me.
Had I not heart to smile, when Iseult's mouth
Kissed Palomydes under a thick tree?
For I remember, as the wind sets low,
How all that peril ended quietly
In a green place where heavy sunflowers blow."

---

---

THE TALE OF BALEN

by

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

                     I

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light,
The world is sweet in sound and sight,
Glad thoughts and birds take flower and flight,
The heather kindles toward the light,
   The whin is frankincense and flame.
And be it for strife or be it for love
The falcon quickens as the dove
When earth is touched from heaven above
   With joy that knows no name.

And glad in spirit and sad in soul
With dream and doubt of days that roll
As waves that race and find no goal
Rode on by bush and brake and bole
   A northern child of earth and sea.
The pride of life before him lay
Radiant: the heavens of night and day
Shone less than shone before his way
   His ways and days to be.

And all his life of blood and breath
Sang out within him: time and death
Were even as words a dreamer saith
When sleep within him slackeneth,
   And light and life and spring were one.
The steed between his knees that sprang,
The moors and woods that shone and sang,
The hours wherethrough the spring's breath rang,
   Seemed ageless as the sun.

But alway through the bounteous bloom
That earth gives thanks if heaven illume
His soul forefelt a shadow of doom,
His heart foreknew a gloomier gloom
   Than closes all men's equal ways.
Albeit the spirit of life's light spring
With pride of heart upheld him, king
And lord of hours like snakes that sting
   And nights that darken days.

And as the strong spring round him grew
Stronger, and all blithe winds that blew
Blither, and flowers that flowered anew
More glad of sun and air and dew,
   The shadow lightened on his soul
And brightened into death and died
Like winter, as the bloom waxed wide
From woodside on to riverside
   And southward goal to goal.

Along the wandering ways of Tyne,
By beech and birch and thorn that shine
And laugh when life's requickening wine
Makes night and noon and dawn divine
   And stirs in all the veins of spring,
And past the brightening banks of Tees,
He rode as one that breathes and sees
A sun more blithe, a merrier breeze,
   A life that hails him king.

And down the softening south that knows
No more how glad the heather glows,
Nor how, when winter's clarion blows
Across the bright Northumbrian snows,
   Sea-mists from east and westward meet,
Past Avon senseless yet of song
And Thames that bore but swans in throng
He rode elate in heart and strong
   In trust of days as sweet.

So came he through to Camelot,
Glad, though for shame his heart waxed hot,
For hope within it withered not
To see the shaft it dreamed of shot
   Fair toward the glimmering goal of fame.
And all King Arthur's knightliest there
Approved him knightly, swift to dare
And keen to bid their records bear
   Sir Balen's northern name.

Sir Balen of Northumberland
Gat grace before the king to stand
High as his heart was, and his hand
Wrought honour toward the strange north strand
   That sent him south so goodly a knight.
And envy, sick with sense of sin,
Began as poisonous herbs begin
To work in base men's blood, akin
   To men's of nobler might.

And even so fell it that his doom,
For all his bright life's kindling bloom
And light that took no thought for gloom,
Fell as a breath from the opening tomb
   Full on him ere he wist or thought.
For once a churl of royal seed,
King Arthur's kinsman, faint in deed
And loud in word that knew not heed,
   Spake shame where shame was nought.

"What doth one here in Camelot
Whose birth was northward? Wot we not
As all his brethren borderers wot
How blind of heart, how keen and hot,
   The wild north lives and hates the south?
Men of the narrowing march that knows
Nought save the strength of storms and snows,
What would these carles where knighthood blows
    A trump of kinglike mouth?"

Swift from his place leapt Balen, smote
The liar across his face, and wrote
His wrath in blood upon the bloat
Brute cheek that challenged shame for note
   How vile a king-born knave might be.
Forth sprang their swords, and Balen slew
The knave ere well one witness knew
Of all that round them stood or drew
   What sight was there to see.

Then spake the great king's wrathful will
A doom for six dark months to fill
Wherein close prison held him, still
And steadfast-souled for good or ill.
   But when those weary days lay dead
His lordliest knights and barons spake
Before the king for Balen's sake
Good speech and wise, of force to break
   The bonds that bowed his head.

                     II

In linden-time the heart is high
For pride of summer passing by
With lordly laughter in her eye;
A heavy splendour in the sky
   Uplifts and bows it down again.
The spring had waned from wood and wold
Since Balen left his prison hold
And lowlier-hearted than of old
   Beheld it wax and wane.

Though humble heart and poor array
Kept not from spirit and sense away
Their noble nature, nor could slay
The pride they bade but pause and stay
   Till time should bring its trust to flower,
Yet even for noble shame's sake, born
Of hope that smiled on hate and scorn,
He held him still as earth ere morn
   Ring forth her rapturous hour.

But even as earth when dawn takes flight
And beats her wings of dewy light
Full in the faltering face of night,
His soul awoke to claim by right
   The life and death of deed and doom,
When once before the king there came
A maiden clad with grief and shame
And anguish burning her like flame
   That feeds on flowers in bloom.

Beneath a royal mantle, fair
With goodly work of lustrous vair,
Girt fast against her side she bare
A sword whose weight bade all men there
   Quail to behold her face again.
Save of a passing perfect knight
Not great alone in force and fight
It might not be for any might
   Drawn forth, and end her pain.

So said she: then King Arthur spake:
"Albeit indeed I dare not take
Such praise on me, for knighthood's sake
And love of ladies will I make
   Assay if better none may be."
By girdle and by sheath he caught
The sheathed and girded sword, and wrought
With strength whose force availed him nought
   To save and set her free.

Again she spake: "No need to set
The might that man has matched not yet
Against it; he whose hand shall get
Grace to release the bonds that fret
   My bosom and my girdlestead
With little strain of strength or strife
Shall bring me as from death to life
And win to sister or to wife
   Fame that outlives men dead."

Then bade the king his knights assay
This mystery that before him lay
And mocked his might of manhood. "Nay,"
Quoth she, "the man that takes away
   This burden laid on me must be
A knight of record clean and fair
As sunlight and the flowerful air,
By sire and mother born to bear
   A name to shame not me."

Then forth strode Launcelot, and laid
The mighty-moulded hand that made
Strong knights reel back like birds affrayed
By storm that smote them as they strayed
   Against the hilt that yeilded not.
Then Tristram, bright and sad and kind
As one that bore in noble mind
Love that made light as darkness blind,
   Fared even as Launcelot.

Then Lamoracke, with hardier cheer,
As one that held all hope and fear
Wherethrough the spirit of man may steer
In life and death less dark or dear,
   Laid hand thereon, and fared as they.
With half a smile his hand he drew
Back from the spell-bound thing, and threw
With half a glance his heart anew
   Toward no such blameless may.

Between Iseult and Guenevere
Sat one of name as high to hear,
But darklier doomed than they whose cheer
Foreshowed not yet the deadlier year
   That bids the queenliest head bow down,
The queen Morgause of Orkney: they
With scarce a flash of the eye could say
The very word of dawn, when day
   Gives earth and heaven their crown.

But bright and dark as night or noon
And lowering as a storm-flushed moon
When clouds and thwarting winds distune
The music of the midnight, soon
   To die from darkening star to star
And leave a silence in the skies
That yearns till dawn find voice and rise,
Shone strange as fate Morgause, with eyes
   That dwelt on days afar.

A glance that shot on Lamoracke
As from a storm-cloud bright and black
Fire swift and blind as death's own track
Turned fleet as flame on Arthur back
   From him whose hand forsook the hilt:
And one in blood and one in sin
Their hearts caught fire of pain within
And knew no goal for them to win
   But death that guerdons guilt.

Then Gawain, sweet of soul and gay
As April ere he dreams of May,
Strove, and prevailed not; then Sir Kay,
The snake-souled envier, vile as they
   That fawn and foam and lurk and lie,
Sire of the bastard band whose brood
Was alway found at servile feud
With honour, faint and false and lewd,
   Scarce grasped and put it by.

Then wept for woe the damsel bound
With iron and with anguish round,
That none to help her grief was found
Or loose the inextricably inwound
   Grim curse that girt her life with grief
And made a burden of her breath,
Harsh as the bitterness of death.
Then spake the king as one that saith
   Words bitterer even than brief.

"Methought the wide round world could bring
Before the face of queen or king
No knights more fit for fame to sing
Than fill this full Round Table's ring
   With honour higher than pride of place:
But now my heart is wrung to know,
Damsel, that none whom fame can show
Finds grace to heal or help thy woe:
   God gives them not the grace."

Then from the lowliest place thereby,
With heart-enkindled cheek and eye
Most like the star and kindling sky
That say the sundawn's hour is high
   When rapture trembles through the sea,
Strode Balen in his poor array
Forth, and took heart of grace to pray
The damsel suffer even him to assay
   His power to set her free.

Nay, how should he avail, she said,
Averse with scorn-averted head,
Where these availed not? none had sped
Of all these mightier men that led
   The lists wherein he might not ride,
And how should less men speed? But he,
With lordlier pride of courtesy,
Put forth his hand and set her free
   From pain and humbled pride.

But on the sword he gazed elate
With hope set higher than fear or fate,
Or doubt of darkling days in wait;
And when her thankful praise waxed great
   And craved of him the sword again,
He would not give it. "Nay, for mine
It is till force may make it thine."
A smile that shone as death may shine
   Spake toward him bale and bane.

Strange lightning flickered from her eyes.
"Gentle and good in knightliest guise
And meet for quest of strange emprise
Thou hast here approved thee: yet not wise
   To keep the sword from me, I wis.
For with it thou shalt surely slay
Of all that look upon the day
The man best loved of thee, and lay
   Thine own life down for his."

"What chance God sends, that chance I take,"
He said. Then soft and still she spake;
"I would but for thine only sake
Have back the sword of thee, and break
   The links of doom that bind thee round.
But seeing thou wilt not have it so,
My heart for thine is wrung with woe."
"God's will," quoth he, "it is, we know,
   Wherewith our lives are bound."

"Repent it must thou soon," she said,
"Who wouldst not hear the rede I read
For thine and not for my sake, sped
In vain as waters heavenward shed
   From springs that falter and depart
Earthward. God bids not thee believe
Truth, and the web thy life must weave
For even this sword to close and cleave
   Hangs heavy round my heart."

So passed she mourning forth. But he,
With heart of springing hope set free
As birds that breast and brave the sea,
Bade horse and arms and armour be
   Made straightway ready toward the fray.
Nor even might Arthur's royal prayer
Withhold him, but with frank and fair
Thanksgiving and leave-taking there
   He turned him thence away.

                     III

As the east wind, when the morning's breast
Gleams like a bird's that leaves the nest,
A fledgeling halcyon's bound on quest,
Drives wave on wave on wave to west
   Till all the sea be life and light,
So time's mute breath, that brings to bloom
All flowers that strew the dead spring's tomb,
Drives day on day on day to doom
   Till all man's day be night.

Brief as the breaking of a wave
That hurls on man his thunderous grave
Ere fear find breath to cry or crave
Life that no chance may spare or save,
   The light of joy and glory shone
Even as in dreams where death seems dead
Round Balen's hope-exalted head,
Shone, passed, and lightened as it fled
   The shadow of doom thereon.

For as he bound him thence to fare,
Before the stately presence there
A lady like a windflower fair,
Girt on with raiment strange and rare
   That rippled whispering round her, came.
Her clear cold eyes, all glassy grey,
Seemed lit not with the light of day
But touched with gleams that waned away
   Of quelled and fading flame.

Before the king she bowed and spake:
"King, for thine old faith's plighted sake
To me the lady of the lake,
I come in trust of thee to take
   The guerdon of the gift I gave,
Thy sword Excalibur." And he
Made answer: "Be it whate'er it be,
If mine to give, I give it thee,
   Nor need is thine to crave."

As when a gleam of wicked light
Turns half a low-lying water bright
That moans beneath the shivering night
With sense of evil sound and sight
   And whispering witchcraft's bated breath
Her wan face quickened as she said:
"This knight that won the sword--his head
I crave or hers that brought it. Dead,
   Let these be one in death."

"Not with mine honour this may be;
Ask all save this thou wilt," quoth he,
"And have thy full desire." But she
Made answer: "Nought will I of thee,
   Nought if not this." Then Balen turned,
And saw the sorceress hard beside
By whose fell craft his mother died:
Three years he had sought her, and here espied
   His heart against her yearned.

"Ill be thou met," he said, "whose ire
Would slake with blood thy soul's desire:
By thee my mother died in fire;
Die thou by me a death less dire."
   Sharp flashed his sword forth, fleet as flame,
And shore away her sorcerous head.
"Alas for shame," the high king said,
"That one found once my friend lies dead;
   Alas for all our shame!

"Thou shouldst have here forborne her; yea,
Were all the wrongs that bid men slay
Thine, heaped too high for wrath to weigh,
Not here before my face to-day
   Was thine the right to wreak thy wrong."
Still stood he then as one that found
His rose of hope by storm discrowned,
And all the joy that girt him round
   Brief as a broken song.

Yet ere he passed he turned and spake:
"King, only for thy nobler sake
Than aught of power man's power may take
Or pride of place that pride may break
   I bid the lordlier man in thee,
That lives within the king, give ear.
This justice done before thee here
On one that hell's own heart holds dear,
   Needs might not this but be.

"Albeit, for all that pride would prove,
My heart be wrung to lose thy love,
It yet repents me not hereof:
So many an eagle and many a dove,
   So many a knight, so many a may,
This water-snake of poisonous tongue
To death by words and wiles hath stung,
That her their slayer, from hell's lake sprung,
   I did not ill to slay."

"Yea," said the king, "too high of heart
To stand before a king thou art;
Yet irks it me to bid thee part
And take thy penance for thy part,
   That God may put upon thy pride."
Then Balen took the severed head
And toward his hostry turned and sped
As one that knew not quick from dead
   Nor good from evil tide.

He bade his squire before him stand
And take that sanguine spoil in hand
And bear it far by shore and strand
Till all in glad Northumberland
   That loved him, seeing it, all might know
His deadliest foe was dead, and hear
How free from prison as from fear
He dwelt in trust of the answering year
   To bring him weal for woe.

"And tell them, now I take my way
To meet in battle, if I may,
King Ryons of North Wales, and slay
That king of kernes whose fiery sway
   Doth all the marches dire despite
That serve King Arthur: so shall he
Again be gracious lord to me,
And I that leave thee meet with thee
   Once more in Arthur's sight."

So spake he ere they parted, nor
Took shame or fear to counsellor,
As one whom none laid ambush for;
And wist not how Sir Launceor,
   The wild king's son of Ireland, hot
And high in wrath to know that one
Stood higher in fame before the sun,
Even Balen, since the sword was won,
   Drew nigh from Camelot.

For thence, in heat of hate and pride,
As one that man might bid not bide,
He craved the high king's grace to ride
On quest of Balen far and wide
   And wreak the wrong his wrath had wrought.
"Yea," Arthur said, "for such despite
Was done me never in my sight
As this thine hand shall now requite
   If trust avail us aught."

But ere he passed, in eager mood
To feed his hate with bitter food,
Before the king's face Merlin stood
And heard his tale of ill and good,
   Of Balen, and the sword achieved.
And whence it smote as heaven's red ire
That direful dame of doom as dire;
And how the king's wrath turned to fire
   The grief wherewith he grieved.

And darkening as he gave it ear,
The still face of the sacred seer
Waxed wan with wrath and not with fear.
And ever changed its cloudier cheer
   Till all his face was very night.
"This damosel that brought the sword,"
He said, "before the king my lord,
And all these knights about his board,
   Hath done them all despite.

"The falsest damosel she is
That works men ill on earth, I wis,
And all her mind is toward but this,
To kill as with a lying kiss
   Truth, and the life of noble trust.
A brother hath she, --see but now
The flame of shame that brands her brow!--
A true man, pure as faith's own vow,
   Whose honour knows not rust.

"This good knight found within her bower
A felon and her paramour,
And slew him in his shameful hour,
As right gave might and righteous power
   To hands that wreaked so foul a wrong.
Then, for the hate her heart put on,
She sought by ways where death had gone
The lady Lyle of Avalon,
   Whose crafts are strange and strong.

"The sorceress, one with her in thought,
Gave her that sword of magic, wrought
By charms whereof sweet heaven sees nought,
That hither girt on her she brought
   To be by doom her brother's bane.
And grief it is to think how he
That won it, being of heart so free
And perfect found in chivalry,
   Shall by that sword lie slain.

"Great pity it is and strange despite
That one whose eyes are stars to light
Honour, and shine as heaven's own height,
Should perish, being the goodliest knight
   That even the all-glorious north had borne.
Nor shall my lord the king behold
A lordlier friend of mightier mould
Than Balen, though his tale be told
   Ere noon fulfil his morn."

                     IV

As morning hears before it run
The music of the mounting sun,
And laughs to watch his trophies won
From darkness, and her hosts undone,
   And all the night become a breath,
Nor dreams that fear should hear and flee
The summer menace of the sea,
So hears our hope what life may be,
   And knows it not for death.

Each day that slays its hours and dies
Weeps, laughs, and lightens on our eyes,
And sees and hears not: smiles and sighs
As flowers ephemeral fall and rise
   About its birth, about its way,
And pass as love and sorrow pass,
As shadows flashing down a glass,
As dew-flowers blowing in flowerless grass,
   As hope from yesterday.

The blossom of the sunny dew
That now the stronger sun strikes through
Fades off the blade whereon it blew
No fleetlier than the flowers that grew
   On hope's green stem in life's fierce light.
Nor might the glory soon to sit
Awhile on Balen's crest alit
Outshine the shadow of doom on it
   Or stay death's wings from flight.

Dawn on a golden moorland side
By holt and heath saw Balen ride
And Launceor after, pricked with pride
And stung with spurring envy: wide
   And far he had ridden athwart strange lands
And sought amiss the man he found
And cried on, till the stormy sound
Rang as a rallying trumpet round
   That fires men's hearts and hands.

Abide he bade him: nor was need
To bid when Balen wheeled his steed
Fiercely, less fain by word than deed
To bid his envier evil speed,
   And cried, "What wilt thou with me?" Loud
Rang Launceor's vehement answer: "Knight,
To avenge on thee the dire despite
Thou hast done us all in Arthur's sight
   I stand toward Arthur vowed."

"Ay?" Balen said: "albeit I see
I needs must deal in strife with thee,
Light is thy wyte thou layest on me;
For her I slew and sinned not, she
   Was dire in all men's eyes as death,
Or none were lother found than I
By me to bid a woman die:
As lief were loyal men to lie,
   Or scorn what honour saith."

As the arched wave's weight against the reef
Hurls, and is hurled back like a leaf
Storm-shrivelled, and its rage of grief
Speaks all the loud broad sea in brief,
   And quells the hearkening hearts of men,
Or as the crash of overfalls
Down under blue smooth water brawls
Like jarring steel on ruining walls,
   So rang their meeting then.

As wave on wave shocks, and confounds
The bounding bulk whereon it bounds
And breaks and shattering seaward sounds
As crying of the old sea's wolves and hounds
   That moan and ravin and rage and wail,
So steed on steed encountering sheer
Shocked, and the strength of Launceor's spear
Shivered on Balen's shield, and fear
   Bade hope within him quail.

But Balen's spear through Launceor's shield
Clove as a ploughshare cleaves the field
And pierced the hauberk triple-steeled,
That horse with horseman stricken reeled,
   And as a storm-breached rock falls, fell,
And Balen turned his horse again
And wist not yet his foe lay slain,
And saw him dead that sought his bane
   And wrought and fared not well.

Suddenly, while he gazed and stood,
And mused in many-minded mood
If life or death were evil or good,
Forth of a covert of a wood
   That skirted half the moorland lea
Fast rode a maiden flower-like white
Full toward that fair wild place of fight,
Anhungered of the woful sight
   God gave her there to see.

And seeing the man there fallen and dead,
She cried against the sun that shed
Light on the living world, and said,
"O Balen, slayer whose hand is red,
   Two bodies and one heart thou hast slain,
Two hearts within one body: aye,
Two souls thou hast lost; by thee they die,
Cast out of sight of earth and sky
   And all that made them fain."

And from the dead his sword she caught,
And fell in trance that wist of nought,
Swooning: but softly Balen sought
To win from her the sword she thought
   To die on, dying by Launceor's side.
Again her wakening wail outbroke
As wildly, sword in hand, she woke
And struck one swift and bitter stroke
   That healed her, and she died.

And sorrowing for their strange love's sake
Rode Balen forth by lawn and lake,
By moor and moss and briar and brake,
And in his heart their sorrow spake
   Whose lips were dumb as death, and said
Mute words of presage blind and vain
As rain-stars blurred and marred by rain
To wanderers on a moonless main
   Where night and day seem dead.

Then toward a sunbright wildwood side
He looked and saw beneath it ride
A knight whose arms afar espied
By note of name and proof of pride
   Bare witness of his brother born,
His brother Balan, hard at hand,
Twin flower of bright Northumberland,
Twin sea-bird of their loud sea-strand,
   Twin song-bird of their morn.

Ah then from Balen passed away
All dread of night, all doubt of day,
All care what life or death might say,
All thought of all worse months than May:
   Only the might of joy in love
Brake forth within him as a fire,
And deep delight in deep desire
Of far-flown days whose full-souled quire
   Rang round from the air above.

From choral earth and quiring air
Rang memories winged like songs that bear
Sweet gifts for spirit and sense to share:
For no man's life knows love more fair
   And fruitful of memorial things
Than this the deep dear love that breaks
With sense of life on life, and makes
The sundawn sunnier as it wakes
   Where morning round it rings.

"O brother, O my brother!" cried
Each upon each, and cast aside
Their helms unbraced that might not hide
From sight of memory single-eyed
   The likeness graven of face and face,
And kissed and wept upon each other
For joy and pity of either brother,
And love engraffed by sire and mother,
   God's natural gift of grace.

And each with each took counsel meet
For comfort, making sorrow sweet,
And grief a goodly thing to greet:
And word from word leapt light and fleet
   Till all the venturous tale was told,
And how in Balen's hope it lay
To meet the wild Welsh king and slay,
And win from Arthur back for pay
   The grace he gave of old.

"And thither wilt not thou with me
And win as great a grace for thee?"
"That will I well," quoth Balan: "we
Will cleave together, bound and free,
   As brethren should, being twain and one."
But ere they parted thence there came
A creature withered as with flame,
A dwarf mismade in nature's shame,
   Between them and the sun.

And riding fleet as fire may glide
He found the dead lie side by side,
And wailed and rent his hair and cried,
"Who hath done this deed?" And Balen eyed
   The strange thing loathfully, and said,
"The knight I slew, who found him fain
And keen to slay me: seeing him slain,
The maid I sought to save in vain,
   Self-stricken, here lies dead.

"Sore grief was mine to see her die,
And for her true faith's sake shall I
Love, and with love of heart more high,
All women better till I die."
   "Alas," the dwarf said, "ill for thee
In evil hour this deed was done:
For now the quest shall be begun
Against thee, from the dawning sun
   Even to the sunset sea.

"From shore to mountain, dawn to night,
The kinsfolk of this great dead knight
Will chase thee to thy death." A light
Of swift blithe scorn flashed answer bright
   As fire from Balen's eye. "For that,
Small fear shall fret my heart," quoth he:
"But that my lord the king should be
For this dead man's sake wroth with me,
   Weep might it well thereat."

Then murmuring passed the dwarf away,
And toward the knights in fair array
Came riding eastward up the way
From where the flower-soft lowlands lay
   A king whose name the sweet south-west
Held high in honour, and the land
That bowed beneath his gentle hand
Wore on its wild bright northern strand
   Tintagel for a crest.

And Balen hailed with homage due
King Mark of Cornwall, when he knew
The pennon that before him flew:
And for those lovers dead and true
   The king made moan to hear their doom;
And for their sorrow's sake he sware
To seek in all the marches there
The church that man might find most fair
   And build therein their tomb.

                     V

As thought from thought takes wing and flies,
As month on month with sunlit eyes
Tramples and triumphs in its rise,
As wave smites wave to death and dies,
   So chance on hurtling chance like steel
Strikes, flashes, and is quenched, ere fear
Can whisper hope, or hope can hear,
If sorrow or joy be far or near
   For time to hurt or heal.

Swift as a shadow and strange as light
That cleaves in twain the shadow of night
Before the wide-winged word takes flight
That thunder speaks to depth and height
   And quells the quiet hour with sound,
That came before King Mark and stood
Between the moorside and the wood
The man whose word God's will made good,
   Nor guile was in it found.

And Merlin said to Balen: "Lo,
Thou hast wrought thyself a grievous woe
To let this lady die, and know
Thou mightst have stayed her deadly blow."
   And Balen answered him and said,
"Nay, by my truth to faith, not I,
So fiercely fain she was to die;
Ere well her sword had flashed on high,
   Self-slain she lay there dead."

Again and sadly Merlin spake:
"My heart is wrung for this deed's sake,
To know thee therefore doomed to take
Upon thine hand a curse, and make
   Three kingdoms pine through twelve years' change,
In want and woe: for thou shalt smite
The man most noble and truest knight
That looks upon the live world's light
   A dolorous stroke and strange.

"And not till years shall round their goal
May this man's wound thou hast given be whole."
And Balen, stricken through the soul
By dark-winged words of doom and dole,
   Made answer: "If I wist it were
No lie but sooth thou sayest of me,
Then even to make a liar of thee
Would I too slay myself, and see
   How death bids dead men fare."

And Merlin took his leave and passed
And was not: and the shadow as fast
Went with him that his word had cast,
Too fleet for thought thereof to last:
   And there those brethren bade King Mark
Farewell: but fain would Mark have known
The strong knight's name who had overthrown
The pride of Launceor, when it shone
   Bright as it now lay dark.

And Balan for his brother spake,
Saying: "Sir, albeit him list not break
The seal of secret time, nor shake
Night off him ere his morning wake,
   By these two swords he is girt withal
May men that praise him, knights and lords,
Call him the knight that bears two swords,
And all the praise his fame accords
   Make answer when they call."

So parted they toward eventide;
And tender twilight, heavy-eyed,
Saw deep down glimmering woodlands ride
Balen and Balan side by side,
   Till where the leaves grew dense and dim
Again they spied from far draw near
The presence of the sacred seer,
But so disguised and strange of cheer
   That seeing they knew not him.

"Now whither ride ye," Merlin said,
"Through shadows that the sun strikes red,
Ere night be born or day be dead?"
But they, for doubt half touched with dread,
   Would say not where their goal might lie.
"And thou," said Balen, "what art thou,
To walk with shrouded eye and brow?"
He said: "Me lists not show thee now
   By name what man am I."

"Ill seen is this of thee," said they,
"That thou art true in word and way
Nor fain to fear the face of day,
Who wilt not as a true man say
   The name it shames not him to bear."
He answered: "Be it or be it not so,
Yet why ye ride this way I know,
To meet King Ryons as a foe,
   And how your hope shall fare.

"Well, if ye hearken toward my rede,
Ill, if ye hear not, shall ye speed."
"Ah, now," they cried, "thou art ours at need:
What Merlin saith we are fain to heed."
   "Great worship shall ye win," said he,
"And look that ye do knightly now,
For great shall be your need, I trow."
And Balen smiled: "By knighthood's vow,
   The best we may will we."

Then Merlin bade them turn and take
Rest, for their good steeds' weary sake,
Between the highway and the brake,
Till starry midnight bade them wake:
   Then "Rise," he said, "the king is nigh,
Who hath stolen from all his host away
With threescore horse in armed array,
The goodliest knights that bear his sway
   And hold his kingdom high.

"And twenty ride of them before
To bear his errand, ere the door
Turn of the night, sealed fast no more,
And sundawn bid the stars wax hoar;
   For by the starshine of to-night
He seeks a leman where she waits
His coming, dark and swift as fate's,
And hearkens toward the unopening gates
   That yield not him to sight."

Then through the glimmering gloom around
A shadowy sense of light and sound
Made, ere the proof thereof were found,
The brave blithe hearts within them bound,
   And "Where," quoth Balen, "rides the king?"
But softer spake the seer: "Abide,
Till hither toward your spears he ride,
Where all the narrowing woodland side
   Grows dense with boughs that cling."

There in that straitening way they met
The wild Welsh host against them set,
And smote their strong king down, ere yet
His hurrying horde of spears might get
   Fierce vantage of them. Then the fight
Grew great and joyous as it grew,
For left and right those brethren slew,
Till all the lawn waxed red with dew
   More deep than dews of night.

And ere the full fierce tale was read
Full forty lay before them dead,
And fast the hurtling remnant fled
And wist not whither fear had led:
   And toward the king they went again,
And would have slain him: but he bowed
Before them, crying in fear aloud
For grace they gave him, seeing the proud
   Wild king brought lowest of men.

And ere the wildwood leaves were stirred
With song or wing of wakening bird,
In Camelot was Merlin's word
With joy in joyous wonder heard
   That told of Arthur's bitterest foe
Diskingdomed and discomfited.
"By whom?" the high king smiled and said.
He answered: "Ere the dawn wax red,
   To-morrow bids you know.

"Two knights whose heart and hope are one
And fain to win your grace have done
This work whereby if grace be won
Their hearts shall hail the enkindling sun
   With joy more keen and deep than day."
And ere the sundawn drank the dew
Those brethren with their prisoner drew
To the outer guard they gave him to
   And passed again away.

And Arthur came as toward his guest
To greet his foe, and bade him rest
As one returned from nobler quest
And welcome from the stormbright west,
   But by what chance he fain would hear.
"The chance was hard and strange, sir king,"
Quoth Ryons, bowed in thanksgiving.
"Who won you?" Arthur said: "the thing
   Is worth a warrior's ear."

The wild king flushed with pride and shame,
Answering: "I know not either name
Of those that there against us came
And withered all our strength like flame:
   The knight that bears two swords is one,
And one his brother: not on earth
May men meet men of knightlier worth
Nor mightier born of mortal birth
   That hail the sovereign sun."

And Arthur said: "I know them not;
But much am I for this, God wot,
Beholden to them: Launcelot
Nor Tristram, when the war waxed hot
   Along the marches east and west,
Wrought ever nobler work than this."
"Ah," Merlin said, "sore pity it is
And strange mischance of doom, I wis,
   That death should mar their quest.

"Balen, the perfect knight that won
The sword whose name is malison,
And made his deed his doom, is one:
Nor hath his brother Balan done
   Less royal service: not on earth
Lives there a nobler knight, more strong
Of soul to win men's praise in song,
Albeit the light abide not long
   That lightened round his birth.

"Yea, and of all sad things I know
The heaviest and the highest in woe
Is this, the doom whose date brings low
Too soon in timeless overthrow
   A head so high, a hope so sure.
The greatest moan for any knight
That ever won fair fame in fight
Shall be for Balen, seeing his might
   Must now not long endure."

"Alas," King Arthur said, "he hath shown
Such love to me-ward that the moan
Made of him should be mine alone
Above all other, knowing it known
   I have ill deserved it of him." "Nay,"
Said Merlin, "he shall do for you
Much more, when time shall be anew,
Than time hath given him chance to do
   Or hope may think to say.

"But now must be your powers purveyed
To meet, ere noon of morn be made
To-morrow, all the host arrayed
Of this wild foe's wild brother, laid
   Around against you: see to it well,
For now I part from you." And soon,
When sundawn slew the withering moon,
Two hosts were met to win the boon
   Whose tale is death's to tell.

A lordly tale of knights and lords
For death to tell by count of swords
When war's wild harp in all its chords
Rang royal triumph, and the hordes
   Of hurtling foemen rocked and reeled
As waves wind-thwarted on the sea,
Was told of all that there might be,
Till scarce might battle hear or see
   The fortune of the field.

And many a knight won fame that day
When even the serpent soul of Kay
Was kindled toward the fiery play
As might a lion's be for prey,
   And won him fame that might not die
With passing of his rancorous breath
But clung about his life and death
As fire that speaks in cloud, and saith
   What strong men hear and fly.

And glorious works were Arthur's there,
That lit the battle-darkened air:
But when they saw before them fare
Like stars of storm the knight that bare
   Two swords about him girt for fray,
Balen, and Balan with him, then
Strong wonder smote the souls of men
If heaven's own host or hell's deep den
   Had sent them forth to slay.

So keen they rode across the fight,
So sharp they smote to left and right,
And made of hurtling darkness light
With lightning of their swords, till flight
   And fear before them flew like flame,
That Arthur's self had never known,
He said, since first his blast was blown,
Such lords of war as these alone
   That whence he knew not came.

But while the fire of war waxed hot
The wild king hearkened, hearing not,
Through storm of spears and arrow-shot,
For succour toward him from King Lot
   And all his host of sea-born men,
Strong as the strong storm-baffling bird
Whose cry round Orkney's headlands heard
Is as the sea's own sovereign word
   That mocks our mortal ken.

For Merlin's craft of prophecy,
Who wist that one of twain must die,
Put might in him to say thereby
Which head should lose its crown, and lie
   Stricken, though loth he were to know
That either life should wane and fail;
Yet most might Arthur's love avail,
And still with subtly tempered tale
   His wile held fast the foe.

With woven words of magic might
Wherein the subtle shadow and light
Changed hope and fear till fear took flight,
He stayed King Lot's fierce lust of fight
   Till all the wild Welsh war was driven
As foam before the wind that wakes
With the all-awakening sun, and breaks
Strong ships that rue the mirth it makes
   When grace to slay is given.

And ever hotter lit and higher,
As fire that meets encountering fire,
Waxed in King Lot his keen desire
To bid revenge within him tire
   On Arthur's ravaged fame and life:
Across the waves of war between
Floated and flashed, unseen and seen,
The lustrous likeness of the queen
   Whom shame had sealed his wife.

But when the woful word was brought
That while he tarried, doubting nought,
The hope was lost whose goal he sought
And all the fight he yearned for fought,
   His heart was rent for grief and shame,
And half his hope was set on flight
Till word was given him of a knight
Who said: "They are weary and worn with fight.
   And we more fresh than flame."

And bright and dark as night and day
Ere either find the unopening way
Clear, and forego the unaltering sway,
The sad king's face shone, frowning: "Yea,
   I would that every knight of mine
Would do his part as I shall do,"
He said, "till death or life anew
Shall judge between us as is due
   With wiser doom than thine."

Then thundered all the awakening field
With crash of hosts that clashed and reeled,
Banner to banner, shield to shield,
And spear to splintering spear-shaft, steeled
   As heart against high heart of man,
As hope against high hope of knight
To pluck the crest and crown of fight
From war's clenched hand by storm's wild light,
   For blessing given or ban.

All hearts of hearkening men that heard
The ban twin-born with blessing, stirred
Like springtide waters, knew the word
Whereby the steeds of storm are spurred
   With ravenous rapture to destroy,
And laughed for love of battle, pierced
With passion of tempestuous thirst
And hungering hope to assuage it first
   With draughts of stormy joy.

But sheer ahead of the iron tide
That rocked and roared from side to side
Rode as the lightning's lord might ride
King Lot, whose heart was set to abide
   All peril of the raging hour,
And all his host of warriors born
Where lands by warring seas are worn
Was only by his hands upborne
   Who gave them pride and power.

But as the sea's hand smites the shore
And shatters all the strengths that bore
The ravage earth may bear no more,
So smote the hand of Pellinore
   Charging, a knight of Arthur's chief,
And clove his strong steed's neck in twain,
And smote him sheer through brow and brain,
Falling: and there King Lot lay slain,
   And knew not wrath or grief.

And all the host of Orkney fled,
And many a mother's son lay dead:
But when they raised the stricken head
Whence pride and power and shame were fled
   And rage and anguish now cast out,
And bore it toward a kingly tomb,
The wife whose love had wrought his doom
Came thither, fair as morning's bloom
   And dark as twilight's doubt.

And there her four strong sons and his,
Gawain and Gareth, Gaherys
And Agravain, whose sword's sharp kiss
With sound of hell's own serpent's hiss
   Should one day turn her life to death,
Stood mourning with her: but by these
Seeing Mordred as a seer that sees,
Anguish of terror bent her knees
   And caught her shuddering breath.

The splendour of her sovereign eyes
Flashed darkness deeper than the skies
Feel or fear when the sunset dies
On his that felt as midnight rise
   Their doom upon them, there undone
By faith in fear ere thought could yield
A shadowy sense of days revealed,
The ravin of the final field,
   The terror of their son.

For Arthur's, as they caught the light
That sought and durst not seek his sight,
Darkened, and all his spirit's might
Withered within him even as night
   Withers when sunrise thrills the sea.
But Mordred's lightened as with fire
That smote his mother and his sire
With darkling doom and deep desire
   That bade its darkness be.

And heavier on their hearts the weight
Sank of the fear that brings forth fate,
With all the grief and love and hate
   That turn to fire men's days on earth.
And glorious was the funeral made,
And dark the deepening dread that swayed
Their darkening souls whose light grew shade
   With sense of death in birth.

                     VI

In autumn, when the wind and sea
Rejoice to live and laugh to be,
And scarce the blast that curbs the tree
And bids before it quail and flee
   The fiery foliage, where its brand
Is radiant as the seal of spring,
Sounds less delight, and waves a wing
Less lustrous, life's loud thanksgiving
   Puts life in sea and land.

High hope in Balen's heart alight
Laughed, as from all that clamorous fight
He passed and sought not Arthur's sight,
Who fain had found his kingliest knight
   And made amend for Balen's wrong.
But Merlin gave his soul to see
Fate, rising as a shoreward sea,
And all the sorrow that should be
   Ere hope or fear thought long.

"O where are they whose hands upbore
My battle," Arthur said, "before
The wild Welsh host's wide rage and roar?
Balen and Balan, Pellinore
   Where are they?" Merlin answered him:
"Balen shall be not long away
From sight of you, but night nor day
Shall bring his brother back to say
   If life burn bright or dim."

"Now, by my faith," said Arthur then,
"Two marvellous knights are they, whose ken
Toward battle makes the twain as ten,
And Balen most of all born men
   Passeth of prowess all I know
Or ever found or sought to see:
Would God he would abide with me
To face the times foretold of thee
   And all the latter woe."

For there had Merlin shown the king
The doom that songs unborn should sing,
The gifts that time should rise and bring
Of blithe and bitter days to spring
   As weeds and flowers against the sun.
And on the king for fear's sake fell
Sickness, and sorrow deep as hell,
Nor even might sleep bid fear farewell
   If grace to sleep were won.

Down in a meadow green and still
He bade the folk that wrought his will
Pitch his pavilion, where the chill
Soft night would let not rest fulfil
   His heart wherein dark fears lay deep.
And sharp against his hearing cast
Came a sound as of horsehoofs fast
Passing, that ere their sound were past
   Aroused him as from sleep.

And forth he looked along the grass
And saw before his portal pass
A knight that wailed aloud, "Alas
That life should find this dolorous pass
   And find no shield from doom and dole!"
And hearing all his moan, "Abide,
Fair sir," the king arose and cried,
"And say what sorrow bids you ride
   So sorrowful of soul."

"My hurt may no man heal, God wot,
And help of man may speed me not,"
The sad knight said, "nor change my lot."
And toward the castle of Melyot
   Whose towers arose a league away
He passed forth sorrowing: and anon,
Ere well the woful sight were gone,
Came Balen down the meads that shone,
   Strong, bright, and brave as day.

And seeing the king there stand, the knight
Drew rein before his face to alight
In reverence made for love's sake bright
With joy that set his face alight
   As theirs who see, alive, above,
The sovereign of their souls, whose name
To them is even as love's own flame
To enkindle hope that heeds not fame
   And knows no lord but love.

And Arthur smiled on him, and said,
"Right welcome be thou: by my head,
I would not wish me better sped.
For even but now there came and fled
   Before me like a cloud that flies
A knight that made most heavy cheer,
I know not wherefore; nor may fear
Or pity give my heart to hear
   Or lighten on mine eyes.

"But even for fear's and pity's sake
Fain were I thou shouldst overtake
And fetch again this knight that spake
No word of answering grace to make
   Reply to mine that hailed him: thou,
By force or by goodwill, shalt bring
His face before me." "Yea, my king,"
Quoth Balen, "and a greater thing
   Were less than is my vow.

"I would the task required and heard
Were heavier than your sovereign word
Hath laid on me:" and thence he spurred
Elate at heart as youth, and stirred
   With hope as blithe as fires a boy:
And many a mile he rode, and found
Far in a forest's glimmering bound
The man he sought afar around
   And seeing took fire for joy.

And with him went a maiden, fair
As flowers aflush with April air.
And Balen bade him turn him there
To tell the king what woes they were
   That bowed him down so sore: and he
Made woful answer: "This should do
Great scathe to me, with nought for you
Of help that hope might hearken to
   For boot that may not be."

And Balen answered: "I were loth
To fight as one perforce made wroth
With one that owes by knighthood's oath
One love, one service, and one troth
   With me to him whose gracious hand
Holds fast the helm of knighthood here
Whereby man's hope and heart may steer:
I pray you let not sorrow or fear
   Against his bidding stand."

The strange knight gazed on him, and spake:
"Will you, for Arthur's royal sake,
Be warrant for me that I take
No scathe from strife that man may make?
   Then will I go with you." And he
Made joyous answer: "Yea, for I
Will be your warrant or will die."
And thence they rode with hearts as high
   As men's that search the sea.

And as by noon's large light the twain
Before the tented hall drew rein,
Suddenly fell the strange knight, slain
By one that came and went again
   And none might see him; but his spear
Clove through the body, swift as fire,
The man whose doom, forefelt as dire,
Had darkened all his life's desire,
   As one that death held dear.

And dying he turned his face and said,
"Lo now thy warrant that my head
Should fall not, following forth where led
A knight whose pledge hath left me dead.
   This darkling manslayer hath to name
Garlon: take thou my goodlier steed,
Seeing thine is less of strength and speed,
And ride, if thou be knight indeed,
   Even thither whence we came.

"And as the maiden's fair behest
Shall bid you follow on my quest,
Follow: and when God's will sees best,
Revenge my death, and let me rest
   As one that lived and died a knight,
Unstained of shame alive or dead."
And Balen, wrung with sorrow, said,
"That shall I do: my hand and head
   I pledge to do you right."

And thence with sorrowing heart and cheer
He rode, in grief that cast out fear
Lest death in darkness yet were near,
And bore the truncheon of the spear
   Wherewith the woful knight lay slain
To her with whom he rode, and she
Still bare it with her, fain to see
What righteous doom of God's might be
   The darkling manslayer's bane.

And down a dim deep woodland way
They rode between the boughs asway
With flickering winds whose flash and play
Made sunlight sunnier where the day
   Laughed, leapt, and fluttered like a bird
Caught in a light loose leafy net
That earth for amorous heaven had set
To hold and see the sundawn yet
   And hear what morning heard.

There in the sweet soft shifting light
Across their passage rode a knight
Flushed hot from hunting as from fight,
And seeing the sorrow-stricken sight
   Made question of them why they rode
As mourners sick at heart and sad,
When all alive about them bade
Sweet earth for heaven's sweet sake be glad
   As heaven for earth's love glowed.

"Me lists not tell you," Balen said.
The strange knight's face grew keen and red;
"Now, might my hand but keep my head,
Even here should one of twain lie dead
   Were he no better armed than I."
And Balen spake with smiling speed,
Where scorn and courtesy kept heed
Of either: "That should little need:
   Not here shall either die."

And all the cause he told him through
As one that feared not though he knew
All: and the strange knight spake anew,
Saying: "I will part no more from you
   While life shall last me." So they went
Where he might arm himself to ride,
And rode across wild ways and wide
To where against a churchyard side
   A hermit's harbour leant.

And there against them riding came
Fleet as the lightning's laugh and flame
The invisible evil, even the same
They sought and might not curse by name
   As hell's foul child on earth set free,
And smote the strange knight through, and fled,
And left the mourners by the dead.
"Alas, again," Sir Balen said,
   "This wrong he hath done to me."

And there they laid their dead to sleep
Royally, lying where wild winds keep
Keen watch and wail more soft and deep
Than where men's choirs bid music weep
   And song like incense heave and swell.
And forth again they rode, and found
Before them, dire in sight and sound,
A castle girt about and bound
   With sorrow like a spell.

Above it seemed the sun at noon
Sad as a wintry withering moon
That shudders while the waste wind's tune
Craves ever none may guess what boon,
   But all may know the boon for dire.
And evening on its darkness fell
More dark than very death's farewell,
And night about it hung like hell,
   Whose fume the dawn made fire.

And Balen lighted down and passed
Within the gateway, whence no blast
Rang as the sheer portcullis, cast
Suddenly down, fell, and made fast
   The gate behind him, whence he spied
A sudden rage of men without
And ravin of a murderous rout
That girt the maiden hard about
   With death on either side.

And seeing that shame and peril, fear
Bade wrath and grief awake and hear
What shame should say in fame's wide ear
If she, by sorrow sealed more dear
   Than joy might make her, so should die:
And up the tower's curled stair he sprang
As one that flies death's deadliest fang,
And leapt right out amid their gang
   As fire from heaven on high.

And they thereunder seeing the knight
Unhurt among their press alight
And bare his sword for chance of fight
Stood from him, loth to strive or smite,
   And bade him hear their woful word,
That not the maiden's death they sought;
But there through years too dire for thought
Had lain their lady stricken, and nought
   Might heal her: and he heard.

For there a maiden clean and whole
In virgin body and virgin soul,
Whose name was writ on royal roll,
That would but stain a silver bowl
   With offering of her stainless blood,
Therewith might heal her: so they stayed
For hope's sad sake each blameless maid
There journeying in that dolorous shade
   Whose bloom was bright in bud.

No hurt nor harm to her it were
If she should yield a sister there
Some tribute of her blood, and fare
Forth with this joy at heart to bear,
   That all unhurt and unafraid
This grace she had here by God's grace wrought.
And kindling all with kindly thought
And love that saw save love's self nought,
   Shone, smiled, and spake the maid.

"Good knight of mine, good will have I
To help this healing though I die."
"Nay," Balen said, "but love may try
What help in living love may lie.
   --I will not lose the life of her
While my life lasteth." So she gave
The tribute love was fain to crave,
But might not heal though fain to save,
   Were God's grace helpfuller.

Another maid in later Mays
Won with her life that woful praise,
And died. But they, when surging day's
Deep tide fulfilled the dawn's wide ways,
   Rode forth, and found by day or night
No chance to cross their wayfaring
Till when they saw the fourth day spring
A knight's hall gave them harbouring
   Rich as a king's house might.

And while they sat at meat and spake
Words bright and kind as grace might make
Sweet for true knighthood's kindly sake,
They heard a cry beside them break
   The still-souled joy of blameless rest.
"What noise is this?" quoth Balen. "Nay,"
His knightly host made answer, "may
Our grief not grieve you though I say
   How here I dwell unblest.

"Not many a day has lived and died
Since at a tournay late I tried
My strength to smite and turn and ride
Against a knight of kinglike pride,
   King Pellam's brother: twice I smote
The splendour of his strength to dust:
And he, fulfilled of hate's fierce lust,
Swore vengeance, pledged for hell to trust,
   And keen as hell's wide throat.

"Invisible as the spirit of night
That heaven and earth in depth and height
May see not by the mild moon's light
Nor even when stars would grant them sight,
   He walks and slays as plague's blind breath
Slays: and my son, whose anguish here
Makes moan perforce that mars our cheer,
He wounded, even ere love might fear
   That hate were strong as death.

"Nor may my son be whole till he
Whose stroke through him hath stricken me
Shall give again his blood to be
Our healing: yet may no man see
   This felon, clothed with darkness round
And keen as lightning's life." Thereon
Spake Balen, and his presence shone
Even as the sun's when stars are gone
   That hear dawn's trumpet sound.

"That knight I know: two knights of mine,
Two comrades, sealed by faith's bright sign,
Whose eyes as ours that live should shine,
And drink the golden sunlight's wine
   With joy's thanksgiving that they live,
He hath slain in even the same blind wise:
Were all wide wealth beneath the skies
Mine, might I meet him, eyes on eyes,
   All would I laugh to give."

His host made answer, and his gaze
Grew bright with trust as dawn's moist maze
With fire: "Within these twenty days,
King Pellam, lord of Lystenayse,
   Holds feast through all this country cried,
And there before the knightly king
May no knight come except he bring
For witness of his wayfaring
   His paramour or bride.

"And there that day, so soon to shine,
This knight, your felon foe and mine,
Shall show, full-flushed with bloodred wine,
The fierce false face whereon we pine
   To wreak the wrong he hath wrought us, bare
As shame should see and brand it." "Then,"
Said Balen, "shall he give again
His blood to heal your son, and men
   Shall see death blind him there."

"Forth will we fare to-morrow," said
His host: and forth, as sunrise led,
They rode; and fifteen days were fled
Ere toward their goal their steeds had sped.
   And there alighting might they find
For Balen's host no place to rest,
Who came without a gentler guest
Beside him: and that household's hest
   Bade leave his sword behind.

"Nay," Balen said, "that do I not:
My country's custom stands, God wot,
That none whose lot is knighthood's lot,
To ride where chance as fire is hot
   With hope or promise given of fight,
Shall fail to keep, for knighthood's part,
His weapon with him as his heart;
And as I came will I depart,
   Or hold herein my right."

Then gat he leave to wear his sword
Beside the strange king's festal board
Where feasted many a knight and lord
In seemliness of fair accord:
   And Balen asked of one beside,
"Is there not in this court, if fame
Keep faith, a knight that hath to name
Garlon?" and saying that word of shame,
   He scanned that place of pride.

"Yonder he goeth against the light,
He with the face as swart as night,"
Quoth the other: "but he rides to fight
Hid round by charms from all men's sight,
   And many a noble knight he hath slain,
Being wrapt in darkness deep as hell
And silence dark as shame." "Ah, well,"
Said Balen, "is that he? the spell
   May be the sorcerer's bane."

Then Balen gazed upon him long,
And thought, "If here I wreak my wrong,
Alive I may not scape, so strong
The felon's friends about him throng;
   And if I leave him here alive,
This chance perchance may life not give
Again: much evil, if he live,
He needs must do, should fear forgive
   When wrongs bid strike and strive."

And Garlon, seeing how Balen's eye
Dwelt on him as his heart waxed high
With joy in wrath to see him nigh,
Rose wolf-like with a wolfish cry
   And crossed and smote him on the face,
Saying, "Knight, what wouldst thou with me? Eat,
For shame, and gaze not: eat thy meat:
Do that thou art come for: stands thy seat
   Next ours of royal race?"

"Well hast thou said: thy rede rings true;
That which I came for will I do,"
Quoth Balen: forth his fleet sword flew,
And clove the head of Garlon through
   Clean to the shoulders. Then he cried
Loud to his lady, "Give me here
The truncheon of the shameful spear
Wherewith he slew your knight, when fear
   Bade hate in darkness ride."

And gladly, bright with grief made glad,
She gave the truncheon as he bade,
For still she bare it with her, sad
And strong in hopeless hope she had,
   Through all dark days of thwarting fear,
To see if doom should fall aright
And as God's fire-fraught thunder smite
That head, clothed round with hell-faced night,
   Bare now before her here.

And Balen smote therewith the dead
Dark felon's body through, and said
Aloud, "With even this truncheon, red
With baser blood than brave men bled
   Whom in thy shameful hand it slew,
Thou hast slain a nobler knight, and now
It clings and cleaves thy body: thou
Shalt cleave again no brave man's brow,
   Though hell would aid anew."

And toward his host he turned and spake;
"Now for your son's long-suffering sake
Blood ye may fetch enough, and take
Wherewith to heal his hurt, and make
   Death warm as life." Then rose a cry
Loud as the wind's when stormy spring
Makes all the woodland rage and ring:
"Thou hast slain my brother," said the king,
   "And here with him shalt die."

"Ay?" Balen laughed him answer. "Well,
Do it then thyself." And the answer fell
Fierce as a blast of hate from hell,
"No man of mine that with me dwell
   Shall strike at thee but I their lord
For love of this my brother slain."
And Pellam caught and grasped amain
A grim great weapon, fierce and fain
   To feed his hungering sword.

And eagerly he smote, and sped
Not well: for Balen's blade, yet red
With lifeblood of the murderous dead,
Between the swordstroke and his head
   Shone, and the strength of the eager stroke
Shore it in sunder: then the knight,
Naked and weaponless for fight,
Ran seeking him a sword to smite
   As hope within him woke.

And so their flight for deathward fast
From chamber forth to chamber passed
Where lay no weapon, till the last
Whose doors made way for Balen cast
   Upon him as a sudden spell
Wonder that even as lightning leapt
Across his heart and eyes, and swept
As storm across his soul that kept
   Wild watch, and watched not well.

For there the deed he did, being near
Death's danger, breathless as the deer
Driven hard to bay, but void of fear,
Brought sorrow down for many a year
   On many a man in many a land.
All glorious shone that chamber, bright
As burns at sunrise heaven's own height:
With cloth of gold the bed was dight,
   That flamed on either hand.

And one he saw within it lie:
A table of all clear gold thereby
Stood stately, fair as morning's eye,
With four strong silver pillars, high
   And firm as faith and hope may be:
And on it shone the gift he sought,
A spear most marvellously wrought,
That when his eye and handgrip caught
   Small fear at heart had he.

Right on King Pellam then, as fire
Turns when the thwarting winds wax higher,
He turned, and smote him down. So dire
The stroke was, when his heart's desire
   Struck, and had all its fill of hate,
That as the king fell swooning down
Fell the walls, rent from base to crown,
Prone as prone seas that break and drown
   Ships fraught with doom for freight.

And there for three days' silent space
Balen and Pellam face to face
Lay dead or deathlike, and the place
Was death's blind kingdom, till the grace
   That God had given the sacred seer
For counsel or for comfort led
His Merlin thither, and he said,
Standing between the quick and dead,
   "Rise up, and rest not here."

And Balen rose and set his eyes
Against the seer's as one that tries
His heart against the sea's and sky's
And fears not if he lives or dies,
   Saying, "I would have my damosel,
Ere I fare forth, to fare with me."
And sadly Merlin answered, "See
Where now she lies; death knows if she
   Shall now fare ill or well.

"And in this world we meet no more,
Balen." And Balen, sorrowing sore,
Though fearless yet the heart he bore
Beat toward the life that lay before,
   Rode forth through many a wild waste land
Where men cried out against him, mad
With grievous faith in fear that bade
Their wrath make moan for doubt they had
   Lest hell had armed his hand.

For in that chamber's wondrous shrine
Was part of Christ's own blood, the wine
Shed of the true triumphal vine
Whose growth bids earth's deep darkness shine
   As heaven's deep light through the air and sea;
That mystery toward our northern shore
Arimathean Joseph bore
For healing of our sins of yore,
   That grace even there might be.

And with that spear there shrined apart
Was Christ's side smitten to the heart.
And fiercer than the lightning's dart
The stroke was, and the deathlike smart
   Wherewith, nigh drained of blood and breath,
The king lay stricken as one long dead:
And Joseph's was the blood there shed,
For near akin was he that bled,
   Near even as life to death.

And therefore fell on all that land
Sorrow: for still on either hand,
As Balen rode alone and scanned
Bright fields and cities built to stand
   Till time should break them, dead men lay;
And loud and long from all their folk
Living, one cry that cursed him broke;
Three countries had his dolorous stroke
   Slain, or should surely slay.

                     VII

In winter, when the year burns low
As fire wherein no firebrands glow,
And winds dishevel as they blow
The lovely stormy wings of snow,
   The hearts of northern men burn bright
With joy that mocks the joy of spring
To hear all heaven's keen clarions ring
Music that bids the spirit sing
   And day give thanks for night.

Aloud and dark as hell or hate
Round Balen's head the wind of fate
Blew storm and cloud from death's wide gate:
But joy as grief in him was great
   To face God's doom and live or die,
Sorrowing for ill wrought unaware,
Rejoicing in desire to dare
All ill that innocence might bear
   With changeless heart and eye.

Yet passing fain he was when past
Those lands and woes at length and last.
Eight times, as thence he fared forth fast,
Dawn rose and even was overcast
   With starry darkness dear as day,
Before his venturous quest might meet
Adventure, seeing within a sweet
Green low-lying forest, hushed in heat,
   A tower that barred his way.

Strong summer, dumb with rapture, bound
With golden calm the woodlands round
Wherethrough the knight forth faring found
A knight that on the greenwood ground
   Sat mourning: fair he was to see,
And moulded as for love or fight
A maiden's dreams might frame her knight;
But sad in joy's far-flowering sight
   As grief's blind thrall might be.

"God save you," Balen softly said,
"What grief bows down your heart and head
Thus, as one sorrowing for his dead?
Tell me, if haply I may stead
   In aught your sorrow, that I may."
"Sir knight," that other said, "thy word
Makes my grief heavier that I heard."
And pity and wonder inly stirred
   Drew Balen thence away.

And so withdrawn with silent speed
He saw the sad knight's stately steed,
A war-horse meet for warrior's need,
That none who passed might choose but heed,
   So strong he stood, so great, so fair,
With eyes afire for flight or fight,
A joy to look on, mild in might,
And swift and keen and kind as light,
   And all as clear of care.

And Balen, gazing on him, heard
Again his master's woful word
Sound sorrow through the calm unstirred
By fluttering wind or flickering bird,
   Thus: "Ah, fair lady and faithless, why
Break thy pledged faith to meet me? soon
An hour beyond thy trothplight noon
Shall strike my death-bell, and thy boon
   Is this, that here I die.

"My curse for all thy gifts may be
Heavier than death or night on thee;
For now this sword thou gavest me
Shall set me from thy bondage free."
   And there the man had died self-slain,
But Balen leapt on him and caught
The blind fierce hand that fain had wrought
Self-murder, stung with fire of thought,
   As rage makes anguish fain.

Then, mad for thwarted grief, "Let go
My hand," the fool of wrath and woe
Cried, "or I slay thee." Scarce the glow
In Balen's cheek and eye might show,
   As dawn shows day while seas lie chill,
He heard, though pity took not heed,
But smiled and spake, "That shall not need:
What man may do to bid you speed
   I, so God speed me, will."

And the other craved his name, beguiled
By hope that made his madness mild.
Again Sir Balen spake and smiled:
"My name is Balen, called the Wild
   By knights whom kings and courts make tame,
Because I ride alone afar
And follow but my soul for star."
"Ah, sir, I know the knight you are
   And all your fiery fame.

"The knight that bears two swords I know,
Most praised of all men, friend and foe,
For prowess of your hands, that show
Dark war the way where balefires glow
   And kindle glory like the dawn's."
So spake the sorrowing knight, and stood
As one whose heart fresh hope made good:
And forth they rode by wold and wood
   And down the glimmering lawns.

And Balen craved his name who rode
Beside him, where the wild wood glowed
With joy to feel how noontide flowed
Through glade and glen and rough green road
   Till earth grew joyful as the sea.
"My name is Garnysshe of the Mount,
A poor man's son of none account,"
He said, "where springs of loftier fount
   Laugh loud with pride to be.

"But strength in weakness lives and stands
As rocks that rise through shifting sands;
And for the prowess of my hands
One made me knight and gave me lands,   
   Duke Hermel, lord from far to near,
Our prince; and she that loved me--she
I love, and deemed she loved but me,
His daughter, pledged her faith to be
   Ere now beside me here."

And Balen, brief of speech as light
Whose word, beheld of depth and height,
Strikes silence through the stars of night,
Spake, and his face as dawn's grew bright,
   For hope to help a happier man,
"How far then lies she hence?" "By this,"
Her lover sighed and said, "I wis,
Not six fleet miles the passage is,
   And straight as thought could span."

So rode they swift and sure, and found
A castle walled and dyked around:
And Balen, as a warrior bound
On search where hope might fear to sound
   The darkness of the deeps of doubt,
Made entrance through the guardless gate
As life, while hope in life grows great,
Makes way between the doors of fate
   That death may pass thereout.

Through many a glorious chamber, wrought
For all delight that love's own thought
Might dream or dwell in, Balen sought
And found of all he looked for nought,
   For like a shining shell her bed
Shone void and vacant of her: thence
Through devious wonders bright and dense
He passed and saw with shame-struck sense
   Where shame and faith lay dead.

Down in a sweet small garden, fair
With flowerful joy in the ardent air,
He saw, and raged with loathing, where
She lay with love-dishevelled hair
   Beneath a broad bright laurel tree
And clasped in amorous arms a knight,
The unloveliest that his scornful sight
Had dwelt on yet; a shame the bright
   Broad noon might shrink to see.

And thence in wrathful hope he turned,
Hot as the heart within him burned,
To meet the knight whose love, so spurned
And spat on and made nought of, yearned
   And dreamed and hoped and lived in vain,
And said, "I have found her sleeping fast,"
And led him where the shadows cast
From leaves wherethrough light winds ran past
   Screened her from sun and rain.

But Garnysshe, seeing, reeled as he stood
Like a tree, kingliest of the wood,
Half hewn through: and the burning blood
Through lips and nostrils burst aflood:
   And gathering back his rage and might
As broken breakers rally and roar
The loud wind down that drives off shore,
He smote their heads off: there no more
   Their life might shame the light.

Then turned he back toward Balen, mad
With grief, and said, "The grief I had
Was nought: ere this my life was glad:
Thou hast done this deed: I was but sad
   And fearful how my hope might fare:
I had lived my sorrow down, hadst thou
Not shown me what I saw but now."
The sorrow and scorn on Balen's brow
   Bade silence curb him there.

And Balen answered: "What I did
I did to hearten thee and bid
Thy courage know that shame should rid
A man's high heart of love that hid
   Blind shame within its core: God knows,
I did, to set a bondman free,
But as I would thou hadst done by me,
That seeing what love must die to see
   Love's end might well be woe's."

"Alas," the woful weakling said,
"I have slain what most I loved: I have shed
The blood most near my heart: the head
Lies cold as earth, defiled and dead,
   That all my life was lighted by,
That all my soul bowed down before,
And now may bear with life no more:
For now my sorrow that I bore
   Is twofold, and I die."

Then with his red wet sword he rove
His breast in sunder, where it clove
Life, and no pulse against it strove,
So sure and strong the deep stroke drove
   Deathward: and Balen, seeing him dead,
Rode thence, lest folk would say he had slain
Those three: and ere three days again
Had seen the sun's might wax and wane,
   Far forth he had spurred and sped.

And riding past a cross whereon
Broad golden letters written shone,
Saying, "No knight born may ride alone
Forth toward this castle," and all the stone
   Glowed in the sun's glare even as though
Blood stained it from the crucified
Dead burden of one that there had died,
An old hoar man he saw beside
   Whose face was wan as woe.

"Balen the Wild," he said, "this way
Thy way lies not: thou hast passed to-day
Thy bands: but turn again, and stay
Thy passage, while thy soul hath sway
   Within thee, and through God's good power
It will avail thee:" and anon
His likeness as a cloud was gone,
And Balen's heart within him shone
   Clear as the cloudless hour.

Nor fate nor fear might overcast
The soul now near its peace at last.
Suddenly, thence as forth he past,
A mighty and a deadly blast
   Blown of a hunting-horn he heard,
As when the chase hath nobly sped.
"That blast is blown for me," he said,
"The prize am I who am yet not dead,"
   And smiled upon the word.

As toward a royal hart's death rang
That note, whence all the loud wood sang
With winged and living sound that sprang
Like fire, and keen as fire's own fang
   Pierced the sweet silence that it slew.
But nought like death or strife was here:
Fair semblance and most goodly cheer
They made him, they whose troop drew near
   As death among them drew.

A hundred ladies well arrayed
And many a knight well weaponed made
That kindly show of cheer: the glade
Shone round them till its very shade
   Lightened and laughed from grove to lawn
To hear and see them: so they brought
Within a castle fair as thought
Could dream that wizard hands had wrought
   The guest among them drawn.

All manner of glorious joy was there:
Harping and dancing, loud and fair,
And minstrelsy that made of air
Fire, so like fire its raptures were.
   Then the chief lady spake on high:
"Knight with the two swords, one of two
Must help you here or fall from you:
For needs you now must have ado
   And joust with one hereby.

"A good knight guards an island here
Against all swords that chance brings near,
And there with stroke of sword and spear
Must all for whom these halls make cheer
   Fight, and redeem or yield up life."
"An evil custom," Balen said,
"Is this, that none whom chance hath led
Hither, if knighthood crown his head,
   May pass unstirred to strife."

"You shall not have ado to fight
Here save against one only knight,"
She said, and all her face grew bright
As hell-fire, lit with hungry light
   That wicked laughter touched with flame.
"Well, since I shall thereto," said he,
"I am ready at heart as death for me:
Fain would I be where death should be
   And life should lose its name.

"But travelling men whose goal afar
Shines as a cloud-constraining star
Are often weary, and wearier are
Their steeds that feel each fret and jar
   Wherewith the wild ways wound them: yet,
Albeit my horse be weary, still
My heart is nowise weary; will
Sustains it even till death fulfil
   My trust upon him set."

"Sir," said a knight thereby that stood,
"Meseems your shield is now not good
But worn with warrior work, nor could
Sustain in strife the strokes it would:
   A larger will I lend you." "Ay,
Thereof I thank you," Balen said,
Being single of heart as one that read
No face aright whence faith had fled,
   Nor dreamed that faith could fly.

And so he took that shield unknown
And left for treason's touch his own,
And toward that island rode alone,
Nor heard the blast against him blown
   Sound in the wind's and water's sound,
But hearkening toward the stream's edge heard
Nought save the soft stream's rippling word,
Glad with the gladness of a bird,
   That sang to the air around.

And there against the water-side
He saw, fast moored to rock and ride,
A fair great boat anear abide
Like one that waits the turning tide,
   Wherein embarked his horse and he
Passed over toward no kindly strand:
And where they stood again on land
There stood a maiden hard at hand
   Who seeing them wept to see.

And "O knight Balen," was her cry,
"Why have ye left your own shield? why
Come hither out of time to die?
For had ye kept your shield, thereby
   Ye had yet been known, and died not here.
Great pity it is of you this day
As ever was of knight, or may
Be ever, seeing in war's bright way
   Praise knows not Balen's peer."

And Balen said, "Thou hast heard my name
Right: it repenteth me, though shame
May tax me not with base men's blame,
That ever, hap what will, I came
   Within this country; yet, being come,
For shame I may not turn again
Now, that myself and nobler men
May scorn me: now is more than then,
   And faith bids fear be dumb.

"Be it life or death, my chance I take,
Be it life's to build or death's to break:
And fall what may, me lists not make
Moan for sad life's or death's sad sake."
   Then looked he on his armour, glad
And high of heart, and found it strong:
And all his soul became a song
And soared in prayer that soared not long,
   For all the hope it had.

Then saw he whence against him came
A steed whose trappings shone like flame,
And he that rode him showed the same
Fierce colour, bright as fire or fame,
   But dark the visors were as night
That hid from Balen Balan's face,
And his from Balan: God's own grace
Forsook them for a shadowy space
   Where darkness cast out light.

The two swords girt that Balen bare
Gave Balan for a breath's while there
Pause, wondering if indeed it were
Balen his brother, bound to dare
   The chance of that unhappy quest:
But seeing not as he thought to see
His shield, he deemed it was not he,
And so, as fate bade sorrow be,
   They laid their spears in rest.

So mighty was the course they ran
With spear to spear so great of span,
Each fell back stricken, man by man,
Horse by horse, borne down: so the ban
   That wrought by doom against them wrought:
But Balen by his falling steed
Was bruised the sorer, being indeed
Way-weary, like a rain-bruised reed,
   With travel ere he fought.

And Balen rose again from swoon
First, and went toward him: all too soon
He too then rose, and the evil boon
Of strength came back, and the evil tune
   Of battle unnatural made again
Mad music as for death's wide ear
Listening and hungering toward the near
Last sigh that life or death might hear
   At last from dying men.

Balan smote Balen first, and clove
His lifted shield that rose and strove
In vain against the stroke that drove
Down: as the web that morning wove
   Of glimmering pearl from spray to spray
Dies when the strong sun strikes it, so
Shrank the steel, tempered thrice to show
Strength, as the mad might of the blow
   Shore Balen's helm away.

Then turning as a turning wave
Against the land-wind, blind and brave
In hope that dreams despair may save,
With even the unhappy sword that gave
   The gifts of fame and fate in one
He smote his brother, and there had nigh
Felled him: and while they breathed, his eye
Glanced up, and saw beneath the sky
   Sights fairer than the sun.

The towers of all the castle there
Stood full of ladies, blithe and fair
As the earth beneath and the amorous air
About them and above them were:
   So toward the blind and fateful fight
Again those brethren went, and sore
Were all the strokes they smote and bore,
And breathed again, and fell once more
   To battle in their sight.

With blood that either spilt and bled
Was all the ground they fought on red,
And each knight's hauberk hewn and shred
Left each unmailed and naked, shed
   From off them even as mantles cast:
And oft they breathed, and drew but breath
Brief as the word strong sorrow saith,
And poured and drank the draught of death,
   Till fate was full at last.

And Balan, younger born than he
Whom darkness bade him slay, and be
Slain, as in mist where none may see
If aught abide or fall or flee,
   Drew back a little and laid him down,
Dying: but Balen stood, and said,
As one between the quick and dead
Might stand and speak, "What good knight's head
   Hath won this mortal crown?

"What knight art thou? for never I
Who now beside thee dead shall die
Found yet the knight afar or nigh
That matched me." Then his brother's eye
   Flashed pride and love; he spake and smiled
And felt in death life's quickening flame,
And answered: "Balan is my name,
The good knight Balen's brother; fame
   Calls and miscalls him wild."

The cry from Balen's lips that sprang
Sprang sharper than his sword's stroke rang.
More keen than death's or memory's fang,
Through sense and soul the shuddering pang
   Shivered: and scarce he had cried, "Alas
That ever I should see this day,"
When sorrow swooned from him away
As blindly back he fell, and lay
   Where sleep lets anguish pass.

But Balan rose on hands and knees
And crawled by childlike dim degrees
Up toward his brother, as a breeze
Creeps wingless over sluggard seas
   When all the wind's heart fails it: so
Beneath their mother's eyes had he,
A babe that laughed with joy to be,
Made toward him standing by her knee
   For love's sake long ago.

Then, gathering strength up for a space,
From off his brother's dying face
With dying hands that wrought apace
While death and life would grant them grace
   He loosed his helm and knew not him,
So scored with blood it was, and hewn
Athwart with darkening wounds: but soon
Life strove and shuddered through the swoon
   Wherein its light lay dim.

And sorrow set these chained words free:
"O Balan, O my brother! me
Thou hast slain, and I, my brother, thee:
And now far hence, on shore and sea,
   Shall all the wide world speak of us."
"Alas," said Balan, "that I might
Not know you, seeing two swords were dight
About you; now the unanswering sight
   Hath here found answer thus.

"Because you bore another shield
Than yours, that even ere youth could wield
Like arms with manhood's tried and steeled
Shone as my star of battle-field,
   I deemed it surely might not be
My brother." Then his brother spake
Fiercely: "Would God, for thy sole sake,
I had my life again, to take
   Revenge for only thee!

"For all this deadly work was wrought
Of one false knight's false word and thought,
Whose mortal craft and counsel caught
And snared my faith who doubted nought,
   And made me put my shield away.
Ah, might I live, I would destroy
That castle for its customs: joy
There makes of grief a deadly toy,
   And death makes night of day."

"Well done were that, if aught were done
Well ever here beneath the sun,"
Said Balan: "better work were none:
For hither since I came and won
   A woful honour born of death,
When here my hap it was to slay
A knight who kept this island way,
I might not pass by night or day
   Hence, as this token saith.

"No more shouldst thou, for all the might
Of heart and hand that seals thee knight
Most noble of all that see the light,
Brother, hadst thou but slain in fight
   Me, and arisen unscathed and whole,
As would to God thou hadst risen! though here
Light is as darkness, hope as fear,
And love as hate: and none draws near
   Save toward a mortal goal."

Then, fair as any poison-flower
Whose blossom blights the withering bower
Whereon its blasting breath has power,
Forth fared the lady of the tower
   With many a lady and many a knight,
And came across the water-way
Even where on death's dim border lay
Those brethren sent of her to slay
   And die in kindless fight.

And all those hard light hearts were swayed
With pity passing like a shade
That stays not, and may be not stayed,
To hear the mutual moan they made,
   Each to behold his brother die,
Saying , "Both we came out of one tomb,
One star-crossed mother's woful womb,
And so within one grave-pit's gloom
   Untimely shall we lie."

And Balan prayed, as God should bless
That lady for her gentleness,
That where the battle's mortal stress
Had made for them perforce to press
   The bed whence never man may rise
They twain, free now from hopes and fears,
Might sleep; and she, as one that hears,
Bowed her bright head: and very tears
   Fell from her cold fierce eyes.

Then Balen prayed her send a priest
To housel them, that ere they ceased
The hansel of the heavenly feast
That fills with light from the answering east
   The sunset of the life of man
Might bless them, and their lips be kissed
With death's requickening eucharist,
And death's and life's dim sunlit mist
   Pass as a stream that ran.

And so their dying rites were done:
And Balen, seeing the death-struck sun
Sink, spake as he whose goal is won:
"Now, when our trophied tomb is one,
   And over us our tale is writ,
How two that loved each other, two
Born and begotten brethren, slew
Each other, none that reads anew
   Shall choose but weep for it.

"And no good knight and no good man
Whose eye shall ever come to scan
The record of the imperious ban
That made our life so sad a span
   Shall read or hear, who shall not pray
For us for ever." Then anon
Died Balan; but the sun was gone,
And deep the stars of midnight shone,
   Ere Balen passed away.

And there low lying, as hour on hour
Fled, all his life in all its flower
Came back as in a sunlit shower
Of dreams, when sweet-souled sleep has power
   On life less sweet and glad to be.
He drank the draught of life's first wine
Again: he saw the moorland shine,
The rioting rapids of the Tyne,
   The woods, the cliffs, the sea.

The joy that lives at heart and home,
The joy to rest, the joy to roam,
The joy of crags and scaurs he clomb,
The rapture of the encountering foam
   Embraced and breasted of the boy,
The first good steed his knees bestrode,
The first wild sound of songs that flowed
Through ears that thrilled and heart that glowed,
   Fulfilled his death with joy.

So, dying not as a coward that dies
And dares not look in death's dim eyes
Straight as the stars on seas and skies
Whence moon and sun recoil and rise,
   He looked on life and death, and slept.
And there with morning Merlin came,
And on the tomb that told their fame
He wrote by Balan's Balen's name,
   And gazed thereon, and wept.

For all his heart within him yearned
With pity like as fire that burned.
The fate his fateful eye discerned
Far off now dimmed it, ere he turned
   His face toward Camelot, to tell
Arthur of all the storms that woke
Round Balen, and the dolorous stroke,
And how that last blind battle broke
   The consummated spell.

"Alas," King Arthur said, "this day
I have heard the worst that woe might say:
For in this world that wanes away
I know not two such knight as they."
   This is the tale that memory writes
Of men whose names like stars shall stand,
Balen and Balan, sure of hand
Two brethren of Northumberland,
   In life and death good knights.

---

---

KING BAN: A FRAGMENT

by

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

These three held flight upon the leaning lands
At undern, past the skirt of misty camps
Sewn thick from Benwick to the outer march--
King Ban, and, riding wrist by wrist, Ellayne,
And caught up with his coloured swathing-bands
Across her arm, a hindrance in the reins,
A bauble slipt between the bridle-ties,
The three months' trouble that was Launcelot.
For Claudas leant upon the land, and smote
This way and that way, as a pestilence
Moves with vague patience in the unclean heat
This way and that way; so the Gaulish war
Smote, moving in the marches. Then King Ban
Shut in one girdled waist of narrow stones
His gold and all his men, and set on them
A name, the name of perfect men at need,
And over them a seneschal, the man
Most inward and entailed upon his soul,
That next his will and in his pulses moved
As the close blood and purpose of his heart,
And laid the place between his hands, and rode
North to the wild rims of distempered sea
That, crossed to Logres, his face might look red [sic]
The face of Arthur, and therein light blood
Even to the eyes and to the circled hair
For shame of failure in so near a need,
Failure in service of so near a man.
Because that time King Arthur would not ride,
But lay and let his hands weaken to white
Among the stray gold of a lady's head.
His hands unwedded: neither could bring help
To Ban that helped to rend his land for him
From the steel wrist of spoilers, but the time
A sleep like yellow mould had overgrown,
A pleasure sweet and sick as marsh-flowers.
Therefore about his marches rode King Ban
With eyes that fell between his hands to count
The golden inches of the saddle-rim,
Strange with rare stones; and in his face there rose
A doubt that burnt it with red pain and fear
All over it, and plucked upon his heart,
The old weak heart that loss had eaten through,
Remembering how the seneschal went back
At coming out from Claudas in his tent;
And how they bound together, chin by chin,
Whispered and wagged, and made lean room for words,
And a sharp mutter fed the ears of them.
And he went in and set no thought thereon
To waste; fear had not heart to fear indeed,
The king being old, since any fear in such
Is as a wound upon the fleshly sense
That drains a parcel of his time thereout,
Therefore he would not fear that as it fell
This thing should fall. For Claudas the keen thief
For some thin rounds and wretched stamps of gold
Had bought the tower and men and seneschal,
Body and breath and blood, yea, soul and shame.
They knew not this, at halt upon a hill.
Only surmise was dull upon the sense
And thin conjecture sickened in the speech;
So they fell silent, riding in the hills.
There on a little terrace the good king
Reined, and looked out. Far back the white lands lay;
The wind went in them like a broken man,
Lamely; the mist had set a bitter lip
To the rimmed river, and the moon burnt blank.
But outward from the castle of King Ban
There blew a sound of trouble, and there clomb
A fire that thrust an arm across the air,
Shook a rent skirt of dragging flame, and blanched
The grey flats to such cruel white as shone
Iron against the shadow of the sky
Blurred out with its blind stars; for as the sea
Gathers to lengthen a bleached edge of foam
Whole weights of windy water, and the green
Brine flares and hisses as the heap makes up,
Till the gaunt wave writhes, trying to breathe,
Then turns, and all the whited rims of steel
Lean over, and the hollowed round roars in
And smites the pebble forward in the mud,
And grinds the shingle in cool whirls of white,
Clashed through and crossed with blank assault of foam,
Filled with hard thunder and drenched dregs of sand--
So leant and leapt the many-mouthèd fire,
So curled upon the walls, dipt, crawled, smote, clung,
Caught like a beast that catches on the flesh,
Waxed hoar with sick default, shivered across,
Choked out, a snake unfed.
Thereat King Ban
Trembled for pain in all his blood, and death
Under the heart caught him and made his breath
Wince, as a worm does, wounded in the head;
And fear began upon his flesh, and shook
The chaste and inly sufferance of it
Almost to ruin; a small fire and keen
Eating in muscle and nerve and hinge of joint
Perilous way; so bitter was the blow
Made on his sense by treason and sharp loss.
Then he fell weeping tears, with blood in them,
Like that red sweat that stained Gethsemane
With witness, when the deadly kiss had put
Shame on the mouth of Judas; and he cried,
Crying on God, and made out words and said:
Fair lord, sweet lord, most pleasant to all men,
To me so pleasant in clean days of mine
That now are rained upon with heavy rain,
Soiled with grey grime and with the dusty years,
Because in all those tourneys and hot things
I had to do with, in all riding times
And noise of work, and on smooth holidays
Sitting to see the smiting of hard spears,
And spur-smiting of steeds and wrath of men,
And gracious measure of the rounded game,
I held you in true honour and kept white
The hands of my allegiance as a maid's,
Being whole of faith and perfect in the will.
Therefore I pray you, O God marvellous,
See me how I am stricken among men,
And how the lip I fed with plenteousness
And cooled with wine of liberal courtesy
Turns a snake's life to poison me and clings--

---

---

THE SECRET OF SIR DINADAN

by

MARION AMES TAGGART

"For he was a good knight, but he was a a scoffer and a jester, and the merriest knight among fellowship that was that time living.
"And he had such a custom that he loved every good knight, and every good knight loved him again.
"And so he (Dinadan) rode into the castle. Anon Belle Isoud came unto him, and either saluted other. Then she asked him of whence he came.
"'Madam,' said Dinadan, 'I am of the court of King Arthur, and knight of the Table Round, and my name is Dinadan.'
"'Madam,' said Dinadan, 'I marvel of Sir Tristram and other lovers, what aileth them to be so mad and so sotted upon women.'
"'Why,' said La Belle Isoud, 'are ye a knight and be no lover?'
"'Nay,' said Sir Dinadan, 'for the joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long.'

"As it happened Sir Palamides looked up toward her (Isoud) where she lay in the window, and he espied how she laughed: and therewith he took such a rejoicing that he smote down, what with his spear and with his sword, all that ever he met, for through the sight of her he was so enamored in her love. 'Well,' said Dinadan to himself, 'this worship that Sir Palamides hath here this day, he may thank the Queen Isoud: for had she been away this day Sir Palamides had not gotten the prize this day.'" - (From Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur.")

AH, Dinadan! light as thy lance in rest,
Rang the gay laugh of thy gibe and thy jest;
But he that laughs last laughs ever the best,
    And love is no theme for thy laughter.
Friendship thou knowest, and knighthood's sure truth,
But love of a man for a man, in sooth,
Sufficeth but rarely the blood of youth,
    Though it leaveth no sting thereafter.

Why did ye mock to the belle Dame Isoud,
Fresh from thy ride through the murmuring wood,
Vaunting the strength that love's darts had withstood,
    With laughter so mirthless and dreary?
Scoffing, thou saidst that love's joy was but brief,
Long as life dureth its sorrow and grief;
Years in their passing bring never relief,
    To lovers' hearts, heavy and weary.

She who loved Tristram so long and so well,
Laughed in the casement like chime of a bell;
But, Dinadan, who shall say what befell
    The heart that thy armor concealed?
Sure in thy boast and thy laugh rang a cry;
Hid in thy mail which all knights could defy,
Lay in the weak spot where love's arrows did fly;
    The wound that thy words had revealed.

How couldst thou guess how love's sorrow was long,
How couldst thou know how love's strength made one strong,
How couldst thou bear its refrain in thy song,
    Whose heart had loved never a woman?
Ah, Dinadan, merriest friend and knight,
Loved of them all whom the king pledged to right,
Fear we that once thou wert worsted in fight,
    In secretly loving wert human!

---

---

THE MARCH OF ARTHUR
(BALE ARZUR)

translated by

Tom Taylor

   [M. de la Villemarqué, to whom we owe the Breton original of The March of Arthur , which he obtained from the recitation of an old mountaineer of Leuhan, called Mikel Floc'h, informs us that these triplets were sung in chorus, as late as the Chouan war, by the Breton peasants, as they marched to battle against the Republican soldiers. The belief in the appearance of Arthur's host on the mountains, headed by their mystic chief, who awakens from his charmed sleep in the Valley of Avalon whenever war impends over his beloved Cymry, is common to all the Celtic races, and may be compared with a similar faith as to Holger among the Danes, Barbarossa among the Germans, and Marco among the Servians. Sir Walter Scott has recorded the belief entertained in the Highlands of the apparition of mounted warriors riding along the precipitous flanks of the mountains, where no living horse could keep his footing. The apparition of this ghostly troop is always held to portend war; and it is no doubt the same which the Celtic bard has here described as arrayed under Arthur. The ancient air to which the triplets are sung (which will be found among the musical accompaniments in the Appendix ) is a wild and warlike march; and the peasant who chanted it to De la Villermarqué told him it was always sung three times over. The composition is an ancient one, and contains many words now obsolete in Brittany, though still found in the Cymric of Wales. The last triplet is a late addition.]

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp to battle din!
Tramp son, tramp sire, tramp kith and kin!
Tramp one, tramp all, have hearts within.

The chieftain's son his sire addrest,
As morn awoke the world from rest:
"Lo! warriors on yon mountain crest--

"Lo! warriors armed, their course that hold
On grey war-horses riding bold,
With nostrils snorting wide for cold!

"Rank closing up on rank I see,
Six by six, and three by three,
Spear-points by thousands glinting free.

"Now rank on rank, twos front they go
Behind a flag which to and fro
Sways, as the winds of death do blow!

"Nine sling-casts' length from wan to rear--
I know 'tis Arthur's hosts appear;
There Arthur strides--the foremost peer!"

"If it be Arthur--Ho! what, ho!
Up spear! out arrow! Bend the bow!
Forth, after Arthur, on the foe!"

The chieftain's words were hardly spoke,
When forth the cry of battle broke--
From end to end the hills it woke:

"Be 't head for hand, and heart for eye,
Death-wound for scratch--a-low, on high--
Matron for maid, and man for boy!

"Stone-horse for mare, for heifers steers.
War-chief for warrior, youth for years,
And fire for sweat, and blood for tears.

"And three for one--by strath and scaur,
By day, by night, till near and far
The streams run red with waves of war!

"If in the fight we fall, so best!
Bathed in our blood--a baptism blest--
With joyous hearts we'll take our rest.

"If we but fall where we have fought,
As Christian men and Bretons ought,
Such death is ne'er too early sought."

---

---

GALAHAD IN THE CASTLE OF THE MAIDENS

by

SARA TEASDALE

(To the maiden with the hidden face in Abbey's painting)

The other maidens raised their eyes to him
Who stumbled in before them when the fight
Had left him victor, with a victor's right.
I think his eyes with quick hot tears grew dim;
He scarcely saw her swaying white and slim,
And trembling slightly, dreaming of his might,
Nor knew he touched her hand, as cool and light
As a wan wraith's beside a river's rim.
The other maidens raised their eyes to see
And only she has hid her face away,
And yet I think she loved him more than they,
And very fairly fashioned was her face.
Yet for Love's shame and sweet humility,
She could not meet him with their queenlike grace.

---

---

GUENEVERE

by

SARA TEASDALE

I was a queen, and I have lost my crown;
A wife, and I have broken all my vows;
A lover, and I ruined him I loved:--
There is no other havoc left to do.
A little month ago I was a queen,
And mothers held their babies up to see
When I came riding out of Camelot.
The women smiled, and all the world smiled too.
And now, what woman's eyes would smile on me?
I am still beautiful, and yet what child
Would think of me as some high, heaven-sent thing,
An angel, clad in gold and miniver?
The world would run from me, and yet I am
No different from the queen they used to love.
If water, flowing silver over stones,
Is forded, and beneath the horses' feet
Grows turbid suddenly, it clears again,
And men will drink it with no thought of harm.
Yet I am branded for a single fault.

I was the flower amid a toiling world,
Where people smiled to see one happy thing,
And they were proud and glad to raise me high;
They only asked that I should be right fair,
A little kind, and gownèd wondrously,
And surely it were little praise to me
If I had pleased them well throughout my life.

I was a queen, the daughter of a king.
The crown was never heavy on my head,
It was my right, and was a part of me.
The women thought me proud, the men were kind,
And bowed down gallantly to kiss my hand,
And watched me as I passed them calmly by,
Along the halls I shall not tread again.
What if, to-night, I should revisit them?
The warders at the gates, the kitchen-maids,
The very beggars would stand off from me,
And I, their queen, would climb the stairs alone,
Pass through the banquet-hall, a hated thing,
And seek my chambers for a hiding-place,
And I should find them but a sepulchre,
The very rushes rotted on the floors,
The fire in ashes on the freezing hearth.

I was a queen, and he who loved me best
Made me a woman for a night and day,
And now I go unqueened forevermore.

A queen should never dream on summer nights,
When hovering spells are heavy in the dusk:--
I think no night was ever quite so still,
So smoothly lit with red along the west,
So deeply hushed with quiet through and through.
And strangely clear, and sharply dyed with light,
The trees stood straight against a paling sky,
With Venus burning lamp-like in the west.
I walked alone among a thousand flowers,
That drooped their heads and drowsed beneath the dew,
And all my thoughts were quieted to sleep.
Behind me, on the walk, I heard a step--
I did not know my heart could tell his tread,
I did not know I loved him till that hour.
The garden reeled a little, I was weak,
And in my breast I felt a wild, sick pain.
Quickly he came behind me, caught my arms,
That ached beneath his touch; and then I swayed,
My head fell backward and I saw his face.

All this grows bitter that was once so sweet,
And many mouths must drain the dregs of it,
But none will pity me, nor pity him
Whom Love so lashed, and with such cruel thongs.

---

---

THE LADY OF SHALOTT

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Part I.

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow-veil'd
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott."

Part II.

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
"I am half-sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

Part III.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A redcross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle-bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV.

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale-yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott .

And down the river's dim expanse--
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance--
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right--
The leaves upon her falling light--
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot;
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
A corse between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott .

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

---

---

SIR GALAHAD

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

My good blade carves the casques of men,
   My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
   Because my heart is pure.
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
   The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly,
   The horse and rider reel:
They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
   And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
   That lightly rain from ladies' hands.

How sweet are looks that ladies bend
   On whom their favours fall!
From them I battle till the end,
   To save from shame and thrall:
But all my heart is drawn above,
   My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine:
I never felt the kiss of love,
   Nor maiden's hand in mine.
More bounteous aspects on me beam,
   Me mightier transports move and thrill;
So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
   A virgin heart in work and will.

When down the stormy crescent goes,
   A light before me swims,
Between dark stems the forest glows,
   I hear a noise of hymns:
Then by some secret shrine I ride;
   I hear a voice but none are there;
The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
   The tapers burning fair.
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
   The silver vessels sparkle clean,
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
   And solemn chaunts resound between.

Sometime on lonely mountain-meres
   I find a magic bark;
I leap on board: no helmsman steers:
   I float till all is dark.
A gentle sound, an awful light!
   Three angels bear the holy Grail:
With folded feet, in stoles of white,
   On sleeping wings they sail.
Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!
   My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,
   And star-like mingles with the stars.

When on my goodly charger borne
   Thro' dreaming towns I go,
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
   The streets are dumb with snow.
The tempest crackles on the leads,
   And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
   And gilds the driving hail.
I leave the plain, I climb the height;
   No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
   Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden knight--to me is given
   Such hope, I know not fear;
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
   That often meet me here.
I muse on joy that will not cease,
   Pure spaces clothed in living beams,
Pure lilies of eternal peace,
   Whose odours haunt my dreams;
And, stricken by an angel's hand,
   This mortal armour that I wear,
This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
   Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.

The clouds are broken in the sky,
   And thro' the mountain-walls
A rolling organ-harmony
   Swells up, and shakes and falls.
Then move the trees, the copses nod,
   Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
"O just and faithful knight of God!
   Ride on! the prize is near."
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
   By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,
   Until I find the holy Grail.

---

---

SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE
A FRAGMENT

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Like souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sunlit fall of rain.
In crystal vapor everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And far, in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.

Sometimes the linnet piped his song;
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong;
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong;
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.

Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring;
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.

Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mixt with violet
Her cream-white mule his pastern set;
And fleeter now she skimm'd the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings
With jingling bridle-reins.

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.

---

---

Balin and Balan

by

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Pellam the King, who held and lost with Lot
In that first war, and had his realm restored
But rendered tributary, failed of late
To send his tribute; wherefore Arthur called
His treasurer, one of many years, and spake,
"Go thou with him and him and bring it to us,
Lest we should set one truer on his throne.
Man's word is God in man."

               His Baron said
"We go but harken: there be two strange knights
Who sit near Camelot at a fountain side,
A mile beneath the forest, challenging
And overthrowing every knight who comes.
Wilt thou I undertake them as we pass,
And send them to thee?"

            Arthur laughed upon him,
"Old friend, too old to be so young, depart,
Delay not thou for aught, but let them sit,
Until they find a lustier than themselves."

   So these departed. Early, one fair dawn,
The light-winged spirit of his youth returned
On Arthur's heart; he armed himself and went,
So coming to the fountain-side beheld
Balin and Balan sitting statuelike,
Brethren, to right and left the spring, that down,
From underneath a plume of lady-fern,
Sang, and the sand danced at the bottom of it.
And on the right of Balin Balin's horse
Was fast beside an alder, on the left
Of Balan Balan's near a poplartree.
"Fair Sirs," said Arthur, "wherefore sit ye here?"
Balin and Balan answered "For the sake
Of glory; we be mightier men than all
In Arthur's court; that also have we proved;
For whatsoever knight against us came
Or I or he have easily overthrown."
"I too," said Arthur, "am of Arthur's hall,
But rather proven in his Paynim wars
Than famous jousts; but see, or proven or not,
Whether me likewise ye can overthrow."
And Arthur lightly smote the brethren down,
And lightly so returned, and no man knew.

   Then Balin rose, and Balan, and beside
The carolling water set themselves again,
And spake no word until the shadow turned;
When from the fringe of coppice round them burst
A spangled pursuivant, and crying, "Sirs,
Rise, follow! ye be sent for by the King,"
They followed; whom when Arthur seeing asked
"Tell me your names; why sat ye by the well?"
Balin the stillness of a minute broke
Saying "An unmelodious name to thee,
Balin, 'the Savage'--that addition thine--
My brother and my better, this man here,
Balan. I smote upon the naked skull
A thrall of thine in open hall, my hand
Was gauntleted, half slew him; for I heard
He had spoken evil of me; thy just wrath
Sent me a three-years' exile from thine eyes.
I have not lived my life delightsomely:
For I that did that violence to thy thrall,
Had often wrought some fury on myself,
Saving for Balan: those three kingless years
Have past--were wormwood-bitter to me. King,
Methought that if we sat beside the well,
And hurled to ground what knight soever spurred
Against us, thou would'st take me gladlier back,
And make, as ten-times worthier to be thine
Than twenty Balins, Balan knight. I have said.
Not so--not all. A man of thine today
Abashed us both, and brake my boast. Thy will?"
Said Arthur "Thou hast ever spoken truth;
Thy too fierce manhood would not let thee lie.
Rise, my true knight. As children learn, be thou
Wiser for falling! walk with me, and move
To music with thine Order and the King.
Thy chair, a grief to all the brethren, stands
Vacant, but thou retake it, mine again!"

   Thereafter, when Sir Balin entered hall,
The Lost one Found was greeted as in Heaven
With joy that blazed itself in woodland wealth
Of leaf, and gayest garlandage of flowers,
Along the walls and down the board; they sat,
And cup clashed cup; they drank and some one sang,
Sweet-voiced, a song of welcome, whereupon
Their common shout in chorus, mounting, made
Those banners of twelve battles overhead
Stir, as they stirred of old, when Arthur's host
Proclaimed him Victor, and the day was won.

   Then Balan added to their Order lived
A wealthier life than heretofore with these
And Balin, till their embassage returned.

   "Sir King" they brought report "we hardly found,
So bushed about it is with gloom, the hall
Of him to whom ye sent us, Pellam, once
A Christless foe of thine as ever dashed
Horse against horse; but seeing that thy realm
Hath prospered in the name of Christ, the King
Took, as in rival heat, to holy things;
And finds himself descended from the Saint
Arimathaean Joseph; him who first
Brought the great faith to Britain over seas;
He boasts his life as purer than thine own;
Eats scarce enow to keep his pulse abeat;
Hath pushed aside his faithful wife, nor lets
Or dame or damsel enter at his gates
Lest he should be polluted. This gray King
Showed us a shrine wherein were wonders--yea--
Rich arks with priceless bones of martyrdom,
Thorns of the crown and shivers of the cross,
And therewithal (for thus he told us) brought
By holy Joseph hither, that same spear
Wherewith the Roman pierced the side of Christ.
He much amazed us; after, when we sought
The tribute, answered 'I have quite foregone
All matters of this world: Garlon, mine heir,
Of him demand it,' which this Garlon gave
With much ado, railing at thine and thee.

   "But when we left, in those deep woods we found
A knight of thine spear-stricken from behind,
Dead, whom we buried; more than one of us
Cried out on Garlon, but a woodman there
Reported of some demon in the woods
Was once a man, who driven by evil tongues
From all his fellows, lived alone, and came
To learn black magic, and to hate his kind
With such a hate, that when he died, his soul
Became a Fiend, which, as the man in life
Was wounded by blind tongues he saw not whence,
Strikes from behind. This woodman showed the cave
From which he sallies, and wherein he dwelt.
We saw the hoof-print of a horse, no more."

   Then Arthur, "Let who goes before me, see
He do not fall behind me: foully slain
And villainously! who will hunt for me
This demon of the woods?" Said Balan, "I"!
So claimed the quest and rode away, but first,
Embracing Balin, "Good my brother, hear!
Let not thy moods prevail, when I am gone
Who used to lay them! hold them outer fiends,
Who leap at thee to tear thee; shake them aside,
Dreams ruling when wit sleeps! yea, but to dream
That any of these would wrong thee, wrongs thyself.
Witness their flowery welcome. Bound are they
To speak no evil. Truly save for fears,
My fear for thee, so rich a fellowship
Would make me wholly blest: thou one of them,
Be one indeed: consider them, and all
Their bearing in their common bond of love,
No more of hatred than in Heaven itself,
No more of jealousy than in Paradise."

   So Balan warned, and went; Balin remained:
Who--for but three brief moons had glanced away
From being knighted till he smote the thrall,
And faded from the presence into years
Of exile-- now would strictlier set himself
To learn what Arthur meant by courtesy,
Manhood, and knighthood; wherefore hovered round
Lancelot, but when he marked his high sweet smile
In passing, and a transitory word
Make knight or churl or child or damsel seem
From being smiled at happier in themselves--
Sighed, as a boy lame-born beneath a height,
That glooms his valley, sighs to see the peak
Sun-flushed, or touch at night the northern star;
For one from out his village lately climbed
And brought report of azure lands and fair,
Far seen to left and right; and he himself
Hath hardly scaled with help a hundred feet
Up from the base: so Balin marvelling oft
How far beyond him Lancelot seemed to move,
Groaned, and at times would mutter, "These be gifts,
Born with the blood, not learnable, divine,
Beyond my reach. Well had I foughten-- well--
In those fierce wars, struck hard--and had I crowned
With my slain self the heaps of whom I slew--
So--better!-- But this worship of the Queen,
That honour too wherein she holds him--this,
This was the sunshine that hath given the man
A growth, a name that branches o'er the rest,
And strength against all odds, and what the King
So prizes--overprizes--gentleness.
Her likewise would I worship an I might.
I never can be close with her, as he
That brought her hither. Shall I pray the King
To let me bear some token of his Queen
Whereon to gaze, remembering her--forget
My heats and violences? live afresh?
What, if the Queen disdained to grant it! nay
Being so stately-gentle, would she make
My darkness blackness? and with how sweet grace
She greeted my return! Bold will I be--
Some goodly cognizance of Guinevere,
In lieu of this rough beast upon my shield,
Langued gules, and toothed with grinning savagery."

   And Arthur, when Sir Balin sought him, said
"What wilt thou bear?" Balin was bold, and asked
To bear her own crown-royal upon shield,
Whereat she smiled and turned her to the King,
Who answered "Thou shalt put the crown to use.
The crown is but the shadow of the King,
And this a shadow's shadow, let him have it,
So this will help him of his violences!"
"No shadow" said Sir Balin "O my Queen,
But light to me! no shadow, O my King
But golden earnest of a gentler life!"

   So Balin bare the crown, and all the knights
Approved him, and the Queen, and all the world
Made music, and he felt his being move
In music with his Order, and the King.

   The nightingale, full-toned in middle May,
Hath ever and anon a note so thin
It seems another voice in other groves;
Thus, after some quick burst of sudden wrath,
The music in him seemed to change, and grow
Faint and far-off.

            And once he saw the thrall
His passion half had gauntleted to death,
That causer of his banishment and shame,
Smile at him, as he deemed, presumptuously:
His arm half rose to strike again, but fell:
The memory of that cognizance on shield
Weighted it down, but in himself he moaned:

   "Too high this mount of Camelot for me:
These high-set courtesies are not for me.
Shall I not rather prove the worse for these?
Fierier and stormier from restraining, break
Into some madness even before the Queen?"

   Thus, as a hearth lit in a mountain home,
And glancing on the window, when the gloom
Of twilight deepens round it, seems a flame
That rages in the woodland far below,
So when his moods were darkened, court and King
And all the kindly warmth of Arthur's hall
Shadowed an angry distance: yet he strove
To learn the graces of their Table, fought
Hard with himself, and seemed at length in peace.

   Then chanced, one morning, that Sir Balin sat
Close-bowered in that garden nigh the hall.
A walk of roses ran from door to door;
A walk of lilies crost it to the bower:
And down that range of roses the great Queen
Came with slow steps, the morning on her face;
And all in shadow from the counter door
Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at once,
As if he saw not, glanced aside, and paced
The long white walk of lilies toward the bower.
Followed the Queen; Sir Balin heard her "Prince,
Art thou so little loyal to thy Queen,
As pass without good morrow to thy Queen?"
To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on earth,
"Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen?"
"Yea so" she said "but so to pass me by--
So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself,
Whom all men rate the king of courtesy.
Let be: ye stand, fair lord, as in a dream."

   Then Lancelot with his hand among the flowers
"Yea--for a dream. Last night methought I saw
That maiden Saint who stands with lily in hand
In yonder shrine. All round her prest the dark,
And all the light upon her silver face
Flowed from the spiritual lily that she held.
Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes--away:
For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush
As hardly tints the blossom of the quince
Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood."

   "Sweeter to me" she said "this garden rose
Deep-hued and many-folded! sweeter still
The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom of May.
Prince, we have ridden before among the flowers
In those fair days--not all as cool as these,
Though season-earlier. Art thou sad? or sick?
Our noble King will send thee his own leech--
Sick? or for any matter angered at me?"

   Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes; they dwelt
Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall: her hue
Changed at his gaze: so turning side by side
They past, and Balin started from his bower.

   "Queen? subject? but I see not what I see.
Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear.
My father hath begotten me in his wrath.
I suffer from the things before me, know,
Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight;
A churl, a clown!" and in him gloom on gloom
Deepened: he sharply caught his lance and shield,
Nor stayed to crave permission of the King,
But, mad for strange adventure, dashed away.

   He took the selfsame track as Balan, saw
The fountain where they sat together, sighed
"Was I not better there with him?" and rode
The skyless woods, but under open blue
Came on the hoarhead woodman at a bough
Wearily hewing, "Churl, thine axe!" he cried,
Descended, and disjointed it at a blow:
To whom the woodman uttered wonderingly
"Lord, thou couldst lay the Devil of these woods
If arm of flesh could lay him." Balin cried
"Him, or the viler devil who plays his part,
To lay that devil would lay the Devil in me."
"Nay" said the churl, "our devil is a truth,
I saw the flash of him but yestereven.
And some do say that our Sir Garlon too
Hath learned black magic, and to ride unseen.
Look to the cave." But Balin answered him
"Old fabler, these be fancies of the churl,
Look to thy woodcraft," and so leaving him,
Now with slack rein and careless of himself,
Now with dug spur and raving at himself,
Now with droopt brow down the long glades he rode;
So marked not on his right a cavern-chasm
Yawn over darkness, where, nor far within,
The whole day died, but, dying, gleamed on rocks
Roof-pendent, sharp; and others from the floor,
Tusklike, arising, made that mouth of night
Whereout the Demon issued up from Hell.
He marked not this, but blind and deaf to all
Save that chained rage, which ever yelpt within,
Past eastward from the falling sun. At once
He felt the hollow-beaten mosses thud
And tremble, and then the shadow of a spear,
Shot from behind him, ran along the ground.
Sideways he started from the path, and saw,
With pointed lance as if to pierce, a shape,
A light of armour by him flash, and pass
And vanish in the woods; and followed this,
But all so blind in rage that unawares
He burst his lance against a forest bough,
Dishorsed himself, and rose again, and fled
Far, till the castle of a King, the hall
Of Pellam, lichen-bearded, grayly draped
With streaming grass, appeared, low-built but strong;
The ruinous donjon as a knoll of moss,
The battlement overtopt with ivytods,
A home of bats, in every tower an owl.

   Then spake the men of Pellam crying "Lord,
Why wear ye this crown-royal upon shield?"
Said Balin "For the fairest and the best
Of ladies living gave me this to bear."
So stalled his horse, and strode across the court,
But found the greetings both of knight and King
Faint in the low dark hall of banquet: leaves
Laid their green faces flat against the panes,
Sprays grated, and the cankered boughs without
Whined in the wood; for all was hushed within,
Till when at feast Sir Garlon likewise asked
"Why wear ye that crown-royal?" Balin said
"The Queen we worship, Lancelot, I, and all,
As fairest, best and purest, granted me
To bear it!" Such a sound (for Arthur's knights
Were hated strangers in the hall) as makes
The white swan-mother, sitting, when she hears
A strange knee rustle through her secret reeds,
Made Garlon, hissing; then he sourly smiled.
"Fairest I grant her: I have seen; but best,
Best, purest? thou from Arthur's hall, and yet
So simple! hast thou eyes, or if, are these
So far besotted that they fail to see
This fair wife-worship cloaks a secret shame?
Truly, ye men of Arthur be but babes."

   A goblet on the board by Balin, bossed
With holy Joseph's legend, on his right
Stood, all of massiest bronze: one side had sea
And ship and sail and angels blowing on it:
And one was rough with wattling, and the walls
Of that low church he built at Glastonbury.
This Balin graspt, but while in act to hurl,
Through memory of that token on the shield
Relaxed his hold: "I will be gentle" he thought
"And passing gentle" caught his hand away,
Then fiercely to Sir Garlon "Eyes have I
That saw today the shadow of a spear,
Shot from behind me, run along the ground;
Eyes too that long have watched how Lancelot draws
From homage to the best and purest, might,
Name, manhood, and a grace, but scantly thine,
Who, sitting in thine own hall, canst endure
To mouth so huge a foulness--to thy guest,
Me, me of Arthur's Table. Felon talk!
Let be! no more!"
            But not the less by night
The scorn of Garlon, poisoning all his rest,
Stung him in dreams. At length, and dim through leaves
Blinkt the white morn, sprays grated, and old boughs
Whined in the wood. He rose, descended, met
The scorner in the castle court, and fain,
For hate and loathing, would have past him by;
But when Sir Garlon uttered mocking-wise;
"What, wear ye still that same crown-scandalous?"
His countenance blackened, and his forehead veins
Bloated, and branched; and tearing out of sheath
The brand, Sir Balin with a fiery "Ha!
So thou be shadow, here I make thee ghost,"
Hard upon helm smote him, and the blade flew
Splintering in six, and clinkt upon the stones.
Then Garlon, reeling slowly backward, fell,
And Balin by the banneret of his helm
Dragged him, and struck, but from the castle a cry
Sounded across the court, and--men-at-arms,
A score with pointed lances, making at him--
He dashed the pummel at the foremost face,
Beneath a low door dipt, and made his feet
Wings through a glimmering gallery, till he marked
The portal of King Pellam's chapel wide
And inward to the wall; he stept behind;
Thence in a moment heard them pass like wolves
Howling; but while he stared about the shrine,
In which he scarce could spy the Christ for Saints,
Beheld before a golden altar lie
The longest lance his eyes had ever seen,
Point-painted red; and seizing thereupon
Pushed through an open casement down, leaned on it,
Leapt in a semicircle, and lit on earth;
Then hand at ear, and harkening from what side
The blindfold rummage buried in the walls
Might echo, ran the counter path, and found
His charger, mounted on him and away.
An arrow whizzed to the right, one to the left,
One overhead; and Pellam's feeble cry
"Stay, stay him! he defileth heavenly things
With earthly uses"--made him quickly dive
Beneath the boughs, and race through many a mile
Of dense and open, till his goodly horse,
Arising wearily at a fallen oak,
Stumbled headlong, and cast him face to ground.

   Half-wroth he had not ended, but all glad,
Knightlike, to find his charger yet unlamed,
Sir Balin drew the shield from off his neck,
Stared at the priceless cognizance, and thought
"I have shamed thee so that now thou shamest me,
Thee will I bear no more," high on a branch
Hung it, and turned aside into the woods,
And there in gloom cast himself all along,
Moaning "My violences, my violences!"

   But now the wholesome music of the wood
Was dumbed by one from out the hall of Mark,
A damsel-errant, warbling, as she rode
The woodland alleys, Vivien, with her Squire.

   "The fire of Heaven has killed the barren cold,
And kindled all the plain and all the wold.
The new leaf ever pushes off the old.
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell.

   "Old priest, who mumble worship in your quire--
Old monk and nun, ye scorn the world's desire,
Yet in your frosty cells ye feel the fire!
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell.

   "The fire of Heaven is on the dusty ways.
The wayside blossoms open to the blaze.
The whole wood-world is one full peal of praise.
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell.
   
   "The fire of Heaven is lord of all things good,
And starve not thou this fire within thy blood,
But follow Vivien through the fiery flood!
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell!"

   Then turning to her Squire "This fire of Heaven,
This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again,
And beat the cross to earth, and break the King
And all his Table."

            Then they reached a glade,
Where under one long lane of cloudless air
Before another wood, the royal crown
Sparkled, and swaying upon a restless elm
Drew the vague glance of Vivien, and her Squire;
Amazed were these; "Lo there" she cried--"a crown--
Borne by some high lord-prince of Arthur's hall,
And there a horse! the rider? where is he?
See, yonder lies one dead within the wood.
Not dead; he stirs!--but sleeping. I will speak.
Hail, royal knight, we break on thy sweet rest,
Not, doubtless, all unearned by noble deeds.
But bounden art thou, if from Arthur's hall,
To help the weak. Behold, I fly from shame,
A lustful King, who sought to win my love
Through evil ways: the knight, with whom I rode,
Hath suffered misadventure, and my squire
Hath in him small defence; but thou, Sir Prince,
Wilt surely guide me to the warrior King,
Arthur the blameless, pure as any maid,
To get me shelter for my maidenhood.
I charge thee by that crown upon thy shield,
And by the great Queen's name, arise and hence."

   And Balin rose, "Thither no more! nor Prince
Nor knight am I, but one that hath defamed
The cognizance she gave me: here I dwell
Savage among the savage woods, here die--
Die: let the wolves' black maws ensepulchre
Their brother beast, whose anger was his lord.
O me, that such a name as Guinevere's,
Which our high Lancelot hath so lifted up,
And been thereby uplifted, should through me,
My violence, and my villainy, come to shame."

   Thereat she suddenly laughed and shrill, anon
Sighed all as suddenly. Said Balin to her
"Is this thy courtesy--to mock me, ha?
Hence, for I will not with thee." Again she sighed
"Pardon, sweet lord! we maidens often laugh
When sick at heart, when rather we should weep.
I knew thee wronged. I brake upon thy rest,
And now full loth am I to break thy dream,
But thou art man, and canst abide a truth,
Though bitter. Hither, boy--and mark me well.
Dost thou remember at Caerleon once--
A year ago--nay, then I love thee not--
Ay, thou rememberest well--one summer dawn--
By the great tower--Caerleon upon Usk--
Nay, truly we were hidden: this fair lord,
The flower of all their vestal knighthood, knelt
In amorous homage--knelt--what else?--O ay
Knelt, and drew down from out his night-black hair
And mumbled that white hand whose ringed caress
Had wandered from her own King's golden head,
And lost itself in darkness, till she cried--
I thought the great tower would crash down on both--
'Rise, my sweet King, and kiss me on the lips,
Thou art my King.' This lad, whose lightest word
Is mere white truth in simple nakedness,
Saw them embrace: he reddens, cannot speak,
So bashful, he! but all the maiden Saints,
The deathless mother-maidenhood of Heaven
Cry out upon her. Up then, ride with me!
Talk not of shame! thou canst not, an thou would'st,
Do these more shame than these have done themselves."

   She lied with ease; but horror-stricken he,
Remembering that dark bower at Camelot,
Breathed in a dismal whisper "It is truth."

   Sunnily she smiled "And even in this lone wood,
Sweet lord, ye do right well to whisper this.
Fools prate, and perish traitors. Woods have tongues,
As walls have ears: but thou shalt go with me,
And we will speak at first exceeding low.
Meet is it the good King be not deceived.
See now, I set thee high on vantage ground,
From whence to watch the time, and eagle-like
Stoop at thy will on Lancelot and the Queen."

   She ceased; his evil spirit upon him leapt,
He ground his teeth together, sprang with a yell,
Tore from the branch, and cast on earth, the shield,
Drove his mailed heel athwart the royal crown,
Stampt all into defacement, hurled it from him
Among the forest weeds, and cursed the tale,
The told-of, and the teller.

               That weird yell,
Unearthlier than all shriek of bird or beast,
Thrilled through the woods; and Balan lurking there
(His quest was unaccomplished) heard and thought
"The scream of that Wood-devil I came to quell!"
Then nearing "Lo! he hath slain some brother-knight,
And tramples on the goodly shield to show
His loathing of our Order and the Queen.
My quest, meseems, is here. Or devil or man
Guard thou thine head." Sir Balin spake not word,
But snatched a sudden buckler from the Squire,
And vaulted on his horse, and so they crashed
In onset, and King Pellam's holy spear,
Reputed to be red with sinless blood,
Reddened at once with sinful, for the point
Across the maiden shield of Balan pricked
The hauberk to the flesh; and Balin's horse
Was wearied to the death, and, when they clashed,
Rolling back upon Balin, crushed the man
Inward, and either fell, and swooned away.

   Then to her Squire muttered the damsel "Fools!
This fellow hath wrought some foulness with his Queen:
Else never had he borne her crown, nor raved
And thus foamed over at a rival name:
But thou, Sir Chick, that scarce hast broken shell,
Art yet half-yolk, not even come to down--
Who never sawest Caerleon upon Usk--
And yet hast often pleaded for my love--
See what I see, be thou where I have been,
Or else Sir Chick--dismount and loose their casques
I fain would know what manner of men they be."
And when the Squire had loosed them, "Goodly!--look!
They might have cropt the myriad flower of May,
And butt each other here, like brainless bulls,
Dead for one heifer!"

            Then the gentle Squire
"I hold them happy, so they died for love:
And, Vivien, though ye beat me like your dog,
I too could die, as now I live, for thee."

   "Live on, Sir Boy," she cried, "I better prize
The living dog than the dead lion: away!
I cannot brook to gaze upon the dead."
Then leapt her palfrey o'er the fallen oak,
And bounding forward "Leave them to the wolves."

   But when their foreheads felt the cooling air,
Balin first woke, and seeing that true face,
Familiar up from cradle-time, so wan,
Crawled slowly with low moans to where he lay,
And on his dying brother cast himself
Dying; and he lifted faint eyes; he felt
One near him; all at once they found the world,
Staring wild-wide; then with a childlike wail,
And drawing down the dim disastrous brow
That o'er him hung, he kissed it, moaned and spake;

   "O Balin, Balin, I that fain had died
To save thy life, have brought thee to thy death.
Why had ye not the shield I knew? and why
Trampled ye thus on that which bare the Crown?"

   Then Balin told him brokenly, and in gasps,
All that had chanced, and Balan moaned again.

   "Brother, I dwelt a day in Pellam's hall:
This Garlon mocked me, but I heeded not.
And one said 'Eat in peace! a liar is he,
And hates thee for the tribute!' this good knight
Told me, that twice a wanton damsel came,
And sought for Garlon at the castle-gates,
Whom Pellam drove away with holy heat.
I well believe this damsel, and the one
Who stood beside thee even now, the same.
'She dwells among the woods' he said 'and meets
And dallies with him in the Mouth of Hell.'
Foul are their lives; foul are their lips; they lied.
Pure as our own true Mother is our Queen."

   "O brother" answered Balin "Woe is me!
My madness all thy life has been thy doom,
Thy curse, and darkened all thy day; and now
The night has come. I scarce can see thee now.
Goodnight! for we shall never bid again
Goodmorrow--Dark my doom was here, and dark
It will be there. I see thee now no more.
I would not mine again should darken thine,
Goodnight, true brother."

               Balan answered low
"Goodnight, true brother here! goodmorrow there!
We two were born together, and we die
Together by one doom:" and while he spoke
Closed his death-drowsing eyes, and slept the sleep
With Balin, either locked in either's arm.

---

---

GARETH AND LYNETTE

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent,
And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring
Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted Pine
Lost footing, fell, and so was whirled away.
"How he went down," said Gareth, "as a false knight
Or evil king before my lance if lance
Were mine to use--O senseless cataract,
Bearing all down in thy precipitancy--
And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows
And mine is living blood; thou dost His will,
The Maker's, and not knowest, and I that know,
Have strength and wit, in my good mother's hall
Linger with vacillating obedience,
Prisoned, and kept and coaxed and whistled to--
Since the good mother holds me still a child!
Good mother is bad mother unto me!
A worse were better; yet no worse would I.
Heaven yield her for it, but in me put force
To weary her ears with one continuous prayer,
Until she let me fly discaged to sweep
In ever-highering eagle-circles up
To the great Sun of Glory, and thence swoop
Down upon all things base, and dash them dead,
A knight of Arthur, working out his will,
To cleanse the world. Why, Gawain, when he came
With Modred hither in the summertime,
Asked me to tilt with him, the proven knight.
Modred for want of worthier was the judge.
Then I so shook him in the saddle, he said,
'Thou hast half prevailed against me,' said so--he--
Though Modred biting his thin lips was mute,
For he is alway sullen: what care I?"

   And Gareth went, and hovering round her chair
Asked, "Mother, though ye count me still the child,
Sweet mother, do ye love the child?" She laughed,
"Thou art but a wild-goose to question it."
"Then, mother, an ye love the child," he said,
"Being a goose and rather tame than wild,
Hear the child's story." "Yea, my well-beloved,
An 'twere but of the goose and golden eggs."

   And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes,
"Nay, nay, good mother, but this egg of mine
Was finer gold than any goose can lay;
For this an Eagle, a royal Eagle, laid
Almost beyond eye-reach, on such a palm
As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours.
And there was ever haunting round the palm
A lusty youth, but poor, who often saw
The splendour sparkling from aloft, and thought
'An I could climb and lay my hand upon it,
Then were I wealthier than a leash of kings,'
But ever when he reached a hand to climb,
One, that had loved him from his childhood, caught
And stayed him, 'Climb not lest thou break thy neck,
I charge thee by my love,' and so the boy,
Sweet mother, neither clomb, nor brake his neck,
But brake his very heart in pining for it.
And past away."

                              To whom the mother said,
"True love, sweet son, had risked himself and climbed,
And handed down the golden treasure to him."

   And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes,
"Gold? said I gold?--ay then, why he, or she,
Or whosoe'er it was, or half the world
Had ventured-- had the thing I spake of been
Mere gold--but this was all of that true steel,
Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,
And lightnings played about it in the storm,
And all the little fowl were flurried at it,
And there were cries and clashings in the nest,
That sent him from his senses: let me go."

   Then Bellicent bemoaned herself and said,
"Hast thou no pity upon my loneliness?
Lo, where thy father Lot beside the hearth
Lies like a log, and all but smouldered out!
For ever since when traitor to the King
He fought against him in the Barons' war,
And Arthur gave him back his territory,
His age hath slowly droopt, and now lies there
A yet-warm corpse, and yet unburiable,
No more; nor sees, nor hears, nor speaks, nor knows.
And both thy brethren are in Arthur's hall,
Albeit neither loved with that full love
I feel for thee, nor worthy such a love:
Stay therefore thou; red berries charm the bird,
And thee, mine innocent, the jousts, the wars,
Who never knewest finger-ache, nor pang
Of wrenched or broken limb--an often chance
In those brain-stunning shocks, and tourney-falls,
Frights to my heart; but stay: follow the deer
By these tall firs and our fast-falling burns;
So make thy manhood mightier day by day;
Sweet is the chase: and I will seek thee out
Some comfortable bride and fair, to grace
Thy climbing life, and cherish my prone year,
Till falling into Lot's forgetfulness
I know not thee, myself, nor anything.
Stay, my best son! ye are yet more boy than man."

   Then Gareth, "An ye hold me yet for child,
Hear yet once more the story of the child.
For, mother, there was once a King, like ours.
The prince his heir, when tall and marriageable,
Asked for a bride; and thereupon the King
Set two before him. One was fair, strong, armed--
But to be won by force--and many men
Desired her; one, good lack, no man desired.
And these were the conditions of the King:
That save he won the first by force, he needs
Must wed that other, whom no man desired,
A red-faced bride who knew herself so vile,
That evermore she longed to hide herself,
Nor fronted man or woman, eye to eye--
Yea--some she cleaved to, but they died of her.
And one--they called her Fame; and one,--O Mother,
How can ye keep me tethered to you--Shame.
Man am I grown, a man's work must I do.
Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the King,
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King--
Else, wherefore born?"

      To whom the mother said,
"Sweet son, for there be many who deem him not,
Or will not deem him, wholly proven King--
Albeit in mine own heart I knew him King,
When I was frequent with him in my youth,
And heard him Kingly speak, and doubted him
No more than he, himself; but felt him mine,
Of closest kin to me: yet--wilt thou leave
Thine easeful biding here, and risk thine all,
Life, limbs, for one that is not proven King?
Stay, till the cloud that settles round his birth
Hath lifted but a little. Stay, sweet son."

   And Gareth answered quickly, "Not an hour,
So that ye yield me--I will walk through fire,
Mother, to gain it--your full leave to go.
Not proven, who swept the dust of ruined Rome
From off the threshold of the realm, and crushed
The Idolators, and made the people free?
Who should be King save him who makes us free?"

   So when the Queen, who long had sought in vain
To break him from the intent to which he grew,
Found her son's will unwaveringly one,
She answered craftily, "Will ye walk through fire?
Who walks through fire will hardly heed the smoke.
Ay, go then, an ye must: only one proof,
Before thou ask the King to make thee knight,
Of thine obedience and thy love to me,
Thy mother,--I demand."

                        And Gareth cried,
"A hard one, or a hundred, so I go.
Nay--quick! the proof to prove me to the quick!"

   But slowly spake the mother looking at him,
"Prince, thou shalt go disguised to Arthur's hall,
And hire thyself to serve for meats and drinks
Among the scullions and the kitchen-knaves,
And those that hand the dish across the bar.
Nor shalt thou tell thy name to anyone.
And thou shalt serve a twelvemonth and a day."

   For so the Queen believed that when her son
Beheld his only way to glory lead
Low down through villain kitchen-vassalage,
Her own true Gareth was too princely-proud
To pass thereby; so should he rest with her,
Closed in her castle from the sound of arms.

   Silent awhile was Gareth, then replied,
"The thrall in person may be free in soul,
And I shall see the jousts. Thy son am I,
And since thou art my mother, must obey.
I therefore yield me freely to thy will;
For hence will I, disguised, and hire myself
To serve with scullions and with kitchen-knaves;
Nor tell my name to any--no, not the King."

   Gareth awhile lingered. The mother's eye,
Full of the wistful fear that he would go,
And turning toward him whereso'er he turned,
Perplext his outward purpose, till an hour,
When wakened by the wind which with full voice
Swept bellowing through the darkness on to dawn,
He rose, and out of slumber calling two
That still had tended on him from his birth,
Before the wakeful mother heard him, went.

   The three were clad like tillers of the soil.
Southward they set their faces. The birds made
Melody on branch, and melody in mid air,
The damp hill-slopes were quickened into green,
And the live green had kindled into flowers,
For it was past the time of Easterday.

   So, when their feet were planted on the plain
That broadened toward the base of Camelot,
Far off they saw the silver-misty morn
Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount,
That rose between the forest and the field.
At times the summit of the high city flashed;
At times the spires and turrets half-way down
Pricked through the mist; at times the great gate shone
Only, that opened on the field below:
Anon, the whole fair city had disappeared.

   Then those who went with Gareth were amazed,
One crying, "Let us go no further, lord.
Here is a city of Enchanters, built
By fairy Kings." The second echoed him,
"Lord, we have heard from our wise man at home
To Northward, that this King is not the King,
But only changeling out of Fairyland,
Who drave the heathen hence by sorcery
And Merlin's glamour." Then the first again,
"Lord, there is no such city anywhere,
But all a vision."

                     Gareth answered them
With laughter, swearing he had glamour enow
In his own blood, his princedom, youth and hopes,
To plunge old Merlin in the Arabian sea;
So pushed them all unwilling toward the gate.
And there was no gate like it under heaven.
For barefoot on the keystone, which was lined
And rippled like an ever-fleeting wave,
The Lady of the Lake stood: all her dress
Wept from her sides as water flowing away;
But like the cross her great and goodly arms
Stretched under all the cornice and upheld:
And drops of water fell from either hand;
And down from one a sword was hung, from one
A censer, either worn with wind and storm;
And o'er her breast floated the sacred fish;
And in the space to left of her, and right,
Were Arthur's wars in weird devices done,
New things and old co-twisted, as if Time
Were nothing, so inveterately, that men
Were giddy gazing there; and over all
High on the top were those three Queens, the friends
Of Arthur, who should help him at his need.

   Then those with Gareth for so long a space
Stared at the figures, that at last it seemed
The dragon-boughts and elvish emblemings
Began to move, seethe, twine and curl: they called
To Gareth, "Lord, the gateway is alive."

   And Gareth likewise on them fixt his eyes
So long, that even to him they seemed to move.
Out of the city a blast of music pealed.
Back from the gate started the three, to whom
From out thereunder came an ancient man,
Long-bearded, saying, "Who be ye, my sons?"

   Then Gareth, "We be tillers of the soil,
Who leaving share in furrow come to see
The glories of our King: but these, my men,
(Your city moved so weirdly in the mist)
Doubt if the King be King at all, or come
From Fairyland; and whether this be built
By magic, and by fairy Kings and Queens;
Or whether there be any city at all,
Or all a vision: and this music now
Hath scared them both, but tell thou these the truth."

   Then that old Seer made answer playing on him
And saying, "Son, I have seen the good ship sail
Keel upward, and mast downward, in the heavens,
And solid turrets topsy-turvy in air:
And here is truth; but an it please thee not,
Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me.
For truly as thou sayest, a Fairy King
And Fairy Queens have built the city, son;
They came from out a sacred mountain-cleft
Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand,
And built it to the music of their harps.
And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted, son,
For there is nothing in it as it seems
Saving the King; though some there be that hold
The King a shadow, and the city real:
Yet take thou heed of him, for, so thou pass
Beneath this archway, then wilt thou become
A thrall to his enchantments, for the King
Will bind thee by such vows, as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep; but, so thou dread to swear,
Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide
Without, among the cattle of the field.
For an ye heard a music, like enow
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built for ever."

                              Gareth spake
Angered, "Old Master, reverence thine own beard
That looks as white as utter truth, and seems
Wellnigh as long as thou art statured tall!
Why mockest thou the stranger that hath been
To thee fair-spoken?"

                        But the Seer replied,
"Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards?
'Confusion, and illusion, and relation,
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion'?
I mock thee not but as thou mockest me,
And all that see thee, for thou art not who
Thou seemest, but I know thee who thou art.
And now thou goest up to mock the King,
Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie."

   Unmockingly the mocker ending here
Turned to the right, and past along the plain;
Whom Gareth looking after said, "My men,
Our one white lie sits like a little ghost
Here on the threshold of our enterprise.
Let love be blamed for it, not she, nor I:
Well, we will make amends."

                                    With all good cheer
He spake and laughed, then entered with his twain
Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces
And stately, rich in emblem and the work
Of ancient kings who did their days in stone;
Which Merlin's hand, the Mage at Arthur's court,
Knowing all arts, had touched, and everywhere
At Arthur's ordinance, tipt with lessening peak
And pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven.
And ever and anon a knight would pass
Outward, or inward to the hall: his arms
Clashed; and the sound was good to Gareth's ear.
And out of bower and casement shyly glanced
Eyes of pure women, wholesome stars of love;
And all about a healthful people stept
As in the presence of a gracious king.

   Then into hall Gareth ascending heard
A voice, the voice of Arthur, and beheld
Far over heads in that long-vaulted hall
The splendour of the presence of the King
Throned, and delivering doom--and looked no more--
But felt his young heart hammering in his ears,
And thought, "For this half-shadow of a lie
The truthful King will doom me when I speak."
Yet pressing on, though all in fear to find
Sir Gawain or Sir Modred, saw nor one
Nor other, but in all the listening eyes
Of those tall knights, that ranged about the throne,
Clear honour shining like the dewy star
Of dawn, and faith in their great King, with pure
Affection, and the light of victory,
And glory gained, and evermore to gain.

   Then came a widow crying to the King,
"A boon, Sir King! Thy father, Uther, reft
From my dead lord a field with violence:
For howsoe'er at first he proffered gold,
Yet, for the field was pleasant in our eyes,
We yielded not; and then he reft us of it
Perforce, and left us neither gold nor field."

   Said Arthur, "Whether would ye? gold or field?"
To whom the woman weeping, "Nay, my lord,
The field was pleasant in my husband's eye."

   And Arthur, "Have thy pleasant field again,
And thrice the gold for Uther's use thereof,
According to the years. No boon is here,
But justice, so thy say be proven true.
Accursed, who from the wrongs his father did
Would shape himself a right!"

                                 And while she past,
Came yet another widow crying to him,
"A boon, Sir King! Thine enemy, King, am I.
With thine own hand thou slewest my dear lord,
A knight of Uther in the Barons' war,
When Lot and many another rose and fought
Against thee, saying thou wert basely born.
I held with these, and loathe to ask thee aught.
Yet lo! my husband's brother had my son
Thralled in his castle, and hath starved him dead;
And standeth seized of that inheritance
Which thou that slewest the sire hast left the son.
So though I scarce can ask it thee for hate,
Grant me some knight to do the battle for me,
Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my son."

   Then strode a good knight forward, crying to him,
"A boon, Sir King! I am her kinsman, I.
Give me to right her wrong, and slay the man."

   Then came Sir Kay, the seneschal, and cried,
"A boon, Sir King! even that thou grant her none,
This railer, that hath mocked thee in full hall--
None; or the wholesome boon of gyve and gag."

   But Arthur, "We sit King, to help the wronged
Through all our realm. The woman loves her lord.
Peace to thee, woman, with thy loves and hates!
The kings of old had doomed thee to the flames,
Aurelius Emrys would have scourged thee dead,
And Uther slit thy tongue: but get thee hence--
Lest that rough humour of the kings of old
Return upon me! Thou art her kin,
Go likewise; lay him low and slay him not,
But bring him here, that I may judge the right,
According to the justice of the King:
Then, be he guilty, by that deathless King
Who lived and died for men, the man shall die."

   Then came in hall the messenger of Mark,
A name of evil savour in the land,
The Cornish king. In either hand he bore
What dazzled all, and shone far-off as shines
A field of charlock in the sudden sun
Between two showers, a cloth of palest gold,
Which down he laid before the throne, and knelt,
Delivering, that his lord, the vassal king,
Was even upon his way to Camelot;
For having heard that Arthur of his grace
Had made his goodly cousin, Tristram, knight,
And, for himself was of the greater state,
Being a king, he trusted his liege-lord
Would yield him this large honour all the more;
So prayed him well to accept this cloth of gold,
In token of true heart and feälty.

   Then Arthur cried to rend the cloth, to rend
In pieces, and so cast it on the hearth.
An oak-tree smouldered there. "The goodly knight!
What! shall the shield of Mark stand among these?"
For, midway down the side of that long hall
A stately pile,--whereof along the front,
Some blazoned, some but carven, and some blank,
There ran a treble range of stony shields,--
Rose, and high-arching overbrowed the hearth.
And under every shield a knight was named:
For this was Arthur's custom in his hall;
When some good knight had done one noble deed,
His arms were carven only; but if twain
His arms were blazoned also; but if none,
The shield was blank and bare without a sign
Saving the name beneath; and Gareth saw
The shield of Gawain blazoned rich and bright,
And Modred's blank as death; and Arthur cried
To rend the cloth and cast it on the hearth.

   "More like are we to reave him of his crown
Than make him knight because men call him king.
The kings we found, ye know we stayed their hands
From war among themselves, but left them kings;
Of whom were any bounteous, merciful,
Truth-speaking, brave, good livers, them we enrolled
Among us, and they sit within our hall.
But Mark hath tarnished the great name of king,
As Mark would sully the low state of churl:
And, seeing he hath sent us cloth of gold,
Return, and meet, and hold him from our eyes,
Lest we should lap him up in cloth of lead,
Silenced for ever--craven--a man of plots,
Craft, poisonous counsels, wayside ambushings--
No fault of thine: let Kay the seneschal
Look to thy wants, and send thee satisfied--
Accursed, who strikes nor lets the hand be seen!"

   And many another suppliant crying came
With noise of ravage wrought by beast and man,
And evermore a knight would ride away.

   Last, Gareth leaning both hands heavily
Down on the shoulders of the twain, his men,
Approached between them toward the King, and asked,
"A boon, Sir King (his voice was all ashamed),
For see ye not how weak and hungerworn
I seem--leaning on these? grant me to serve
For meat and drink among thy kitchen-knaves
A twelvemonth and a day, nor seek my name.
Hereafter I will fight."

                           To him the King,
"A goodly youth and worth a goodlier boon!
But so thou wilt no goodlier, then must Kay,
The master of the meats and drinks, be thine."

   He rose and past; then Kay, a man of mien
Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself
Root-bitten by white lichen,

                              "Lo ye now!
This fellow hath broken from some Abbey, where,
God wot, he had not beef and brewis enow,
However that might chance! but an he work,
Like any pigeon will I cram his crop,
And sleeker shall he shine than any hog."

   Then Lancelot standing near, "Sir Seneschal,
Sleuth-hound thou knowest, and gray, and all the hounds;
A horse thou knowest, a man thou dost not know:
Broad brows and fair, a fluent hair and fine,
High nose, a nostril large and fine, and hands
Large, fair and fine!--Some young lad's mystery--
But, or from sheepcot or king's hall, the boy
Is noble-natured. Treat him with all grace,
Lest he should come to shame thy judging of him."

   Then Kay, "What murmurest thou of mystery?
Think ye this fellow will poison the King's dish?
Nay, for he spake too fool-like: mystery!
Tut, an the lad were noble, he had asked
For horse and armour: fair and fine, forsooth!
Sir Fine-face, Sir Fair-hands? but see thou to it
That thine own fineness, Lancelot, some fine day
Undo thee not--and leave my man to me."

   So Gareth all for glory underwent
The sooty yoke of kitchen-vassalage;
Ate with young lads his portion by the door,
And couched at night with grimy kitchen-knaves.
And Lancelot ever spake him pleasantly,
But Kay the seneschal, who loved him not,
Would hustle and harry him, and labour him
Beyond his comrade of the hearth, and set
To turn the broach, draw water, or hew wood,
Or grosser tasks; and Gareth bowed himself
With all obedience to the King, and wrought
All kind of service with a noble ease
That graced the lowliest act in doing it.
And when the thralls had talk among themselves,
And one would praise the love that linkt the King
And Lancelot--how the King had saved his life
In battle twice, and Lancelot once the King's--
For Lancelot was the first in Tournament,
But Arthur mightiest on the battle-field--
Gareth was glad. Or if some other told,
How once the wandering forester at dawn,
Far over the blue tarns and hazy seas,
On Caer-Eryri's highest found the King,
A naked babe, of whom the Prophet spake,
"He passes to the Isle Avilion,
He passes and is healed and cannot die"--
Gareth was glad. But if their talk were foul,
Then would he whistle rapid as any lark,
Or carol some old roundelay, and so loud
That first they mocked, but, after, reverenced him.
Or Gareth telling some prodigious tale
Of knights, who sliced a red life-bubbling way
Through twenty folds of twisted dragon, held
All in a gap-mouthed circle his good mates
Lying or sitting round him, idle hands,
Charmed; till Sir Kay, the seneschal, would come
Blustering upon them, like a sudden wind
Among dead leaves, and drive them all apart.
Or when the thralls had sport among themselves,
So there were any trial of mastery,
He, by two yards in casting bar or stone
Was counted best; and if there chanced a joust,
So that Sir Kay nodded him leave to go,
Would hurry thither, and when he saw the knights
Clash like the coming and retiring wave,
And the spear spring, and good horse reel, the boy
Was half beyond himself for ecstasy.

   So for a month he wrought among the thralls;
But in the weeks that followed, the good Queen,
Repentant of the word she made him swear,
And saddening in her childless castle, sent,
Between the in-crescent and de-crescent moon,
Arms for her son, and loosed him from his vow.

   This, Gareth hearing from a squire of Lot
With whom he used to play at tourney once,
When both were children, and in lonely haunts
Would scratch a ragged oval on the sand,
And each at either dash from either end--
Shame never made girl redder than Gareth joy.
He laughed; he sprang. "Out of the smoke, at once
I leap from Satan's foot to Peter's knee--
These news be mine, none other's--nay, the King's--
Descend into the city;" whereon he sought
The King alone, and found, and told him all.

   "I have staggered thy strong Gawain in a tilt
For pastime; yea, he said it: joust can I.
Make me thy knight--in secret! let my name
Be hidden, and give me the first quest, I spring
Like flame from ashes."

                           Here the King's calm eye
Fell on, and checked, and made him flush, and bow
Lowly, to kiss his hand, who answered him,
"Son, the good mother let me know thee here,
And sent her wish that I would yield thee thine.
Make thee my knight? my knights are sworn to vows
Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness,
And, loving, utter faithfulness in love,
And uttermost obedience to the King."

   Then Gareth, lightly springing from his knees,
"My King, for hardihood I can promise thee.
For uttermost obedience make demand
Of whom ye gave me to, the Seneschal,
No mellow master of the meats and drinks!
And as for love, God wot, I love not yet,
But love I shall, God willing."

                              And the King--
"Make thee my knight in secret? yea, but he,
Our noblest brother, and our truest man,
And one with me in all, he needs must know."

   "Let Lancelot know, my King, let Lancelot know,
Thy noblest and thy truest!"

                           And the King--
"But wherefore would ye men should wonder at you?
Nay, rather for the sake of me, their King,
And the deed's sake my knighthood do the deed,
Than to be noised of."

                        Merrily Gareth asked,
"Have I not earned my cake in baking of it?
Let be my name until I make my name!
My deeds will speak: it is but for a day."
So with a kindly hand on Gareth's arm
Smiled the great King, and half-unwillingly
Loving his lusty youthhood yielded to him.
Then, after summoning Lancelot privily,
"I have given him the first quest: he is not proven.
Look therefore when he calls for this in hall,
Thou get to horse and follow him far away.
Cover the lions on thy shield, and see
Far as thou mayest, he be nor ta'en nor slain."

   Then that same day there past into the hall
A damsel of high lineage, and a brow
May-blossom, and a cheek of apple-blossom,
Hawk-eyes; and lightly was her slender nose
Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower;
She into hall past with her page and cried,

   "O King, for thou hast driven the foe without,
See to the foe within; bridge, ford, beset
By bandits, everyone that owns a tower
The Lord for half a league. Why sit ye there?
Rest would I not, Sir King, an I were king,
Till even the lonest hold were all as free
From cursed bloodshed, as thine altar-cloth
From that best blood it is a sin to spill."

   "Comfort thyself," said Arthur, "I nor mine
Rest: so my knighthood keep the vows they swore,
The wastest moorland of our realm shall be
Safe, damsel, as the centre of this hall.
What is thy name? thy need?"

                                 "My name?" she said--
"Lynette my name; noble; my need, a knight
To combat for my sister, Lyonors,
A lady of high lineage, of great lands,
And comely, yea, and comelier than myself.
She lives in Castle Perilous: a river
Runs in three loops about her living-place;
And o'er it are three passings, and three knights
Defend the passings, brethren, and a fourth
And of that four the mightiest, holds her stayed
In her own castle, and so besieges her
To break her will, and make her wed with him:
And but delays his purport till thou send
To do the battle with him, thy chief man
Sir Lancelot whom he trusts to overthrow,
Then wed, with glory: but she will not wed
Save whom she loveth, or a holy life.
Now therefore have I come for Lancelot."

   Then Arthur mindful of Sir Gareth asked,
"Damsel, ye know this Order lives to crush
All wrongers of the Realm. But say, these four,
Who be they? What the fashion of the men?"

   "They be of foolish fashion, O Sir King,
The fashion of that old knight-errantry
Who ride abroad, and do but what they will;
Courteous or bestial from the moment, such
As have nor law nor king; and three of these
Proud in their fantasy call themselves the Day,
Morning-Star, and Noon-Sun, and Evening-Star,
Being strong fools; and never a whit more wise
The fourth, who always rideth armed in black,
A huge man-beast of boundless savagery.
He names himself the Night and oftener Death,
And wears a helmet mounted with a skull,
And bears a skeleton figured on his arms,
To show that who may slay or scape the three,
Slain by himself, shall enter endless night.
And all these four be fools, but mighty men,
And therefore am I come for Lancelot."

   Hereat Sir Gareth called from where he rose,
A head with kindling eyes above the throng,
"A boon, Sir King--this quest!" then--for he marked
Kay near him groaning like a wounded bull--
"Yea, King, thou knowest thy kitchen-knave am I,
And mighty through thy meats and drinks am I,
And I can topple over a hundred such.
Thy promise, King," and Arthur glancing at him,
Brought down a momentary brow. "Rough, sudden,
And pardonable, worthy to be knight--
Go therefore," and all hearers were amazed.

   But on the damsel's forehead shame, pride, wrath
Slew the May-white: she lifted either arm,
"Fie on thee, King! I asked for thy chief knight,
And thou hast given me but a kitchen-knave."
Then ere a man in hall could stay her, turned,
Fled down the lane of access to the King,
Took horse, descended the slope street, and past
The weird white gate, and paused without, beside
The field of tourney, murmuring "kitchen-knave."

   Now two great entries opened from the hall,
At one end one, that gave upon a range
Of level pavement where the King would pace
At sunrise, gazing over plain and wood;
And down from this a lordly stairway sloped
Till lost in blowing trees and tops of towers;
And out by this main doorway past the King.
But one was counter to the hearth, and rose
High that the highest-crested helm could ride
Therethrough nor graze: and by this entry fled
The damsel in her wrath, and on to this
Sir Gareth strode, and saw without the door
King Arthur's gift, the worth of half a town,
A warhorse of the best, and near it stood
The two that out of north had followed him:
This bare a maiden shield, a casque; that held
The horse, the spear; whereat Sir Gareth loosed
A cloak that dropt from collar-bone to heel,
A cloth of roughest web, and cast it down,
And from it like a fuel-smothered fire,
That lookt half-dead, brake bright, and flashed as those
Dull-coated things, that making slide apart
Their dusk wing-cases, all beneath there burns
A jewelled harness, ere they pass and fly.
So Gareth ere he parted flashed in arms.
Then as he donned the helm, and took the shield
And mounted horse and graspt a spear, of grain
Storm-strengthened on a windy site, and tipt
With trenchant steel, around him slowly prest
The people, while from out of kitchen came
The thralls in throng, and seeing who had worked
Lustier than any, and whom they could but love,
Mounted in arms, threw up their caps and cried,
"God bless the King, and all his fellowship!"
And on through lanes of shouting Gareth rode
Down the slope street, and past without the gate.

   So Gareth past with joy; but as the cur
Pluckt from the cur he fights with, ere his cause
Be cooled by fighting, follows, being named,
His owner, but remembers all, and growls
Remembering, so Sir Kay beside the door
Muttered in scorn of Gareth whom he used
To harry and hustle.

                     "Bound upon a quest
With horse and arms--the King hath past his time--
My scullion knave! Thralls to your work again,
For an your fire be low ye kindle mine!
Will there be dawn in West and eve in East?
Begone!--my knave!--belike and like enow
Some old head-blow not heeded in his youth
So shook his wits they wander in his prime--
Crazed! How the villain lifted up his voice,
Nor shamed to bawl himself a kitchen-knave.
Tut: he was tame and meek enow with me,
Till peacocked up with Lancelot's noticing.
Well--I will after my loud knave, and learn
Whether he know me for his master yet.
Out of the smoke he came, and so my lance
Hold, by God's grace, he shall into the mire--
Thence, if the King awaken from his craze,
Into the smoke again."

                     But Lancelot said,
"Kay, wherefore wilt thou go against the King,
For that did never he whereon ye rail,
But ever meekly served the King in thee?
Abide: take counsel; for this lad is great
And lusty, and knowing both of lance and sword."
"Tut, tell not me," said Kay, "ye are overfine
To mar stout knaves with foolish courtesies:"
Then mounted, on through silent faces rode
Down the slope city, and out beyond the gate.

   But by the field of tourney lingering yet
Muttered the damsel, "Wherefore did the King
Scorn me? for, were Sir Lancelot lackt, at least
He might have yielded to me one of those
Who tilt for lady's love and glory here,
Rather than--O sweet heaven! O fie upon him--
His kitchen-knave."

                     To whom Sir Gareth drew
(And there were none but few goodlier than he)
Shining in arms, "Damsel, the quest is mine.
Lead, and I follow." She thereat, as one
That smells a foul-fleshed agaric in the holt,
And deems it carrion of some woodland thing,
Or shrew, or weasel, nipt her slender nose
With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling, "Hence!
Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen-grease.
And look who comes behind," for there was Kay.
"Knowest thou not me? thy master? I am Kay.
We lack thee by the hearth."

                                 And Gareth to him,
"Master no more! too well I know thee, ay--
The most ungentle knight in Arthur's hall."
"Have at thee then," said Kay: they shocked, and Kay
Fell shoulder-slipt, and Gareth cried again,
"Lead, and I follow," and fast away she fled.

   But after sod and shingle ceased to fly
Behind her, and the heart of her good horse
Was nigh to burst with violence of the beat,
Perforce she stayed, and overtaken spoke.

   "What doest thou, scullion, in my fellowship?
Deem'st thou that I accept thee aught the more
Or love thee better, that by some device
Full cowardly, or by mere unhappiness,
Thou hast overthrown and slain thy master--thou!--
Dish-washer and broach-turner, loon!--to me
Thou smellest all of kitchen as before."

   "Damsel," Sir Gareth answered gently, "say
Whate'er ye will, but whatsoe'er ye say,
I leave not till I finish this fair quest,
Or die therefore."

                        "Ay, wilt thou finish it?
Sweet lord, how like a noble knight he talks!
The listening rogue hath caught the manner of it.
But, knave, anon thou shalt be met with, knave,
And then by such a one that thou for all
The kitchen brewis that was ever supt
Shalt not once dare to look him in the face."

   "I shall assay," said Gareth with a smile
That maddened her, and away she flashed again
Down the long avenues of a boundless wood,
And Gareth following was again beknaved.

   "Sir Kitchen-knave, I have missed the only way
Where Arthur's men are set along the wood;
The wood is nigh as full of thieves as leaves:
If both be slain, I am rid of thee; but yet,
Sir Scullion, canst thou use that spit of thine?
Fight, as thou canst: I have missed the only way."

   So till the dusk that followed evensong
Rode on the two, reviler and reviled;
Then after one long slope was mounted, saw,
Bowl-shaped, through tops of many thousand pines
A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink
To westward--in the deeps whereof a mere,
Round as the red eye of an Eagle-owl,
Under the half-dead sunset glared; and shouts
Ascended, and there brake a servingman
Flying from out of the black wood, and crying,
"They have bound my lord to cast him in the mere."
Then Gareth, "Bound am I to right the wronged,
But straitlier bound am I to bide with thee."
And when the damsel spake contemptuously,
"Lead, and I follow," Gareth cried again,
"Follow, I lead!" so down among the pines
He plunged; and there, blackshadowed nigh the mere,
And mid-thigh-deep in bulrushes and reed,
Saw six tall men haling a seventh along,
A stone about his neck to drown him in it.
Three with good blows he quieted, but three
Fled through the pines; and Gareth loosed the stone
From off his neck, then in the mere beside
Tumbled it; oilily bubbled up the mere.
Last, Gareth loosed his bonds and on free feet
Set him, a stalwart Baron, Arthur's friend.

   "Well that ye came, or else these caitiff rogues
Had wreaked themselves on me; good cause is theirs
To hate me, for my wont hath ever been
To catch my thief, and then like vermin here
Drown him, and with a stone about his neck;
And under this wan water many of them
Lie rotting, but at night let go the stone,
And rise, and flickering in a grimly light
Dance on the mere. Good now, ye have saved a life
Worth somewhat as the cleanser of this wood.
And fain would I reward thee worshipfully.
What guerdon will ye?"

                           Gareth sharply spake,
"None! for the deed's sake have I done the deed,
In uttermost obedience to the King.
But wilt thou yield this damsel harbourage?"

   Whereat the Baron saying, "I well believe
You be of Arthur's Table," a light laugh
Broke from Lynette, "Ay, truly of a truth,
And in a sort, being Arthur's kitchen-knave!--
But deem not I accept thee aught the more,
Scullion, for running sharply with thy spit
Down on a rout of craven foresters.
A thresher with his flail had scattered them.
Nay--for thou smellest of the kitchen still.
But an this lord will yield us harbourage,
Well."

            So she spake. A league beyond the wood,
All in a full-fair manor and a rich,
His towers where that day a feast had been
Held in high hall, and many a viand left,
And many a costly cate, received the three.
And there they placed a peacock in his pride
Before the damsel, and the Baron set
Gareth beside her, but at once she rose.

   "Meseems, that here is much discourtesy,
Setting this knave, Lord Baron, at my side.
Hear me--this morn I stood in Arthur's hall,
And prayed the King would grant me Lancelot
To fight the brotherhood of Day and Night--
The last a monster unsubduable
Of any save of him for whom I called--
Suddenly bawls this frontless kitchen-knave,
'The quest is mine: thy kitchen-knave am I,
And mighty through thy meats and drinks am I.'
Then Arthur all at once gone mad replies,
'Go therefore,' and so gives the quest to him--
Him--here--a villain fitter to stick swine
Than ride abroad redressing women's wrong,
Or sit beside a noble gentlewoman."

   Then half-ashamed and part-amazed, the lord
Now looked at one and now at other, left
The damsel by the peacock in his pride,
And, seating Gareth at another board,
Sat down beside him, ate and then began.

   "Friend, whether thou be kitchen-knave, or not,
Or whether it be the maiden's fantasy,
And whether she be mad, or else the King,
Or both or neither, or thyself be mad,
I ask not: but thou strikest a strong stroke,
For strong thou art and goodly therewithal,
And saver of my life; and therefore now,
For here be mighty men to joust with, weigh
Whether thou wilt not with thy damsel back
To crave again Sir Lancelot of the King.
Thy pardon; I but speak for thine avail,
The saver of my life."

                        And Gareth said,
"Full pardon, but I follow up the quest,
Despite of Day and Night and Death and Hell."

   So when, next morn, the lord whose life he saved
Had, some brief space, conveyed them on their way
And left them with God-speed, Sir Gareth spake,
"Lead, and I follow." Haughtily she replied.

   "I fly no more: I allow thee for an hour.
Lion and stoat have isled together, knave,
In time of flood. Nay, furthermore, methinks
Some ruth is mine for thee. Back wilt thou, fool?
For hard by here is one will overthrow
And slay thee: then will I to court again,
And shame the King for only yielding me
My champion from the ashes of his hearth."

   To whom Sir Gareth answered courteously,
"Say thou thy say, and I will do my deed.
Allow me for mine hour, and thou wilt find
My fortunes all as fair as hers who lay
Among the ashes and wedded the King's son."

   Then to the shore of one of those long loops
Wherethrough the serpent river coiled, they came.
Rough-thicketed were the banks and steep; the stream
Full, narrow; this a bridge of single arc
Took at a leap; and on the further side
Arose a silk pavilion, gay with gold
In streaks and rays, and all Lent-lily in hue,
Save that the dome was purple, and above,
Crimson, a slender banneret fluttering.
And therebefore the lawless warrior paced
Unarmed, and calling, "Damsel, is this he,
The champion thou hast brought from Arthur's hall?
For whom we let thee pass." "Nay, nay," she said,
"Sir Morning-Star. The King in utter scorn
Of thee and thy much folly hath sent thee here
His kitchen-knave: and look thou to thyself:
See that he fall not on thee suddenly,
And slay thee unarmed: he is not knight but knave."

   Then at his call, "O daughters of the Dawn,
And servants of the Morning-Star, approach,
Arm me," from out the silken curtain-folds
Bare-footed and bare-headed three fair girls
In gilt and rosy raiment came: their feet
In dewy grasses glistened; and the hair
All over glanced with dewdrop or with gem
Like sparkles in the stone Avanturine.
These armed him in blue arms, and gave a shield
Blue also, and thereon the morning star.
And Gareth silent gazed upon the knight,
Who stood a moment, ere his horse was brought,
Glorying; and in the stream beneath him, shone
Immingled with Heaven's azure waveringly,
The gay pavilion and the naked feet,
His arms, the rosy raiment, and the star.

   Then she that watched him, "Wherefore stare ye so?
Thou shakest in thy fear: there yet is time:
Flee down the valley before he get to horse.
Who will cry shame? Thou are not knight but knave."

   Said Gareth, "Damsel, whether knave or knight,
Far liefer had I fight a score of times
Than hear thee so missay me and revile.
Fair words were best for him who fights for thee;
But truly foul are better, for they send
That strength of anger through mine arms, I know
That I shall overthrow him."

                           And he that bore
The star, when mounted, cried from o'er the bridge,
"A kitchen-knave, and sent in scorn of me!
Such fight not I, but answer scorn with scorn.
For this were shame to do him further wrong
Than set him on his feet, and take his horse
And arms, and so return him to the King.
Come, therefore, leave thy lady lightly, knave.
Avoid: for it beseemeth not a knave
To ride with such a lady."

                           "Dog, thou liest.
I spring from loftier lineage than thine own."
He spake; and all at fiery speed the two
Shocked on the central bridge, and either spear
Bent but not brake, and either knight at once,
Hurled as a stone from out of a catapult
Beyond his horse's crupper and the bridge,
Fell, as if dead; but quickly rose and drew,
And Gareth lashed so fiercely with his brand
He drave his enemy backward down the bridge,
The damsel crying, "Well-stricken, kitchen-knave!"
Till Gareth's shield was cloven; but one stroke
Laid him that clove it grovelling on the ground.

   Then cried the fallen, "Take not my life: I yield."
And Gareth, "So this damsel ask it of me
Good--I accord it easily as a grace."
She reddening, "Insolent scullion: I of thee?
I bound to thee for any favour asked!"
"Then shall he die." And Gareth there unlaced
His helmet as to slay him, but she shrieked,
"Be not so hardy, scullion, as to slay
One nobler than thyself." "Damsel, thy charge
Is an abounding pleasure to me. Knight,
Thy life is thine at her command. Arise
And quickly pass to Arthur's hall, and say
His kitchen-knave hath sent thee. See thou crave
His pardon for thy breaking of his laws.
Myself, when I return, will plead for thee.
Thy shield is mine--farewell; and, damsel, thou,
Lead, and I follow."

                     And fast away she fled.
Then when he came upon her, spake, "Methought,
Knave, when I watched thee striking on the bridge
The savour of thy kitchen came upon me
A little faintlier: but the wind hath changed:
I scent it twenty-fold." And then she sang
"'O morning star' (not that tall felon there
Whom thou by sorcery or unhappiness
Or some device, hast foully overthrown),
'O morning star that smilest in the blue,
O star, my morning dream hath proven true,
Smile sweetly, thou! my love hath smiled on me.'

   "But thou begone, take counsel, and away,
For hard by here is one that guards a ford--
The second brother in their fool's parable--
Will pay thee all thy wages, and to boot.
Care not for shame: thou art not knight but knave."

   To whom Sir Gareth answered, laughingly,
"Parables? Hear a parable of the knave.
When I was kitchen-knave among the rest
Fierce was the hearth, and one of my co-mates
Owned a rough dog, to whom he cast his coat,
'Guard it,' and there was none to meddle with it.
And such a coat art thou, and thee the King
Gave me to guard, and such a dog am I,
To worry, and not to flee--and--knight or knave--
The knave that doth thee service as full knight
Is all as good, meseems, as any knight
Toward thy sister's freeing."

                              "Ay, Sir Knave!
Ay, knave, because thou strikest as a knight,
Being but knave I hate thee all the more."

   "Fair damsel, you should worship me the more,
That, being but knave, I throw thine enemies."

   "Ay, ay," she said, "but thou shalt meet thy match."

   So when they touched the second river-loop,
Huge on a huge red horse, and all in mail
Burnished to blinding, shone the Noonday Sun
Beyond a raging shallow. As if the flower,
That blows a globe of after arrowlets,
Ten thousand-fold had grown, flashed the fierce shield,
All sun; and Gareth's eyes had flying blots
Before them when he turned from watching him.
He from beyond the roaring shallow roared,
"What doest thou, brother, in my marches here?"
And she athwart the shallow shrilled again,
"Here is a kitchen-knave from Arthur's hall
Hath overthrown thy brother, and hath his arms."
"Ugh!" cried the Sun, and vizoring up a red
And cipher face of rounded foolishness,
Pushed horse across the foamings of the ford,
Whom Gareth met midstream: no room was there
For lance or tourney-skill: four strokes they struck
With sword, and these were mighty; the new knight
Had fear he might be ashamed; but as the Sun
Heaved up a ponderous arm to strike the fifth,
The hoof of his horse slipt in the stream, the stream
Descended, and the Sun was washed away.

   Then Gareth laid his lance athwart the ford;
So drew him home; but he that fought no more,
As being all bone-battered on the rock,
Yielded; and Gareth sent him to the King.
"Myself when I return will plead for thee."
"Lead, and I follow." Quietly she led.
"Hath not the good wind, damsel, changed again?"
"Nay, not a point: nor art thou victor here.
There lies a ridge of slate across the ford;
His horse thereon stumbled--ay, for I saw it.

   "'O Sun' (not this strong fool whom thou, Sir Knave,
Hast overthrown through mere unhappiness),
'O Sun, that wakenest all to bliss or pain,
O moon, that layest all to sleep again,
Shine sweetly: twice my love hath smiled on me.'

   "What knowest thou of lovesong or of love?
Nay, nay, God wot, so thou wert nobly born,
Thou hast a pleasant presence. Yea, perchance--

   "'O dewy flowers that open to the sun,
O dewy flowers that close when day is done,
Blow sweetly: twice my love hath smiled on me.'

   "What knowest thou of flowers, except, belike,
To garnish meats with? hath not our good King
Who lent me thee, the flower of kitchendom,
A foolish love for flowers? what stick ye round
The pasty? wherewithal deck the boar's head?
Flowers? nay, the boar hath rosemaries and bay.

   "'O birds, that warble to the morning sky,
O birds that warble as the day goes by,
Sing sweetly: twice my love hath smiled on me.'

   "What knowest thou of birds, lark, mavis, merle,
Linnet? what dream ye when they utter forth
May-music growing with the growing light,
Their sweet sun-worship? these be for the snare
(So runs thy fancy) these be for the spit,
Larding and basting. See thou have not now
Larded thy last, except thou turn and fly.
There stands the third fool of their allegory."

   For there beyond a bridge of treble bow,
All in a rose-red from the west, and all
Naked it seemed, and glowing in the broad
Deep-dimpled current underneath, the knight,
That named himself the Star of Evening, stood.

   And Gareth, "Wherefore waits the madman there
Naked in open dayshine?" "Nay," she cried,
"Not naked, only wrapt in hardened skins
That fit him like his own; and so ye cleave
His armour off him, these will turn the blade."

   Then the third brother shouted o'er the bridge,
"O brother-star, why shine ye here so low?
Thy ward is higher up: but have ye slain
The damsel's champion?" and the damsel cried,

   "No star of thine, but shot from Arthur's heaven
With all disaster unto thine and thee!
For both thy younger brethren have gone down
Before this youth; and so wilt thou, Sir Star;
Art thou not old?"

                     "Old, damsel, old and hard,
Old, with the might and breath of twenty boys."
Said Gareth, "Old and over-bold in brag!
But that same strength which threw the Morningn Star
Can throw the Evening."

                           Then that other blew
A hard and deadly note upon the horn.
"Approach and arm me!" With slow steps from out
An old storm-beaten, russet, many-stained
Pavilion, forth a grizzled damsel came,
And armed him in old arms, and brought a helm
With but a drying evergreen for crest,
And gave a shield whereon the Star of Even
Half-tarnished and half-bright, his emblem, shone.
But when it glittered o'er the saddle-bow,
They madly hurled together on the bridge;
And Gareth overthrew him, lighted, drew,
There met him drawn, and overthrew him again,
But up like fire he started: and as oft
As Gareth brought him grovelling on his knees,
So many a time he vaulted up again;
Till Gareth panted hard, and his great heart,
Foredooming all his trouble was in vain,
Laboured within him, for he seemed as one
That all in later, sadder age begins
To war against ill uses of a life,
But these from all his life arise, and cry,
"Thou hast made us lords, and canst not put us down!"
He half despairs; so Gareth seemed to strike
Vainly, the damsel clamouring all the while,
"Well done, knave-knight, well stricken, O good knight-knave--
O knave, as noble as any of all the knights--
Shame me not, shame me not. I have prophesied--
Strike, thou art worthy of the Table Round--
His arms are old, he trusts the hardened skin--
Strike--strike--the wind will never change again."
And Gareth hearing ever stronglier smote,
And hewed great pieces of his armour off him,
But lashed in vain against the hardened skin,
And could not wholly bring him under, more
Than loud Southwesterns, rolling ridge on ridge,
The buoy that rides at sea, and dips and springs
For ever; till at length Sir Gareth's brand
Clashed his, and brake it utterly to the hilt.
"I have thee now;" but forth that other sprang,
And, all unknightlike, writhed his wiry arms
Around him, till he felt, despite his mail,
Strangled, but straining even his uttermost
Cast, and so hurled him headlong o'er the bridge
Down to the river, sink or swim, and cried,
"Lead, and I follow."

                     But the damsel said,
"I lead no longer; ride thou at my side;
Thou art the kingliest of all kitchen-knaves.

   "'O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain,
O rainbow with three colours after rain,
Shine sweetly: thrice my love hath smiled on me.'

   "Sir,--and, good faith, I fain had added--Knight,
But that I heard thee call thyself a knave,--
Shamed am I that I so rebuked, reviled,
Missaid thee; noble I am; and thought the King
Scorned me and mine; and now thy pardon, friend,
For thou hast ever answered courteously,
And wholly bold thou art, and meek withal
As any of Arthur's best, but, being knave,
Hast mazed my wit: I marvel what thou art."

   "Damsel," he said, "you be not all to blame,
Saving that you mistrusted our good King
Would handle scorn, or yield you, asking, one
Not fit to cope your quest. You said your say;
Mine answer was my deed. Good sooth! I hold
He scarce is knight, yea but half-man, nor meet
To fight for gentle damsel, he, who lets
His heart be stirred with any foolish heat
At any gentle damsel's waywardness.
Shamed? care not! thy foul sayings fought for me:
And seeing now thy words are fair, methinks
There rides no knight, nor Lancelot, his great self,
Hath force to quell me."

                           Nigh upon that hour
When the lone hern forgets his melancholy,
Lets down his other leg, and stretching, dreams
Of goodly supper in the distant pool,
Then turned the noble damsel smiling at him,
And told him of a cavern hard at hand,
Where bread and baken meats and good red wine
Of Southland, which the Lady Lyonors
Had sent her coming champion, waited him.

   Anon they past a narrow comb wherein
Were slabs of rock with figures, knights on horse
Sculptured, and deckt in slowly-waning hues.
"Sir Knave, my knight, a hermit once was here,
Whose holy hand hath fashioned on the rock
The war of Time against the soul of man.
And yon four fools have sucked their allegory
From these damp walls, and taken but the form.
Know ye not these?" and Gareth lookt and read--
In letters like to those the vexillary
Hath left crag-carven o'er the streaming Gelt--
"PHOSPHORUS," then "MERIDIES"--"HESPERUS"--
"NOX"--"MORS," beneath five figures, armed men,
Slab after slab, their faces forward all,
And running down the Soul, a Shape that fled
With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair,
For help and shelter to the hermit's cave.
"Follow the faces, and we find it. Look,
Who comes behind?"

                     For one--delayed at first
Through helping back the dislocated Kay
To Camelot, then by what thereafter chanced,
The damsel's headlong error through the wood--
Sir Lancelot, having swum the river-loops--
His blue shield-lions covered--softly drew
Behind the twain, and when he saw the star
Gleam, on Sir Gareth's turning to him, cried,
"Stay, felon knight, I avenge me for my friend,"
And Gareth crying pricked against the cry;
But when they closed--in a moment--at one touch
Of that skilled spear, the wonder of the world--
Went sliding down so easily, and fell,
That when he found the grass within his hands
He laughed; the laughter jarred upon Lynette:
Harshly she asked him, "Shamed and overthrown,
And tumbled back into the kitchen-knave,
Why laugh ye? that ye blew your boast in vain?"
"Nay, noble damsel, but that I, the son
Of old King Lot and good Queen Bellicent,
And victor of the bridges and the ford,
And knight of Arthur, here lie thrown by whom
I know not, all through mere unhappiness--
Device and sorcery and unhappiness--
Out, sword; we are thrown!" And Lancelot answered, "Prince,
O Gareth--through the mere unhappiness
Of one who came to help thee, not to harm,
Lancelot, and all as glad to find thee whole,
As on the day when Arthur knighted him."

   Then Gareth, "Thou--Lancelot!--thine the hand
That threw me? An some chance to mar the boast
Thy brethren of thee make--which could not chance--
Had sent thee down before a lesser spear,
Shamed had I been, and sad--O Lancelot--thou!"

   Whereat the maiden, petulant, "Lancelot,
Why came ye not, when called? and wherefore now
Come ye, not called? I gloried in my knave,
Who being still rebuked, would answer still
Courteous as any knight--but now, if knight,
The marvel dies, and leaves me fooled and tricked
And only wondering wherefore played upon:
And doubtful whether I and mine be scorned.
Where should be truth if not in Arthur's hall,
In Arthur's presence? Knight, knave, prince and fool,
I hate thee and for ever."

                        And Lancelot said,
"Blessed be thou, Sir Gareth! knight art thou
To the King's best wish. O damsel, be you wise
To call him shamed, who is but overthrown?
Thrown have I been, nor once, but many a time.
Victor from vanquished issues at the last,
And overthrower from being overthrown.
With sword we have not striven; and thy good horse
And thou are weary; yet not less I felt
Thy manhood through that wearied lance of thine.
Well hast thou done; for all the stream is freed,
And thou hast wreaked his justice on his foes,
And when reviled, hast answered graciously,
And makes merry when overthrown. Prince, Knight,
Hail, Knight and Prince, and of our Table Round!"

   And then when turning to Lynette he told
The tale of Gareth, petulantly she said,
"Ay well--ay well--for worse than being fooled
Of others, is to fool one's self. A cave,
Sir Lancelot, is hard by, with meats and drinks
And forage for the horse, and flint for fire.
But all about it flies a honeysuckle.
Seek, till we find." And when they sought and found,
Sir Gareth drank and ate, and all his life
Past into sleep; on whom the maiden gazed.
"Sound sleep be thine! sound cause to sleep hast thou.
Wake lusty! Seem I not as tender to him
As any mother? Ay, but such a one
As all day long hath rated at her child,
And vext his day, but blesses him asleep--
Good lord, how sweetly smells the honeysuckle
In the hushed night, as if the world were one
Of utter peace, and love, and gentleness!
O Lancelot, Lancelot"--and she clapt her hands--
"Full merry am I to find my goodly knave
Is knight and noble. See now, sworn have I,
Else yon black felon had not let me pass
To bring thee back to do the battle with him.
Thus an thou goest, he will fight thee first;
Who doubts thee victor? so will my knight-knave
Miss the full flower of this accomplishment."

   Said Lancelot, "Peradventure he, you name,
May know my shield. Let Gareth, an he will,
Change his for mine, and take my charger, fresh,
Not to be spurred, loving the battle as well
As he that rides him." "Lancelot-like," she said,
"Courteous in this, Lord Lancelot, as in all."

   And Gareth, wakening, fiercely clutched the shield;
"Ramp ye lance-splintering lions, on whom all spears
Are rotten sticks! ye seem agape to roar!
Yea, ramp and roar at leaving of your lord!--
Care not, good beasts, so well I care for you.
O noble Lancelot, from my hold on these
Streams virtue--fire--through one that will not shame
Even the shadow of Lancelot under shield.
Hence: let us go."

                        Silent the silent field
They traversed. Arthur's harp though summer-wan,
In counter motion to the clouds, allured
The glance of Gareth dreaming on his liege.
A star shot: "Lo," said Gareth, "the foe falls!"
An owl whoopt: "Hark the victor pealing there!"
Suddenly she that rode upon his left
Clung to the shield that Lancelot lent him, crying,
"Yield, yield him this again: 'tis he must fight:
I curse the tongue that all through yesterday
Reviled thee, and hath wrought on Lancelot now
To lend thee horse and shield: wonders ye have done;
Miracles ye cannot: here is glory enow
In having flung the three: I see thee maimed,
Mangled: I swear thou canst not fling the fourth."

   "And wherefore, damsel? tell me all ye know.
You cannot scare me; nor rough face, or voice,
Brute bulk of limb, or boundless savagery
Appal me from the quest."

                           "Nay, Prince," she cried,
"God wot, I never looked upon the face,
Seeing he never rides abroad by day;
But watched him have I like a phantom pass
Chilling the night: nor have I heard the voice.
Always he made his mouthpiece of a page
Who came and went, and still reported him
As closing in himself the strength of ten,
And when his anger tare him, massacring
Man, woman, lad and girl--yea, the soft babe!
Some hold that he hath swallowed infant flesh,
Monster! O Prince, I went for Lancelot first,
The quest is Lancelot's: give him back the shield."

   Said Gareth laughing, "An he fight for this,
Belike he wins it as the better man:
Thus--and not else!"

                           But Lancelot on him urged
All the devisings of their chivalry
When one might meet a mightier than himself;
How best to manage horse, lance, sword and shield,
And so fill up the gap where force might fail
With skill and fineness. Instant were his words.

   Then Gareth, "Here be rules. I know but one--
To dash against mine enemy and to win.
Yet have I watched thee victor in the joust,
And seen thy way." "Heaven help thee," sighed Lynette.

   Then for a space, and under cloud that grew
To thunder-gloom palling all stars, they rode
In converse till she made her palfrey halt,
Lifted an arm, and softly whispered, "There."
And all the three were silent seeing, pitched
Beside the Castle Perilous on flat field,
A huge pavilion like a mountain peak
Sunder the glooming crimson on the marge,
Black, with black banner, and a long black horn
Beside it hanging; which Sir Gareth graspt,
And so, before the two could hinder him,
Sent all his heart and breath through all the horn.
Echoed the walls; a light twinkled; anon
Came lights and lights, and once again he blew;
Whereon were hollow tramplings up and down
And muffled voices heard, and shadows past;
Till high above him, circled with her maids,
The Lady Lyonors at a window stood,
Beautiful among lights, and waving to him
White hands, and courtesy; but when the Prince
Three times had blown--after long hush--at last--
The huge pavilion slowly yielded up,
Through those black foldings, that which housed therein.
High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms,
With white breast-bone, and barren ribs of Death,
And crowned with fleshless laughter--some ten steps--
In the half-light--through the dim dawn--advanced
The monster, and then paused, and spake no word.

   But Gareth spake and all indignantly,
"Fool, for thou hast, men say, the strength of ten,
Canst thou not trust the limbs thy God hath given,
But must, to make the terror of thee more,
Trick thyself out in ghastly imageries
Of that which Life hath done with, and the clod,
Less dull than thou, will hide with mantling flowers
As if for pity?" But he spake no word;
Which set the horror higher; a maiden swooned:
The Lady Lyonors wrung her hands and wept,
As doomed to be the bride of Night and Death;
Sir Gareth's head prickled beneath his helm;
And even Sir Lancelot through his warm blood felt
Ice strike, and all that marked him were aghast.

   At once Sir Lancelot's charger fiercely neighed,
And Death's dark war-horse bounded forward with him.
Then those that did not blink the terror, saw
That Death was cast to ground, and slowly rose.
But with one stroke Sir Gareth split the skull.
Half fell to right and half to left and lay.
Then with a stronger buffet he clove the helm
As throughly as the skull; and out from this
Issued the bright face of a blooming boy
Fresh as a flower new-born, and crying, "Knight,
Slay me not: my three brethren bade me do it,
To make a horror all about the house,
And stay the world from Lady Lyonors.
They never dreamed the passes would be past."
Answered Sir Gareth graciously to one
Not many a moon his younger, "My fair child,
What madness made thee challenge the chief knight
Of Arthur's hall?" "Fair Sir, they bade me do it.
They hate the King, and Lancelot, the King's friend,
They hoped to slay him somewhere on the stream,
They never dreamed the passes could be past."

   Then sprang the happier day from underground;
And Lady Lyonors and her house, with dance
And revel and song, made merry over Death,
As being after all their foolish fears
And horrors only proven a blooming boy.
So large mirth lived and Gareth won the quest.

   And he that told the tale in older times
Says that Sir Gareth wedded Lyonors,
But he, that told it later, says Lynette.

---

---

GERAINT AND ENID

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, through the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen!

   So fared it with Geraint, who issuing forth
That morning, when they both had got to horse,
Perhaps because he loved her passionately,
And felt that tempest brooding round his heart,
Which, if he spoke at all, would break perforce
Upon a head so dear in thunder, said:
"Not at my side. I charge thee ride before,
Ever a good way on before; and this
I charge thee, on thy duty as a wife,
Whatever happens, not to speak to me,
No, not a word!" and Enid was aghast;
And forth they rode, but scarce three paces on,
When crying out, "Effeminate as I am,
I will not fight my way with gilded arms,
All shall be iron;" he loosed a mighty purse,
Hung at his belt, and hurled it toward the squire.
So the last sight that Enid had of home
Was all the marble threshold flashing, strown
With gold and scattered coinage, and the squire
Chafing his shoulder: then he cried again,
"To the wilds!" and Enid leading down the tracks
Through which he bad her lead him on, they past
The marches, and by bandit-haunted holds,
Gray swamps and pools, waste places of the hern,
And wildernesses, perilous paths, they rode:
Round was their pace at first, but slackened soon:
A stranger meeting them had surely thought
They rode so slowly and they looked so pale,
That each had suffered some exceeding wrong.
For he was ever saying to himself,
"O I that wasted time to tend upon her,
To compass her with sweet observances,
To dress her beautifully and keep her true"--
And there he broke the sentence in his heart
Abruptly, as a man upon his tongue
May break it, when his passion masters him.
And she was ever praying the sweet heavens
To save her dear lord whole from any wound.
And ever in her mind she cast about
For that unnoticed failing in herself,
Which made him look so cloudy and so cold;
Till the great plover's human whistle amazed
Her heart, and glancing round the waste she feared
In every wavering brake an ambuscade.
Then thought again, "If there be such in me,
I might amend it by the grace of Heaven,
If he would only speak and tell me of it."

   But when the fourth part of the day was gone,
Then Enid was aware of three tall knights
On horseback, wholly armed, behind a rock
In shadow, waiting for them, caitiffs all;
And heard one crying to his fellow, "Look,
Here comes a laggard hanging down his head,
Who seems no bolder than a beaten hound;
Come, we will slay him and will have his horse
And armour, and his damsel shall be ours."

   Then Enid pondered in her heart, and said:
"I will go back a little to my lord,
And I will tell him all their caitiff talk;
For, be he wroth even to slaying me,
Far liefer by his dear hand had I die,
Than that my lord should suffer loss or shame."

   Then she went back some paces of return,
Met his full frown timidly firm, and said;
"My lord, I saw three bandits by the rock
Waiting to fall on you, and heard them boast
That they would slay you, and possess your horse
And armour, and your damsel should be theirs."

   He made a wrathful answer: "Did I wish
Your warning or your silence? one command
I laid upon you, not to speak to me,
And thus ye keep it! Well then, look--for now,
Whether ye wish me victory or defeat,
Long for my life, or hunger for my death,
Yourself shall see my vigour is not lost."

   Then Enid waited pale and sorrowful,
And down upon him bare the bandit three.
And at the midmost charging, Prince Geraint
Drave the long spear a cubit through his breast
And out beyond; and then against his brace
Of comrades, each of whom had broken on him
A lance that splintered like an icicle,
Swung from his brand a windy buffet out
Once, twice, to right, to left, and stunned the twain
Or slew them, and dismounting like a man
That skins the wild beast after slaying him,
Stript from the three dead wolves of woman born
The three gay suits of armour which they wore,
And let the bodies lie, but bound the suits
Of armour on their horses, each on each,
And tied the bridle-reins of all the three
Together, and said to her, "Drive them on
Before you;" and she drove them through the waste.

   He followed nearer; ruth began to work
Against his anger in him, while he watched
The being he loved best in all the world,
With difficulty in mild obedience
Driving them on: he fain had spoken to her,
And loosed in words of sudden fire the wrath
And smouldered wrong that burnt him all within;
But evermore it seemed an easier thing
At once without remorse to strike her dead,
Than to cry "Halt," and to her own bright face
Accuse her of the least immodesty:
And thus tongue-tied, it made him wroth the more
That she could speak whom his own ear had heard
Call herself false: and suffering thus he made
Minutes an age: but in scarce longer time
Than at Caerleon the full-tided Usk,
Before he turn to fall seaward again,
Pauses, did Enid, keeping watch, behold
In the first shallow shade of a deep wood,
Before a gloom of stubborn-shafted oaks,
Three other horsemen waiting, wholly armed,
Whereof one seemed far larger than her lord,
And shook her pulses, crying, "Look, a prize!
Three horses and three goodly suits of arms,
And all in charge of whom? a girl: set on."
"Nay," said the second, "yonder comes a knight."
The third, "A craven; how he hangs his head."
The giant answered merrily, "Yea, but one?
Wait here, and when he passes fall upon him."

   And Enid pondered in her heart and said,
"I will abide the coming of my lord,
And I will tell him all their villainy.
My lord is weary with the fight before,
And they will fall upon him unawares.
I needs must disobey him for his good;
How should I dare obey him to his harm?
Needs must I speak, and though he kill me for it,
I save a life dearer to me than mine."

   And she abode his coming, and said to him
With timid firmness, "Have I leave to speak?"
He said, "Ye take it, speaking," and she spoke.

   "There lurk three villains yonder in the wood,
And each of them is wholly armed, and one
Is larger-limbed than you are, and they say
That they will fall upon you while ye pass."

   To which he flung a wrathful answer back:
"And if there were an hundred in the wood,
And every man were larger-limbed than I,
And all at once should sally out upon me,
I swear it would not ruffle me so much
As you that not obey me. Stand aside,
And if I fall, cleave to the better man."

   And Enid stood aside to wait the event,
Not dare to watch the combat, only breathe
Short fits of prayer, at every stroke a breath.
And he, she dreaded most, bare down upon him.
Aimed at the helm, his lance erred: but Geraint's,
A little in the late encounter strained,
Struck through the bulky bandit's corselet home,
And then brake short, and down his enemy rolled,
And there lay still; as he that tells the tale
Saw once a great piece of a promontory,
That had a sapling growing on it, slide
From the long shore-cliff's windy walls to the beach,
And there lie still, and yet the sapling grew:
So lay the man transfixt. His craven pair
Of comrades making slowlier at the Prince,
When now they saw their bulwark fallen, stood;
On whom the victor, to confound them more,
Spurred with his terrible war-cry; for as one,
That listens near a torrent mountain-brook,
All through the crash of the near cataract hears
The drumming thunder of the huger fall
At distance, were the soldiers wont to hear
His voice in battle, and be kindled by it,
And foemen scared, like that false pair who turned
Flying, but, overtaken, died the death
Themselves had wrought on many an innocent.

   Thereon Geraint, dismounting, picked the lance
That pleased him best, and drew from those dead wolves
Their three gay suits of armour, each from each,
And bound them on their horses, each on each,
And tied the bridle-reins of all the three
Together, and said to her, "Drive them on
Before you," and she drove them through the wood.

   He followed nearer still: the pain she had
To keep them in the wild ways of the wood,
Two sets of three laden with jingling arms,
Together, served a little to disedge
The sharpness of that pain about her heart:
And they themselves, like creatures gently born
But into bad hands fallen, and now so long
By bandits groomed, pricked their light ears, and felt
Her low firm voice and tender government.

   So through the green gloom of the wood they past,
And issuing under open heaven beheld
A little town with towers, upon a rock,
And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased
In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it:
And down a rocky pathway from the place
There came a fair-haired youth, that in his hand
Bare victual for the mowers: and Geraint
Had ruth again on Enid looking pale:
Then, moving downward to the meadow ground,
He, when the fair-haired youth came by him, said,
"Friend, let her eat; the damsel is so faint."
"Yea, willingly," replied the youth; "and thou,
My lord, eat also, though the fare is coarse,
And only meet for mowers;" then set down
His basket, and dismounting on the sward
They let the horses graze, and ate themselves.
And Enid took a little delicately,
Less having stomach for it than desire
To close with her lord's pleasure; but Geraint
Ate all the mowers' victual unawares,
And when he found all empty, was amazed;
And "Boy," said he, "I have eaten all, but take
A horse and arms for guerdon; chose the best."
He, reddening in extremity of delight,
"My lord, you overpay me fifty-fold."
"Ye will be all the wealthier," cried the Prince.
"I take it as free gift, then," said the boy,
"Not guerdon; for myself can easily,
While your good damsel rests, return, and fetch
Fresh victual for these mowers of our Earl;
For these are his, and all the field is his,
And I myself am his; and I will tell him
How great a man thou art: he loves to know
When men of mark are in his territory:
And he will have thee to his palace here,
And serve thee costlier than with mowers' fare."

   Then said Geraint, "I wish no better fare:
I never ate with angrier appetite
Than when I left your mowers dinnerless.
And into no Earl's palace will I go.
I know, God knows, too much of palaces!
And if he want me, let him come to me.
But hire us some fair chamber for the night,
And stalling for the horses, and return
With victual for these men, and let us know."

   "Yea, my kind lord," said the glad youth, and went,
Held his head high, and thought himself a knight,
And up the rocky pathway disappeared,
Leading the horse, and they were left alone.

   But when the Prince had brought his errant eyes
Home from the rock, sideways he let them glance
At Enid, where she droopt: his own false doom,
That shadow of mistrust should never cross
Betwixt them, came upon him, and he sighed;
Then with another humorous ruth remarked
The lusty mowers labouring dinnerless,
And watched the sun blaze on the turning scythe,
And after nodded sleepily in the heat.
But she, remembering her old ruined hall,
And all the windy clamour of the daws
About her hollow turret, plucked the grass
There growing longest by the meadow's edge,
And into many a listless annulet,
Now over, now beneath her marriage ring,
Wove and unwove it, till the boy returned
And told them of a chamber, and they went;
Where, after saying to her, "If ye will,
Call for the woman of the house," to which
She answered, "Thanks, my lord;" the two remained
Apart by all the chamber's width, and mute
As creatures voiceless through the fault of birth,
Or two wild men supporters of a shield,
Painted, who stare at open space, nor glance
The one at other, parted by the shield.

   On a sudden, many a voice along the street,
And heel against the pavement echoing, burst
Their drowse; and either started while the door,
Pushed from without, drave backward to the wall,
And midmost of a rout of roisterers,
Femininely fair and dissolutely pale,
Her suitor in old years before Geraint,
Entered, the wild lord of the place, Limours.
He moving up with pliant courtliness,
Greeted Geraint full face, but stealthily,
In the mid-warmth of welcome and graspt hand,
Found Enid with the corner of his eye,
And knew her sitting sad and solitary.
Then cried Geraint for wine and goodly cheer
To feed the sudden guest, and sumptuously
According to his fashion, bad the host
Call in what men soever were his friends,
And feast with these in honour of their Earl;
"And care not for the cost; the cost is mine."

   And wine and food were brought, and Earl Limours
Drank till he jested with all ease, and told
Free tales, and took the word and played upon it,
And made it of two colours; for his talk,
When wine and free companions kindled him,
Was wont to glance and sparkle like a gem
Of fifty facets; thus he moved the Prince
To laughter and his comrades to applause.
Then, when the Prince was merry, asked Limours,
"Your leave, my lord, to cross the room, and speak
To your good damsel there who sits apart,
And seems so lonely?" "My free leave," he said;
"Get her to speak: she doth not speak to me."
Then rose Limours, and looking at his feet,
Like him who tries the bridge he fears may fail,
Crost and came near, lifted adoring eyes,
Bowed at her side and uttered whisperingly:

   "Enid, the pilot star of my lone life,
Enid, my early and my only love,
Enid, the loss of whom hath turned me wild--
What chance is this? how is it I see you here?
Ye are in my power at last, are in my power.
Yet fear me not: I call mine own self wild,
But keep a touch of sweet civility
Here in the heart of waste and wilderness.
I thought, but that your father came between,
In former days you saw me favourably.
And if it were so do not keep it back:
Make me a little happier: let me know it:
Owe you me nothing for a life half-lost?
Yea, yea, the whole dear debt of all you are.
And, Enid, you and he, I see with joy,
Ye sit apart, you do not speak to him,
You come with no attendance, page or maid,
To serve you--doth he love you as of old?
For, call it lovers' quarrels, yet I know
Though men may bicker with the things they love,
They would not make them laughable in all eyes,
Not while they loved them; and your wretched dress,
A wretched insult on you, dumbly speaks
Your story, that this man loves you no more.
Your beauty is no beauty to him now:
A common chance--right well I know it--palled--
For I know men: nor will ye win him back,
For the man's love once gone never returns.
But here is one who loves you as of old;
With more exceeding passion than of old:
Good, speak the word: my followers ring him round:
He sits unarmed; I hold a finger up;
They understand: nay, I do not mean blood:
Nor need ye look so scared at what I say:
My malice is no deeper than a moat,
No stronger than a wall: there is the keep;
He shall not cross us more; speak but the word:
Or speak it not; but then by Him that made me
The one true lover whom you ever owned,
I will make use of all the power I have.
O pardon me! the madness of that hour,
When first I parted from thee, moves me yet."

   At this the tender sound of his own voice
And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it,
Made his eye moist; but Enid feared his eyes,
Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast;
And answered with such craft as women use,
Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance
That breaks upon them perilously, and said:

   "Earl, if you love me as in former years,
And do not practise on me, come with morn,
And snatch me from him as by violence;
Leave me tonight: I am weary to the death."

   Low at leave-taking, with his brandished plume
Brushing his instep, bowed the all-armorous Earl,
And the stout Prince bad him a loud good-night.
He moving homeward babbled to his men,
How Enid never loved a man but him,
Nor cared a broken egg-shell for her lord.

   But Enid left alone with Prince Geraint,
Debating his command of silence given,
And that she now perforce must violate it,
Held commune with herself, and while she held
He fell asleep, and Enid had no heart
To wake him, but hung o'er him, wholly pleased
To find him yet unwounded after fight,
And hear him breathing low and equally.
Anon she rose, and stepping lightly, heaped
The pieces of his armour in one place,
All to be there against a sudden need;
Then dozed awhile herself, but overtoiled
By that day's grief and travel, evermore
Seemed catching at a rootless thorn, and then
Went slipping down horrible precipices,
And strongly striking out her limbs awoke;
Then thought she heard the wild Earl at the door,
With all his rout of random followers,
Sound on a dreadful trumpet, summoning her;
Which was the red cock shouting to the light,
As the gray dawn stole o'er the dewy world,
And glimmered on his armour in the room.
And once again she rose to look at it,
But touched it unawares: jangling, the casque
Fell, and he started up and stared at her.
Then breaking his command of silence given,
She told him all that Earl Limours had said,
Except the passage that he loved her not;
Nor left untold the craft herself had used;
But ended with apology so sweet,
Low-spoken, and of so few words, and seemed
So justified by that necessity,
That though he thought "was it for him she wept
In Devon?" he but gave a wrathful groan,
Saying, "Your sweet faces make good fellows fools
And traitors. Call the host and bid him bring
Charger and palfrey." So she glided out
Among the heavy breathings of the house,
And like a household Spirit at the walls
Beat, till she woke the sleepers, and returned:
Then tending her rough lord, though all unasked,
In silence, did him service as a squire;
Till issuing armed he found the host and cried,
"Thy reckoning, friend?" and ere he learnt it, "Take
Five horses and their armours;" and the host
Suddenly honest, answered in amaze,
"My lord, I scarce have spent the worth of one!"
"Ye will be all the wealthier," said the Prince,
And then to Enid, "Forward! and today
I charge you, Enid, more especially,
What thing soever ye may hear, or see,
Or fancy (though I count it of small use
To charge you) that ye speak not but obey."

   And Enid answered, "Yea, my lord, I know
Your wish, and would obey; but riding first,
I hear the violent threats you do not hear,
I see the danger which you cannot see:
Then not to give you warning, that seems hard;
Almost beyond me: yet I would obey."

   "Yea so," said he, "do it: be not too wise;
Seeing that ye are wedded to a man,
Not all mismated with a yawning clown,
But one with arms to guard his head and yours,
With eyes to find you out however far,
And ears to hear you even in his dreams."

   With that he turned and looked as keenly at her
As careful robins eye the delver's toil;
And that within her, which a wanton fool,
Or hasty judger would have called her guilt,
Made her cheek burn and either eyelid fall.
And Geraint looked and was not satisfied.

   Then forward by a way which, beaten broad,
Led from the territory of false Limours
To the waste earldom of another earl,
Doorm, whom his shaking vassals called the Bull,
Went Enid with her sullen follower on.
Once she looked back, and when she saw him ride
More near by many a rood than yestermorn,
It wellnigh made her cheerful; till Geraint
Waving an angry hand as who should say
"Ye watch me," saddened all her heart again.
But while the sun yet beat a dewy blade,
The sound of many a heavily-galloping hoof
Smote on her ear, and turning round she saw
Dust, and the points of lances bicker in it.
Then not to disobey her lord's behest,
And yet to give him warning, for he rode
As if he heard not, moving back she held
Her finger up, and pointed to the dust.
At which the warrior in his obstinacy,
Because she kept the letter of his word,
Was in a manner pleased, and turning, stood.
And in the moment after, wild Limours,
Borne on a black horse, like a thunder-cloud
Whose skirts are loosened by the breaking storm,
Half ridden off with by the thing he rode,
And all in passion uttering a dry shriek,
Dashed on Geraint, who closed with him, and bore
Down by the length of lance and arm beyond
The crupper, and so left him stunned or dead,
And overthrew the next that followed him,
And blindly rushed on all the rout behind.
But at the flash and motion of the man
They vanished panic-stricken, like a shoal
Of darting fish, that on a summer morn
Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot
Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand,
But if a man who stands upon the brink
But lift a shining hand against the sun,
There is not left the twinkle of a fin
Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower;
So, scared but at the motion of the man,
Fled all the boon companions of the Earl,
And left him lying in the public way;
So vanish friendships only made in wine.

   Then like a stormy sunlight smiled Geraint,
Who saw the chargers of the two that fell
Start from their fallen lords, and wildly fly,
Mixt with the flyers. "Horse and man," he said,
"All of one mind and all right-honest friends!
Not a hoof left: and I methinks till now
Was honest--paid with horses and with arms;
I cannot steal or plunder, no nor beg:
And so what say ye, shall we strip him there
Your lover? has your palfrey heart enough
To bear his armour? shall we fast, or dine?
No?--then do thou, being right honest, pray
That we may meet the horsemen of Earl Doorm,
I too would still be honest." Thus he said:
And sadly gazing on her bridle-reins,
And answering not one word, she led the way.

   But as a man to whom a dreadful loss
Falls in a far land and he knows it not,
But coming back he learns it, and the loss
So pains him that he sickens nigh to death;
So fared it with Geraint, who being pricked
In combat with the follower of Limours,
Bled underneath his armour secretly,
And so rode on, nor told his gentle wife
What ailed him, hardly knowing it himself,
Till his eye darkened and his helmet wagged;
And at a sudden swerving of the road,
Though happily down on a bank of grass,
The Prince, without a word, from his horse fell.

   And Enid heard the clashing of his fall,
Suddenly came, and at his side all pale
Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his arms,
Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye
Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound,
And tearing off her veil of faded silk
Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun,
And swathed the hurt that drained her dear lord's life.
Then after all was done that hand could do,
She rested, and her desolation came
Upon her, and she wept beside the way.

    And many past, but none regarded her,
For in that realm of lawless turbulence,
A woman weeping for her murdered mate
Was cared as much for as a summer shower:
One took him for a victim of Earl Doorm,
Nor dared to waste a perilous pity on him:
Another hurrying past, a man-at-arms,
Rode on a mission to the bandit Earl;
Half whistling and half singing a coarse song,
He drove the dust against her veilless eyes:
Another, flying from the wrath of Doorm
Before an ever-fancied arrow, made
The long way smoke beneath him in his fear;
At which her palfrey whinnying lifted heel,
And scoured into the coppices and was lost,
While the great charger stood, grieved like a man.

   But at the point of noon the huge Earl Doorm,
Broad-faced with under-fringe of russet beard,
Bound on a foray, rolling eyes of prey,
Came riding with a hundred lances up;
But ere he came, like one that hails a ship,
Cried out with a big voice, "What, is he dead?"
"No, no, not dead!" she answered in all haste.
"Would some of your kind people take him up,
And bear him hence out of this cruel sun?
Most sure am I, quite sure, he is not dead."

   Then said Earl Doorm: "Well, if he be not dead,
Why wail ye for him thus? ye seem a child.
And be he dead, I count you for a fool;
Your wailing will not quicken him: dead or not,
Ye mar a comely face with idiot tears.
Yet, since the face is comely--some of you,
Here, take him up, and bear him to our hall:
An if he live, we will have him of our band;
And if he die, why earth has earth enough
To hide him. See ye take the charger too,
A noble one."

         He spake, and past away,
But left two brawny spearmen, who advanced,
Each growling like a dog, when his good bone
Seems to be plucked at by the village boys
Who love to vex him eating, and he fears
To lose his bone, and lays his foot upon it.
Gnawing and growling: so the ruffians growled,
Fearing to lose, and all for a dead man,
Their chance of booty from the morning's raid,
Yet raised and laid him on a litter-bier,
Such as they brought upon their forays out
For those that might be wounded; laid him on it
All in the hollow of his shield, and took
And bore him to the naked hall of Doorm,
(His gentle charger following him unled)
And cast him and the bier in which he lay
Down on an oaken settle in the hall,
And then departed, hot in haste to join
Their luckier mates, but growling as before,
And cursing their lost time, and the dead man,
And their own Earl, and their own souls, and her.
They might as well have blest her: she was deaf
To blessing or to cursing save from one.

   So for long hours sat Enid by her lord,
There in the naked hall, propping his head,
And chafing his pale hands, and calling to him.
Till at the last he wakened from his swoon,
And found his own dear bride propping his head,
And chafing his faint hands, and calling to him;
And felt the warm tears falling on his face;
And said to his own heart, "She weeps for me:"
And yet lay still, and feigned himself as dead,
That he might prove her to the uttermost,
And say to his own heart, "She weeps for me."

   But in the falling afternoon returned
The huge Earl Doorm with plunder to the hall.
His lusty spearmen followed him with noise:
Each hurling down a heap of things that rang
Against the pavement, cast his lance aside,
And doffed his helm: and then there fluttered in,
Half-bold, half-frighted, with dilated eyes,
A tribe of women, dressed in many hues,
And mingled with the spearmen: and Earl Doorm
Struck with a knife's haft hard against the board,
And called for flesh and wine to feed his spears.
And men brought in whole hogs and quarter beeves,
And all the hall was dim with steam of flesh:
And none spake word, but all sat down at once,
And ate with tumult in the naked hall,
Feeding like horses when you hear them feed;
Till Enid shrank far back into herself,
To shun the wild ways of the lawless tribe.
But when Earl Doorm had eaten all he would,
He rolled his eyes about the hall, and found
A damsel drooping in a corner of it.
Then he remembered her, and how she wept;
And out of her there came a power upon him;
And rising on the sudden he said, "Eat!
I never yet beheld a thing so pale.
God's curse, it makes me mad to see you weep.
Eat! Look yourself. Good luck had your man,
For were I dead who is it would weep for me?
Sweet lady, never since I first drew breath
Have I beheld a lily like yourself.
And so there lived some colour in your cheek,
There is not one among my gentlewomen
Were fit to wear your slipper for a glove.
But listen to me, and by me be ruled,
And I will do the thing I have not done,
For ye shall share my earldom with me, girl,
And we will live like two birds in one nest,
And I will fetch you forage from all fields,
For I compel all creatures to my will."

   He spoke: the brawny spearman let his cheek
Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and turning stared;
While some, whose souls the old serpent long had drawn
Down, as the worm draws in the withered leaf
And makes it earth, hissed each at other's ear
What shall not be recorded--women they,
Women, or what had been those gracious things,
But now desired the humbling of their best,
Yea, would have helped him to it: and all at once
They hated her, who took no thought of them,
But answered in low voice, her meek head yet
Drooping, "I pray you of your courtesy,
He being as he is, to let me be."

   She spake so low he hardly heard her speak,
But like a mighty patron, satisfied
With what himself had done so graciously,
Assumed that she had thanked him, adding, "Yea,
Eat and be glad, for I account you mine."

   She answered meekly, "How should I be glad
Henceforth in all the world at anything,
Until my lord arise and look upon me?"

   Here the huge Earl cried out upon her talk,
As all but empty heart and weariness
And sickly nothing; suddenly seized on her,
And bare her by main violence to the board,
And thrust the dish before her, crying, "Eat."

   "No, no," said Enid, vext, "I will not eat
Till yonder man upon the bier arise,
And eat with me." "Drink, then," he answered. "Here!"
(And filled a horn with wine and held it to her,)
"Lo! I, myself, when flushed with fight, or hot,
God's curse, with anger--often I myself,
Before I well have drunken, scarce can eat:
Drink therefore and the wine will change your will."

   "Not so," she cried, "by Heaven, I will not drink
Till my dear lord arise and bid me do it,
And drink with me; and if he rise no more,
I will not look at wine until I die."

   At this he turned all red and paced his hall,
Now gnawed his under, now his upper lip,
And coming up close to her, said at last:
"Girl, for I see ye scorn my courtesies,
Take warning: yonder man is surely dead;
And I compel all creatures to my will.
Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail for one,
Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn
By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I,
Beholding how ye butt against my wish,
That I forbear you thus: cross me no more.
At least put off to please me this poor gown,
This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed:
I love that beauty should go beautifully:
For see ye not my gentlewomen here,
How gay, how suited to the house of one
Who loves that beauty should go beautifully?
Rise therefore; robe yourself in this: obey."

   He spoke, and one among his gentlewomen
Displayed a splendid silk of foreign loom,
Where like a shoaling sea the lovely blue
Played into green, and thicker down the front
With jewels than the sward with drops of dew,
When all night long a cloud clings to the hill,
And with the dawn ascending lets the day
Strike where it clung: so thickly shone the gems.

   But Enid answered, harder to be moved
Than hardest tyrants in their day of power,
With life-long injuries burning unavenged,
And now their hour has come; and Enid said:

   "In this poor gown my dear lord found me first,
And loved me serving in my father's hall:
In this poor gown I rode with him to court,
And there the Queen arrayed me like the sun:
In this poor gown he bad me clothe myself,
When now we rode upon this fatal quest
Of honour, where no honour can be gained:
And this poor gown I will not cast aside
Until himself arise a living man,
And bid me cast it. I have griefs enough:
Pray you be gentle, pray you let me be:
I never loved, can never love but him:
Yea, God, I pray you of your gentleness,
He being as he is, to let me be."

   Then strode the brute Earl up and down his hall,
And took his russet beard between his teeth;
Last, coming up quite close, and in his mood
Crying, "I count it of no more avail,
Dame, to be gentle than ungentle with you;
Take my salute," unknightly with flat hand,
However lightly, smote her on the cheek.

   Then Enid, in her utter helplessness,
And since she thought, "He had not dared to do it,
Except he surely knew my lord was dead,"
Sent forth a sudden sharp and bitter cry,
As of a wild thing taken in the trap,
Which sees the trapper coming through the wood.

   This heard Geraint, and grasping at his sword,
(It lay beside him in the hollow shield),
Made but a single bound, and with a sweep of it
The russet-bearded head rolled on the floor.
So died Earl Doorm by him he counted dead.
And all the men and women in the hall
Rose when they saw the dead man rise, and fled
Yelling as from a spectre, and the two
Were left alone together, and he said:

   "Enid, I have used you worse than that dead man;
Done you more wrong: we both have undergone
That trouble which has left me thrice your own;
Henceforward I will rather die than doubt.
And here I lay this penance on myself,
Not, though mine own ears heard you yestermorn--
You thought me sleeping, but I heard you say,
I heard you say, that you were no true wife:
I swear I will not ask your meaning in it:
I do believe yourself against yourself,
And will henceforward rather die than doubt."

   And Enid could not say one tender word,
She felt so blunt and stupid at the heart:
She only prayed him, "Fly, they will return
And slay you; your charger is without,
My palfrey lost." "Then, Enid, shall you ride
Behind me." "Yea," said Enid, "let us go."
And moving out they found the stately horse,
Who now no more than a vassal to the thief,
But free to stretch his limbs in lawful fight,
Neighed with all gladness as they came, and stooped
With a low whinny toward the pair: and she
Kissed the white star upon his noble front,
Glad also; then Geraint upon the horse
Mounted, and reached a hand, and on his foot
She set her own and climbed; he turned his face
And kissed her climbing, and she cast her arms
About him, and at once they rode away.

   And never yet, since high in Paradise
O'er the four rivers the first roses blew,
Came purer pleasure unto mortal kind
Than lived through her, who in that perilous hour
Put hand to hand beneath her husband's heart,
And felt him hers again: she did not weep,
But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist
Like that which kept the heart of Eden green
Before the useful trouble of the rain:
Yet not so misty were her meek blue eyes
As not to see before them on the path,
Right in the gateway of the bandit hold,
A knight of Arthur's court, who laid his lance
In rest, and made as if to fall upon him.
Then, fearing for his hurt and loss of blood,
She, with her mind all full of what had chanced,
Shrieked to the stranger "Slay not a dead man!"
"The voice of Enid," said the knight; but she,
Beholding it was Edyrn son of Nudd,
Was moved so much the more, and shrieked again,
"O cousin, slay not him who gave you life."
And Edyrn moving frankly forward spake:
"My lord Geraint, I greet you with all love;
I took you for a bandit knight of Doorm;
And fear not, Enid, I should fall upon him,
Who love you, Prince, with something of the love
Wherewith we love the Heaven that chastens us.
For once, when I was up so high in pride
That I was halfway down the slope to Hell,
By overthrowing me you threw me higher.
Now, made a knight of Arthur's Table Round,
And since I knew this Earl, when I myself
Was half a bandit in my lawless hour,
I come the mouthpiece of our King to Doorm
(The King is close behind me) bidding him
Disband himself, and scatter all his powers,
Submit, and hear the judgment of the King."

   "He hears the judgment of the King of kings,"
Cried the wan Prince; "and lo, the powers of Doorm
Are scattered," and he pointed to the field,
Where, huddled here and there on mound and knoll,
Were men and women staring and aghast,
While some yet fled; and then he plainlier told
How the huge Earl lay slain within his hall.
But when the knight besought him, "Follow me,
Prince, to the camp, and in the King's own ear
Speak what has chanced; ye surely have endured
Strange chances here alone;" that other flushed,
And hung his head, and halted in reply,
Fearing the mild face of the blameless King,
And after madness acted question asked:
Till Edyrn crying, "If ye will not go
To Arthur, then will Arthur come to you,"
"Enough," he said, "I follow," and they went.
But Enid in their going had two fears,
One from the bandit scattered in the field,
And one from Edyrn. Every now and then,
When Edyrn reined his charger at her side,
She shrank a little. In a hollow land,
From which old fires have broken, men may fear
Fresh fire and ruin. He, perceiving, said:

   "Fair and dear cousin, you that most had cause
To fear me, fear no longer, I am changed.
Yourself were first the blameless cause to make
My nature's prideful sparkle in the blood
Break into furious flame; being repulsed
By Yniol and yourself, I schemed and wrought
Until I overturned him; then set up
(With one main purpose ever at my heart)
My haughty jousts, and took a paramour;
Did her mock-honour as the fairest fair,
And, toppling over all antagonism,
So waxed in pride, that I believed myself
Unconquerable, for I was wellnigh mad:
And, but for my main purpose in these jousts,
I should have slain your father, seized yourself.
I loved in hope that sometime you would come
To these my lists with him whom best you loved;
And there, poor cousin, with your meek blue eyes,
The truest eyes that ever answered Heaven,
Behold me overturn and trample on him.
Then, had you cried, or knelt, or prayed to me,
I should not less have killed him. And you came,--
But once you came,--and with your own true eyes
Beheld the man you loved ( I speak as one
Speaks of a service done him) overthrow
My proud self, and my purpose three years old,
And set his foot upon me, and give me life.
There was I broken down; there was I saved:
Though thence I rode all-shamed, hating the life
He gave me, meaning to be rid of it.
And all the penance the Queen laid upon me
Was but to rest awhile within her court;
Where first as sullen as a beast new-caged,
And waiting to be treated like a wolf,
Because I knew my deeds were known, I found,
Instead of scornful pity or pure scorn,
Such fine reserve and noble reticence,
Manners so kind, yet stately, such a grace
Of tenderest courtesy, that I began
To glance behind me at my former life,
And find that it had been the wolf's indeed:
And oft I talked with Dubric, the high saint,
Who, with mild heat of holy oratory,
Subdued me somewhat to that gentleness,
Which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man.
And you were often there about the Queen,
But saw me not, or marked not if you saw;
Nor did I care or dare to speak with you,
But kept myself aloof till I was changed;
And fear not, cousin; I am changed indeed."

   He spoke, and Enid easily believed,
Like simple noble natures, credulous
Of what they long for, good in friend or foe,
There most in those who most have done them ill.
And when they reached the camp the King himself
Advanced to greet them, and beholding her
Though pale, yet happy, asked her not a word,
But went apart with Edyrn, whom he held
In converse for a little, and returned,
And, gravely smiling, lifted her from horse,
And kissed her with all pureness, brother-like,
And showed an empty tent allotted her,
And glancing for a minute, till he saw her
Pass into it, turned to the Prince, and said:

   "Prince, when of late ye prayed me for my leave
To move to your own land, and there defend
Your marches, I was pricked with some reproof,
As one that let foul wrong stagnate and be,
By having looked too much through alien eyes,
And wrought too long with delegated hands,
Not used mine own: but now behold me come
To cleanse this common sewer of all my realm,
With Edyrn and with others: have ye looked
At Edyrn? have ye seen how nobly changed?
This work of his is great and wonderful.
His very face with change of heart is changed.
The world will not believe a man repents:
And this wise world of ours is mainly right.
Full seldom doth a man repent, or use
Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch
Of blood and custom wholly out of him,
And make all clean, and plant himself afresh.
Edyrn has done it, weeding all his heart
As I will weed this land before I go.
I, therefore, made him of our Table Round,
Not rashly, but have proved him everyway
One of our noblest, our most valorous,
Sanest and most obedient: and indeed
This work of Edyrn wrought upon himself
After a life of violence, seems to me
A thousand-fold more great and wonderful
Than if some knight of mine, risking his life,
My subject with my subjects under him,
Should make an onslaught single on a realm
Of robbers, though he slew them one by one,
And were himself nigh wounded to the death."

   So spake the King; low bowed the Prince, and felt
His work was neither great nor wonderful,
And past to Enid's tent; and thither came
The King's own leech to look into his hurt;
And Enid tended on him there; and there
Her constant motion round him, and the breath
Of her sweet tendance hovering over him,
Filled all the genial courses of his blood
With deeper and with ever deeper love,
As the south-west that blowing Bala lake
Fills all the sacred Dee. So past the days.

   But while Geraint lay healing of his hurt,
The blameless King went forth and cast his eyes
On each of all whom Uther left in charge
Long since, to guard the justice of the King:
He looked and found them wanting; and as now
Men weed the white horse on the Berkshire hills
To keep him bright and clean as heretofore,
He rooted out the slothful officer
Or guilty, which for a bribe had winked at wrong,
And in their chairs set up a stronger race
With hearts and hands, and sent a thousand men
To till the wastes, and moving everywhere
Cleared the dark places and let in the law,
And broke the bandit holds and cleansed the land.

   Then, when Geraint was whole again, they past
With Arthur to Caerleon upon Usk.
There the great Queen once more embraced her friend,
And clothed her in apparel like the day.
And though Geraint could never take again
That comfort from their converse which he took
Before the Queen's fair name was breathed upon,
He rested well content that all was well.
Thence after tarrying for a space they rode,
And fifty knights rode with them to the shores
Of Severn, and they past to their own land.
And there he kept the justice of the King
So vigorously yet mildly, that all hearts
Applauded, and the spiteful whisper died:
And being ever foremost in the chase,
And victor at the tilt and tournament,
They called him the great Prince and man of men.
But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call
Enid the Fair, a grateful people named
Enid the Good; and in their halls arose
The cry of children, Enids and Geraints
Of times to be; nor did he doubt her more,
But rested in her fealty, till he crowned
A happy life with a fair death, and fell
Against the heathen of the Northern Sea
In battle, fighting for the blameless King.

---

---

GUINEVERE

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat
There in the holy house at Almesbury
Weeping, none with her save a little maid,
A novice: one low light betwixt them burned
Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad,
Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,
The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,
Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still.

   For hither had she fled, her cause of flight
Sir Modred; he that like a subtle beast
Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne,
Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this
He chilled the popular praises of the King
With silent smiles of slow disparagement;
And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse,
Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought
To make disruption in the Table Round
Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds
Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims
Were sharpened by strong hate for Lancelot.

   For thus it chanced one morn when all the court,
Green-suited, but with plumes that mocked the may,
Had been, their wont, a-maying and returned,
That Modred still in green, all ear and eye,
Climbed to the high top of the garden-wall
To spy some secret scandal if he might,
And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best
Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court
The wiliest and the worst; and more than this
He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by
Spied where he couched, and as the gardener's hand
Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar,
So from the high wall and the flowering grove
Of grasses Lancelot plucked him by the heel,
And cast him as a worm upon the way;
But when he knew the Prince though marred with dust,
He, reverencing king's blood in a bad man,
Made such excuses as he might, and these
Full knightly without scorn; for in those days
No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in scorn;
But, if a man were halt or hunched, in him
By those whom God had made full-limbed and tall,
Scorn was allowed as part of his defect,
And he was answered softly by the King
And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp
To raise the Prince, who rising twice or thrice
Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled, and went:
But, ever after, the small violence done
Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart,
As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long
A little bitter pool about a stone
On the bare coast.
                  But when Sir Lancelot told
This matter to the Queen, at first she laughed
Lightly, to think of Modred's dusty fall,
Then shuddered, as the village wife who cries
"I shudder, some one steps across my grave;"
Then laughed again, but faintlier, for indeed
She half-foresaw that he, the subtle beast,
Would track her guilt until he found, and hers
Would be for evermore a name of scorn.
Henceforward rarely could she front in hall,
Or elsewhere, Modred's narrow foxy face,
Heart-hiding smile, and gray persistent eye:
Henceforeward, too, the Powers that tend the soul,
To help it from the death that cannot die,
And save it even in extremes, began
To vex and plague her. Many a time for hours,
Beside the placid breathings of the King,
In the dead night, grim faces came and went
Before her, or a vague spiritual fear--
Like to some doubtful noise of creaking doors,
Heard by the watcher in a haunted house,
That keeps the rust of murder on the walls--
Held her awake: or if she slept, she dreamed
An awful dream, for then she seemed to stand
On some vast plain before a setting sun,
And from the sun there swiftly made at her
A ghastly something, and its shadow flew
Before it, till it touched her, and she turned--
When lo! her own, that broadening from her feet,
And blackening, swallowed all the land, and in it
Far cities burnt, and with a cry she woke.
And all this trouble did not pass but grew;
Till even the clear face of the guileless King,
And trustful courtesies of household life,
Became her bane; and at the last she said,
"O Lancelot, get thee hence to thine own land,
For if thou tarry we shall meet again,
And if we meet again, some evil chance
Will make the smouldering scandal break and blaze
Before the people, and our lord the King."
And Lancelot ever promised, but remained,
And still they met and met. Again she said,
"O Lancelot, if thou love me get thee hence."
And then they were agreed upon a night
(When the good King should not be there) to meet
And part for ever. Vivien, lurking, heard.
She told Sir Modred. Passion-pale they met
And greeted. Hands in hands, and eye to eye,
Low on the border of her couch they sat
Stammering and staring. It was their last hour,
A madness of farewells. And Modred brought
His creatures to the basement of the tower
For testimony; and crying with full voice
"Traitor, come out, ye are trapt at last," aroused
Lancelot, who rushing outward lionlike
Leapt on him, and hurled him headlong, and he fell
Stunned, and his creatures took and bare him off,
And all was still: then she, "The end is come,
And I am shamed for ever;" and he said,
"Mine be the shame; mine was the sin: but rise,
And fly to my strong castle overseas:
There will I hide thee, till my life shall end,
There hold thee with my life against the world."
She answered, "Lancelot, wilt thou hold me so?
Nay, friend, for we have taken our farewells.
Would God that thou couldst hide me from myself!
Mine is the shame, for I was wife, and thou
Unwedded: yet rise now, and let us fly,
For I will draw me into sanctuary,
And bide my doom." So Lancelot got her horse,
Set her thereon, and mounted on his own,
And then they rode to the divided way,
There kissed, and parted weeping: for he past,
Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen,
Back to his land; but she to Almesbury
Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald,
And heard the Spirits of the waste and weald
Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan:
And in herself she moaned "Too late, too late!"
Till in the cold wind that foreruns the morn,
A blot in heaven, the Raven, flying high,
Croaked, and she thought, "He spies a field of death;
For now the Heathen of the Northern Sea,
Lured by the crimes and frailties of the court,
Begin to slay the folk, and spoil the land."

   And when she came to Almesbury she spake
There to the nuns, and said, "Mine enemies
Pursue me, but, O peaceful Sisterhood,
Receive, and yield me sanctuary, nor ask
Her name to whom ye yield it, till her time
To tell you:" and her beauty, grace and power,
Wrought as a charm upon them, and they spared
To ask it.
               So the stately Queen abode
For many a week, unknown, among the nuns;
Nor with them mixed, nor told her name, nor sought,
Wrapt in her grief, for housel or for shrift,
But communed only with the little maid,
Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness
Which often lured her from herself; but now,
This night, a rumor wildly blown about
Came, that Sir Modred had usurped the realm,
And leagued him with the heathen, while the King
Was waging war on Lancelot: then she thought,
"With what a hate the people and the King
Must hate me," and bowed down upon her hands
Silent, until the little maid, who brooked
No silence, brake it, uttering "Late! so late!
What hour, I wonder, now?" and when she drew
No answer, by and by began to hum
An air the nuns had taught her; "Late, so late!"
Which when she heard, the Queen looked up, and said,
"O maiden, if indeed ye list to sing,
Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep."
Whereat full willingly sang the little maid.

   "Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

   "No light had we: for that we do repent;
And learning this, the bridegroom will relent.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

   "No light: so late! and dark and chill the night!
O let us in, that we may find the light!
Too late, too late: ye cannot enter now.

   "Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet?
O let us in, though late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now."

   So sang the novice, while full passionately,
Her head upon her hands, remembering
Her thought when first she came, wept the sad Queen.
Then said the little novice prattling to her,

   "O pray you, noble lady, weep no more;
But let my words, the words of one so small,
Who knowing nothing knows but to obey,
And if I do not there is penance given--
Comfort your sorrows; for they do not flow
From evil done; right sure am I of that,
Who see your tender grace and stateliness.
But weigh your sorrows with our lord the King's,
And weighing find them less; for gone is he
To wage grim war against Sir Lancelot there,
Round that strong castle where he holds the Queen;
And Modred whom he left in charge of all,
The traitor--Ah sweet lady, the King's grief
For his own self, and his own Queen, and realm,
Must needs be thrice as great as any of ours.
For me, I thank the saints, I am not great.
For if there ever come a grief to me
I cry my cry in silence, and have done.
None knows it, and my tears have brought me good:
But even were the griefs of little ones
As great as those of great ones, yet this grief
Is added to the griefs the great must bear,
That howsoever much they may desire
Silence, they cannot weep behind a cloud:
As even here they talk at Almesbury
About the good King and his wicked Queen,
And were I such a King with such a Queen,
Well might I wish to veil her wickedness,
But were I such a King, it could not be."

   Then to her own sad heart muttered the Queen,
"Will the child kill me with her innocent talk?"
But openly she answered, "Must not I,
If this false traitor have displaced his lord,
Grieve with the common grief of all the realm?"

   "Yea," said the maid, "this is all woman's grief,
That she is woman, whose disloyal life
Hath wrought confusion in the Table Round
Which good King Arthur founded, years ago,
With signs and miracles and wonders, there
At Camelot, ere the coming of the Queen."

   Then thought the Queen within herself again,
"Will the child kill me with her foolish prate?"
But openly she spake and said to her,
"O little maid, shut in by nunnery walls,
What canst thou know of Kings and Tables Round,
Or what of signs and wonders, but the signs
And simple miracles of thy nunnery?"

   To whom the little novice garrulously,
"Yea, but I know: the land was full of signs
And wonders ere the coming of the Queen.
So said my father, and himself was knight
Of the great Table--at the founding of it;
And rode thereto from Lyonnesse, and he said
That as he rode, an hour or maybe twain
After the sunset, down the coast, he heard
Strange music, and he paused, and turning--there,
All down the lonely coast of Lyonnesse,
Each with a beacon-star upon his head,
And with a wild sea-light about his feet,
He saw them--headland after headland flame
Far on into the rich heart of the west:
And in the light the white mermaiden swam,
And strong man-breasted things stood from the sea,
And sent a deep sea-voice through all the land,
To which the little elves of chasm and cleft
Made answer, sounding like a distant horn.
So said my father--yea, and furthermore,
Next morning, while he past the dim-lit woods,
Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy
Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower,
That shook beneath them, as the thistle shakes
When three gray linnets wrangle for the seed:
And still at evenings on before his horse
The flickering fairy-cycle wheeled and broke
Flying, and linked again, and wheeled and broke
Flying, for all the land was full of life.
And when at last he came to Camelot,
A wreath of airy dancers hand-in-hand
Swung round the lighted lantern of the hall;
And in the hall itself was such a feast
As never man had dreamed; for every knight
Had whatsoever meat he longed for served
By hands unseen; and even as he said
Down in the cellars merry bloated things
Shouldered the spigot, straddling on the butts
While the wine ran: so glad were spirits and men
Before the coming of the sinful Queen."

   Then spake the Queen and somewhat bitterly,
"Were they so glad? ill prophets were they all,
Spirits and men: could none of them foresee,
Not even thy wise father with his signs
And wonders, what has fallen upon the realm?"

   To whom the novice garrulously again,
"Yea, one, a bard; of whom my father said,
Full many a noble war-song had he sung,
Even in the presence of an enemy's fleet,
Between the steep cliff and the coming wave;
And many a mystic lay of life and death
Had chanted on the smoky mountain-tops,
When round him bent the spirits of the hills
With all their dewy hair blown back like flame:
So said my father--and that night the bard
Sang Arthur's glorious wars, and sang the King
As wellnigh more than man, and railed at those
Who called him the false son of Gorloïs:
For there was no man knew from whence he came;
But after tempest, when the long wave broke
All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos,
There came a day as still as heaven, and then
They found a naked child upon the sands
Of dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea;
And that was Arthur; and they fostered him
Till he by miracle was approven King:
And that his grave should be a mystery
From all men, like his birth; and could he find
A woman in her womanhood as great
As he was in his manhood, then, he sang,
The twain together well might change the world.
But even in the middle of his song
He faltered, and his hand fell from the harp,
And pale he turned, and reeled, and would have fallen,
But that they stayed him up; nor would he tell
His vision; but what doubt that he foresaw
This evil work of Lancelot and the Queen?"

   Then thought the Queen, "Lo! they have set her on,
Our simple-seeming Abbess and her nuns,
To play upon me," and bowed her head nor spake.
Whereat the novice crying, with clasped hands,
Shame on her own garrulity garrulously,
Said the good nuns would check her gadding tongue
Full often, "and, sweet lady, if I seem
To vex an ear too sad to listen to me,
Unmannerly, with prattling and the tales
Which my good father told me, check me too
Nor let me shame my father's memory, one
Of noblest manners, though himself would say
Sir Lancelot had the noblest; and he died,
Killed in a tilt, come next, five summers back,
And left me; but of others who remain,
And of the two first-famed for courtesy--
And pray you check me if I ask amiss--
And pray you, which had noblest, while you moved
Among them, Lancelot or our lord the King?"

   Then the pale Queen looked up and answered her,
"Sir Lancelot, as became a noble knight,
Was gracious to all ladies, and the same
In open battle or the tilting-field
Forbore his own advantage, and the King
In open battle or the tilting-field
Forbore his own advantage, and these two
Were the most nobly-mannered men of all;
For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature, and of noble mind."

   "Yea," said the maid, "be manners such fair fruit?
Then Lancelot's needs must be a thousand-fold
Less noble, being, as all rumour runs,
The most disloyal friend in all the world."

   To which a mournful answer made the Queen:
"O closed about by narrowing nunnery-walls,
What knowest thou of the world, and all its lights
And shadows, all the wealth and all the woe?
If ever Lancelot, that most noble knight,
Were for one hour less noble than himself,
Pray for him that he scape the doom of fire,
And weep for her who drew him to his doom."

   "Yea," said the little novice, "I pray for both;
But I should all as soon believe that his,
Sir Lancelot's, were as noble as the King's,
As I could think, sweet lady, yours would be
Such as they are, were you the sinful Queen."

   So she, like many another babbler, hurt
Whom she would soothe, and harmed where she would heal;
For here a sudden flush of wrathful heat
Fired all the pale face of the Queen, who cried,
"Such as thou art be never maiden more
For ever! thou their tool, set on to plague
And play upon, and harry me, petty spy
And traitress." When that storm of anger brake
From Guinevere, aghast the maiden rose,
White as her veil, and stood before the Queen
As tremulously as foam upon the beach
Stands in a wind, ready to break and fly,
And when the Queen had added "Get thee hence,"
Fled frightened. Then that other left alone
Sighed, and began to gather heart again,
Saying in herself, "The simple, fearful child
Meant nothing, but my own too-fearful guilt,
Simpler than any child, betrays itself.
But help me, heaven, for surely I repent.
For what is true repentance but in thought--
Nor even in inmost thought to think again
The sins that made the past so pleasant to us:
And I have sworn never to see him more,
To see him more."

               And even in saying this,
Her memory from old habit of the mind
Went slipping back upon the golden days
In which she saw him first, when Lancelot came,
Reputed the best knight and goodliest man,
Ambassador, to lead her to his lord
Arthur, and led her forth, and far ahead
Of his and her retinue moving, they,
Rapt in sweet talk or lively, all on love
And sport and tilts and pleasure, (for the time
And maytime, and as yet no sin was dreamed,)
Rode under groves that looked a paradise
Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth
That seemed the heavens upbreaking through the earth,
And on from hill to hill, and every day
Beheld at noon in some delicious dale
The silk pavilions of King Arthur raised
For brief repast or afternoon repose
By couriers gone before; and on again,
Till yet once more ere set of sun they saw
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship,
That crowned the state pavilion of the King,
Blaze by the rushing brook or silent well.

   But when the Queen immersed in such a trance,
And moving through the past unconsciously,
Came to that point where first she saw the King
Ride toward her from the city, sighed to find
Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold,
High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him,
"Not like my Lancelot"--while she brooded thus
And grew half-guilty in her thoughts again,
There rode an armed warrior to the doors.
A murmuring whisper through the nunnery ran,
Then on a sudden a cry, "The King." She sat
Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet
Through the long gallery from the outer doors
Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell,
And grovelled with her face against the floor:
There with her milkwhite arms and shadowy hair
She made her face a darkness from the King:
And in the darkness heard his armed feet
Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice,
Monotonous and hollow like a Ghost's
Denouncing judgment, but though changed, the King's:

   "Liest thou here so low, the child of one
I honoured, happy, dead before thy shame?
Well is it that no child is born of thee.
The children born of thee are sword and fire,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws,
The craft of kindred and the Godless hosts
Of heathen swarming o'er the Northern Sea;
Whom I, while yet Sir Lancelot, my right arm,
The mightiest of my knights, abode with me,
Have everywhere about this land of Christ
In twelve great battles ruining overthrown.
And knowest thou now from whence I come--from him,
From waging bitter war with him: and he,
That did not shun to smite me in worse way,
Had yet that grace of courtesy in him left,
He spared to lift his hand against the King
Who made him knight: but many a knight was slain;
And many more, and all his kith and kin
Clave to him, and abode in his own land.
And many more when Modred raised revolt,
Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave
To Modred, and a remnant stays with me.
And of this remnant will I leave a part,
True men who love me still, for whom I live,
To guard thee in the wild hour coming on,
Lest but a hair of this low head be harmed.
Fear not: thou shalt be guarded till my death.
Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies
Have erred not, that I march to meet my doom.
Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me,
That I the King should greatly care to live;
For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life.
Bear with me for the last time while I show,
Even for thy sake, the sin which thou hast sinned.
For when the Roman left us, and their law
Relaxed its hold upon us, and the ways
Were filled with rapine, here and there a deed
Of prowess done redressed a random wrong.
But I was first of all the kings who drew
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all
The realms together under me, their Head,
In that fair Order of my Table Round,
A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time.
I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the King, as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honour his own word as if his God's,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her; for indeed I knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
And all this throve before I wedded thee,
Believing, "lo mine helpmate, one to feel
My purpose and rejoicing in my joy."
Then came thy shameful sin with Lancelot;
Then came the sin of Tristram and Isolt;
Then others, following these my mightiest knights,
And drawing foul ensample from fair names,
Sinned also, till the loathsome opposite
Of all my heart had destined did obtain,
And all through thee! so that this life of mine
I guard as God's high gift from scathe and wrong,
Not greatly care to lose; but rather think
How sad it were for Arthur, should he live,
To sit once more within his lonely hall,
And miss the wonted number of my knights,
And miss to hear high talk of noble deeds
As in the golden days before thy sin.
For which of us, who might be left, could speak
Of the pure heart, nor seem to glance at thee?
And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk
Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,
And I should evermore be vext with thee
In hanging robe or vacant ornament,
Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair.
For think not, though thou wouldst not love thy lord,
Thy lord has wholly lost his love for thee.
I am not made of so slight elements.
Yet must I leave thee, woman, to thy shame.
I hold that man the worst of public foes
Who either for his own or children's sake,
To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife
Whom he knows false, abide and rule the house:
For being through his cowardice allowed
Her station, taken everywhere for pure,
She like a new disease, unknown to men,
Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd,
Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and saps
The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse
With devil's leaps, and poisons half the young.
Worst of the worst were that man he that reigns!
Better the King's waste hearth and aching heart
Than thou reseated in thy place of light,
The mockery of my people, and their bane."

   He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch
Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.
Far off a solitary trumpet blew.
Then waiting by the doors the warhorse neighed
As at a friend's voice, and he spake again:

   "Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes,
I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,
I, whose vast pity almost makes me die
To see thee, laying there thy golden head,
My pride in happier summers, at my feet.
The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law,
The doom of treason and the flaming death,
(When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past.
The pang--which while I weighed thy heart with one
Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee,
Made my tears burn--is also past--in part.
And all is past, the sin is sinned, and I,
Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God
Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest.
But how to take last leave of all I loved?
O golden hair, with which I used to play
Not knowing! O imperial-moulded form,
And beauty such as never woman wore,
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee--
I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine,
But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the King's.
I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh,
And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh,
Here looking down on thine polluted, cries
"I loathe thee:" yet not less, O Guinevere,
For I was ever virgin save for thee,
My love through flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband--not a smaller soul,
Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that,
I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence.
Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow:
They summon me their King to lead mine hosts
Far down to that great battle in the west,
Where I must strike against the man they call
My sister's son--no kin of mine, who leagues
With Lords of the White Horse, heathen, and knights,
Traitors--and strike him dead, and meet myself
Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.
And thou remaining here wilt learn the event;
But hither shall I never come again,
Never lie by thy side; see thee no more--
Farewell!"
               And while she grovelled at his feet,
She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck,
And in the darkness o'er her fallen head,
Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.

   Then, listening till those armed steps were gone,
Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found
The casement: "peradventure," so she thought;
"If I might see his face, and not be seen."
And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!
And near him the sad nuns with each a light
Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen,
To guard and foster her for evermore.
And while he spake to these his helm was lowered,
To which for crest the golden dragon clung
Of Britain; so she did not see the face,
Which then was as an angel's, but she saw,
Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.
And even then he turned; and more and more
The moony vapour rolling round the King,
Who seemed the phantom of a Giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.
                     Then she stretched out her arms and cried aloud
"Oh Arthur!" there her voice brake suddenly,
Then--as a stream that spouting from a cliff
Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base
Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale--
Went on in passionate utterance:

      "Gone--my lord!
Gone through my sin to slay and to be slain!
And he forgave me, and I could not speak.
Farewell? I should have answered his farewell.
His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord the King,
My own true lord! how dare I call him mine?
The shadow of another cleaves to me,
And makes me one pollution: he, the King,
Called me polluted: shall I kill myself?
What help in that? I cannot kill my sin,
If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame;
No, nor by living can I live it down.
The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months,
The months will add themselves and make the years,
The years will roll into the centuries,
And mine will ever be a name of scorn.
I must not dwell on that defeat of fame.
Let the world be; that is but of the world.
What else? what hope? I think there was a hope,
Except he mocked me when he spake of hope;
His hope he called it; but he never mocks,
For mockery is the fume of little hearts.
And blessed be the King, who hath forgiven
My wickedness to him, and left me hope
That in mine own heart I can live down sin
And be his mate hereafter in the heavens
Before high God. Ah great and gentle lord,
Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint
Among his warring senses, to thy knights--
To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took
Full easily all impressions from below,
Would not look up, or half-despised the height
To which I would not or I could not climb--
I thought I could not breathe in that fine air
That pure severity of perfect light--
I yearned for warmth and colour which I found
In Lancelot--now I see thee what thou art,
Thou art the highest and most human too,
Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none
Will tell the King I love him though so late?
Now--ere he goes to the great Battle? none:
Myself must tell him in that purer life,
But now it were too daring. Ah my God,
What might I not have made of thy fair world,
Had I but loved thy highest creature here?
It was my duty to have loved the highest:
It surely was my profit had I known:
It would have been my pleasure had I seen.
We needs must love the highest when we see it,
Not Lancelot, nor another."
                                 Here her hand
Grasped, made her vail her eyes: she looked and saw
The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said to her,
"Yea, little maid, for am I not forgiven?"
Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns
All round her, weeping; and her heart was loosed
Within her, and she wept with these and said,

   "Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke
The vast design and purpose of the King.
O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls,
Meek maidens, from the voices crying 'shame.'
I must not scorn myself: he loves me still.
Let no one dream but that he loves me still.
So let me, if you do not shudder at me,
Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you;
Wear black and white, and be a nun like you,
Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts;
Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys,
But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites;
Pray and be prayed for; lie before your shrines;
Do each low office of your holy house;
Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole
To poor sick people, richer in His eyes
Who ransomed us, and haler too than I;
And treat their loathsome hurts and heal mine own;
And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
The sombre close of that voluptuous day,
Which wrought the ruin of my lord the King."

   She said: they took her to themselves; and she
Still hoping, fearing "is it yet too late?"
Dwelt with them, till in time their Abbess died.
Then she, for her good deeds and her pure life,
And for the power of ministration in her,
And likewise for the high rank she had borne,
Was chosen Abbess, there, an Abbess, lived
For three brief years, and there, an Abbess, past
To where beyond these voice there is peace.

---

---

LANCELOT AND ELAINE

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

   Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where morning's earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk, and braided thereupon
All the devices blazoned on the shield
In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.
Nor rested thus content, but day by day,
Leaving her household and good father, climbed
That eastern tower, and entering barred her door,
Stript off the case, and read the naked shield,
Now guessed a hidden meaning in his arms,
Now made a pretty history to herself
Of every dint a sword had beaten in it,
And every scratch a lance had made upon it,
Conjecturing when and where: this cut is fresh;
That ten years back; this dealt him at Caerlyle;
That at Caerleon; this at Camelot:
And ah God's mercy, what a stroke was there!
And here a thrust that might have killed, but God
Broke the strong lance, and rolled his enemy down,
And saved him: so she lived in fantasy.

   How came the lily maid by that good shield
Of Lancelot, she that knew not even his name?
He left it with her, when he rode to tilt
For the great diamond in the diamond jousts,
Which Arthur had ordained, and by that name
Had named them, since a diamond was the prize.

   For Arthur, long before they crowned him King,
Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,
Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.
A horror lived about the tarn, and clave
Like its own mists to all the mountain side:
For here two brothers, one a king, had met
And fought together; but their names were lost;
And each had slain his brother at a blow;
And down they fell and made the glen abhorred:
And there they lay till all their bones were bleached,
And lichened into colour with the crags:
And he, that once was king, had on a crown
Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside.
And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass,
All in a misty moonshine, unawares
Had trodden that crowned skeleton, and the skull
Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown
Rolled into light, and turning on its rims
Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn:
And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught,
And set it on his head, and in his heart
Heard murmurs, "Lo, thou likewise shalt be King."

   Thereafter, when a King, he had the gems
Plucked from the crown, and showed them to his knights,
Saying, "These jewels, whereupon I chanced
Divinely, are the kingdom's, not the King's--
For public use: henceforward let there be,
Once every year, a joust for one of these:
For so by nine years' proof we needs must learn
Which is our mightiest, and ourselves shall grow
In use of arms and manhood, till we drive
The heathen, who, some say, shall rule the land
Hereafter, which God hinder." Thus he spoke:
And eight years past, eight jousts had been, and still
Had Lancelot won the diamond of the year,
With purpose to present them to the Queen,
When all were won; but meaning all at once
To snare her royal fancy with a boon
Worth half her realm, had never spoken word.

   Now for the central diamond and the last
And largest, Arthur, holding then his court
Hard on the river nigh the place which now
Is this world's hugest, let proclaim a joust
At Camelot, and when the time drew nigh
Spake (for she had been sick) to Guinevere,
"Are you so sick, my Queen, you cannot move
To these fair jousts?" "Yea, lord," she said, "ye know it."
"Then will ye miss," he answered, "the great deeds
Of Lancelot, and his prowess in the lists,
A sight ye love to look on." And the Queen
Lifted her eyes, and they dwelt languidly
On Lancelot, where he stood beside the King.
He thinking that he read her meaning there,
"Stay with me, I am sick; my love is more
Than many diamonds," yielded; and a heart
Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen
(However much he yearned to make complete
The tale of diamonds for his destined boon)
Urged him to speak against the truth, and say,
"Sir King, mine ancient wound is hardly whole,
And lets me from the saddle;" and the King
Glanced first at him, then her, and went his way.
No sooner gone than suddenly she began:

   "To blame, my lord Sir Lancelot, much to blame!
Why go ye not to these fair jousts? the knights
Are half of them our enemies, and the crowd
Will murmur, 'Lo the shameless ones, who take
Their pastime now the trustful King is gone!' "
Then Lancelot vext at having lied in vain:
"Are ye so wise? ye were not once so wise,
My Queen, that summer, when ye loved me first.
Then of the crowd ye took no more account
Than of the myriad cricket of the mead,
When its own voice clings to each blade of grass,
And every voice is nothing. As to knights,
Them surely can I silence with all ease.
But now my loyal worship is allowed
Of all men: many a bard, without offence,
Has linked our names together in his lay,
Lancelot, the flower of bravery, Guinevere,
The pearl of beauty: and our knights at feast
Have pledged us in this union, while the King
Would listen smiling. How then? is there more?
Has Arthur spoken aught? or would yourself,
Now weary of my service and devoir,
Henceforth be truer to your faultless lord?"

   She broke into a little scornful laugh:
"Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King,
That passionate perfection, my good lord--
But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven?
He never spake word of reproach to me,
He never had a glimpse of mine untruth,
He cares not for me: only here today
There gleamed a vague suspicion in his eyes:
Some meddling rogue has tampered with him--else
Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round,
And swearing men to vows impossible,
To make them like himself: but, friend, to me
He is all fault who hath no fault at all:
For who loves me must have a touch of earth;
The low sun makes the colour: I am yours,
Not Arthur's, as ye know, save by the bond.
And therefore hear my words: go to the jousts:
The tiny-trumpeting gnat can break our dream
When sweetest; and the vermin voices here
May buzz so loud--we scorn them, but they sting."

   Then answered Lancelot, the chief of knights:
"And with what face, after my pretext made,
Shall I appear, O Queen, at Camelot, I
Before a King who honours his own word,
As if it were his God's?"

                         "Yea," said the Queen,
"A moral child without the craft to rule,
Else had he not lost me: but listen to me,
If I must find you wit: we hear it said
That men go down before your spear at a touch,
But knowing you are Lancelot; your great name,
This conquers: hide it therefore; go unknown:
Win! by this kiss you will: and our true King
Will then allow your pretext, O my knight,
As all for glory; for to speak him true,
Ye know right well, how meek soe'er he seem,
No keener hunter after glory breathes.
He loves it in his knights more than himself:
They prove to him his work: win and return."

   Then got Sir Lancelot suddenly to horse,
Wroth at himself. Not willing to be known,
He left the barren-beaten thoroughfare,
Chose the green path that showed the rarer foot,
And there among the solitary downs,
Full often lost in fancy, lost his way;
Till as he traced a faintly-shadowed track,
That all in loops and links among the dales
Ran to the Castle of Astolat, he saw
Fired from the west, far on a hill, the towers.
Thither he made, and blew the gateway horn.
Then came an old, dumb, myriad-wrinkled man,
Who let him into lodging and disarmed.
And Lancelot marvelled at the wordless man;
And issuing found the Lord of Astolat
With two strong sons, Sir Torre and Sir Lavaine,
Moving to meet him in the castle court;
And close behind them stept the lily maid
Elaine, his daughter: mother of the house
There was not: some light jest among them rose
With laughter dying down as the great knight
Approached them: then the Lord of Astolat:
"Whence comest thou, my guest, and by what name
Livest between the lips? for by thy state
And presence I might guess thee chief of those,
After the King, who eat in Arthur's halls.
Him have I seen: the rest, his Table Round,
Known as they are, to me they are unknown."

   Then answered Lancelot, the chief of knights:
"Known am I, and of Arthur's hall, and known,
What I by mere mischance have brought, my shield.
But since I go to joust as one unknown
At Camelot for the diamond, ask me not,
Hereafter ye shall know me--and the shield--
I pray you lend me one, if such you have,
Blank, or at least with some device not mine."

   Then said the Lord of Astolat, "Here is Torre's:
Hurt in his first tilt was my son, Sir Torre.
And so, God wot, his shield is blank enough.
His ye can have." Then added plain Sir Torre,
"Yea, since I cannot use it, ye may have it."
Here laughed the father saying, "Fie, Sir Churl,
Is that an answer for a noble knight?
Allow him! but Lavaine, my younger here,
He is so full of lustihood, he will ride,
Joust for it, and win, and bring it in an hour,
And set it in this damsel's golden hair,
To make her thrice as wilful as before."

   "Nay, father, nay good father, shame me not
Before this noble knight," said young Lavaine,
"For nothing. Surely I but played on Torre:
He seemed so sullen, vext he could not go:
A jest, no more! for, knight, the maiden dreamt
That some one put this diamond in her hand,
And that it was too slippery to be held,
And slipt and fell into some pool or stream,
The castle-well, belike; and then I said
That if I went and if I fought and won it
(But all was jest and joke among ourselves)
Then must she keep it safelier. All was jest.
But, father, give me leave, an if he will,
To ride to Camelot with this noble knight:
Win shall I not, but do my best to win:
Young as I am, yet would I do my best."

   "So ye will grace me," answered Lancelot,
Smiling a moment, "with your fellowship
O'er these waste downs whereon I lost myself,
Then were I glad of you as guide and friend:
And you shall win this diamond,--as I hear
It is a fair large diamond,--if ye may,
And yield it to this maiden, if ye will."
"A fair large diamond," added plain Sir Torre,
"Such be for queens, and not for simple maids."
Then she, who held her eyes upon the ground,
Elaine, and heard her name so tost about,
Flushed slightly at the slight disparagement
Before the stranger knight, who, looking at her,
Full courtly, yet not falsely, thus returned:
"If what is fair be but for what is fair,
And only queens are to be counted so,
Rash were my judgment then, who deem this maid
Might wear as fair a jewel as is on earth,
Not violating the bond of like to like."

   He spoke and ceased: the lily maid Elaine,
Won by the mellow voice before she looked,
Lifted her eyes, and read his lineaments.
The great and guilty love he bare the Queen,
In battle with the love he bare his lord,
Had marred his face, and marked it ere his time.
Another sinning on such heights with one,
The flower of all the west and all the world,
Had been the sleeker for it: but in him
His mood was often like a fiend, and rose
And drove him into wastes and solitudes
For agony, who was yet a living soul.
Marred as he was, he seemed the goodliest man
That ever among ladies ate in hall,
And noblest, when she lifted up her eyes.
However marred, of more than twice her years,
Seamed with an ancient swordcut on the cheek,
And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes
And loved him, with that love which was her doom.

   Then the great knight, the darling of the court,
Loved of the loveliest, into that rude hall
Stept with all grace, and not with half disdain
Hid under grace, as in a smaller time,
But kindly man moving among his kind:
Whom they with meats and vintage of their best
And talk and minstrel melody entertained.
And much they asked of court and Table Round,
And ever well and readily answered he:
But Lancelot, when they glanced at Guinevere,
Suddenly speaking of the wordless man,
Heard from the Baron that, ten years before,
The heathen caught and reft him of his tongue.
"He learnt and warned me of their fierce design
Against my house, and him they caught and maimed;
But I, my sons, and little daughter fled
From bonds or death, and dwelt among the woods
By the great river in a boatman's hut.
Dull days were those, till our good Arthur broke
The Pagan yet once more on Badon hill."

   "O there, great lord, doubtless," Lavaine said, rapt
By all the sweet and sudden passion of youth
Toward greatness in its elder, "you have fought.
O tell us--for we live apart--you know
Of Arthur's glorious wars." And Lancelot spoke
And answered him at full, as having been
With Arthur in the fight which all day long
Rang by the white mouth of the violent Glem;
And in the four loud battles by the shore
Of Duglas; that on Bassa; then the war
That thundered in and out the gloomy skirts
Of Celidon the forest; and again
By castle Gurnion, where the glorious King
Had on his cuirass worn our Lady's Head,
Carved of one emerald centered in a sun
Of silver rays, that lightened as he breathed;
And at Caerleon had he helped his lord,
When the strong neighings of the wild white Horse
Set every gilded parapet shuddering;
And up in Agned-Cathregonion too,
And down the waste sand-shores of Trath Treroit,
Where many a heathen fell; "and on the mount
Of Badon I myself beheld the King
Charge at the head of all his Table Round,
And all his legions crying Christ and him,
And break them; and I saw him, after, stand
High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,
And seeing me, with a great voice he cried,
'They are broken, they are broken!' for the King,
However mild he seems at home, nor cares
For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts--
For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs
Saying, his knights are better men than he--
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God
Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives
No greater leader."

                      While he uttered this,
Low to her own heart said the lily maid,
"Save your great self, fair lord;" and when he fell
From talk of war to traits of pleasantry--
Being mirthful he, but in a stately kind--
She still took note that when the living smile
Died from his lips, across him came a cloud
Of melancholy severe, from which again,
Whenever in her hovering to and fro
The lily maid had striven to make him cheer,
There brake a sudden-beaming tenderness
Of manners and of nature: and she thought
That all was nature, all, perchance, for her.
And all night long his face before her lived,
As when a painter, poring on a face,
Divinely through all hindrance finds the man
Behind it, and so paints him that his face,
The shape and colour of a mind and life,
Lives for his children, ever at its best
And fullest; so the face before her lived,
Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full
Of noble things, and held her from her sleep.
Till rathe she rose, half-cheated in the thought
She needs must bid farewell to sweet Lavaine.
First as in fear, step after step, she stole
Down the long tower-stairs, hesitating:
Anon, she heard Sir Lancelot cry in the court,
"This shield, my friend, where is it?" and Lavaine
Past inward, as she came from out the tower.
There to his proud horse Lancelot turned, and smoothed
The glossy shoulder, humming to himself.
Half-envious of the flattering hand, she drew
Nearer and stood. He looked, and more amazed
Than if seven men had set upon him, saw
The maiden standing in the dewy light.
He had not dreamed she was so beautiful.
Then came on him a sort of sacred fear,
For silent, though he greeted her, she stood
Rapt on his face as if it were a God's.
Suddenly flashed on her a wild desire,
That he should wear her favour at the tilt.
She braved a riotous heart in asking for it.
"Fair lord, whose name I know not--noble it is,
I well believe, the noblest--will you wear
My favour at this tourney?" "Nay," said he,
"Fair lady, since I never yet have worn
Favour of any lady in the lists.
Such is my wont, as those, who know me, know."
"Yea, so," she answered; "then in wearing mine
Needs must be lesser likelihood, noble lord,
That those who know should know you." And he turned
Her counsel up and down within his mind,
And found it true, and answered, "True, my child.
Well, I will wear it: fetch it out to me:
What is it?" and she told him "A red sleeve
Broidered with pearls," and brought it: then he bound
Her token on his helmet, with a smile
Saying, "I never yet have done so much
For any maiden living," and the blood
Sprang to her face and filled her with delight;
But left her all the paler, when Lavaine
Returning brought the yet-unblazoned shield,
His brother's; which he gave to Lancelot,
Who parted with his own to fair Elaine:
"Do me this grace, my child, to have my shield
In keeping till I come." "A grace to me,"
She answered, "twice today. I am your squire!"
Whereat Lavaine said, laughing, "Lily maid,
For fear our people call you lily maid
In earnest, let me bring your colour back;
Once, twice, and thrice: now get you hence to bed:"
So kissed her, and Sir Lancelot his own hand,
And thus they moved away: she stayed a minute,
Then made a sudden step to the gate, and there--
Her bright hair blown about the serious face
Yet rosy-kindled with her brother's kiss--
Paused by the gateway, standing near the shield
In silence, while she watched their arms far-off
Sparkle, until they dipt below the downs.
Then to her tower she climbed, and took the shield,
There kept it, and so lived in fantasy.

   Meanwhile the new companions past away
Far o'er the long backs of the bushless downs,
To where Sir Lancelot knew there lived a knight
Not far from Camelot, now for forty years
A hermit, who had prayed, laboured and prayed,
And ever labouring had scooped himself
In the white rock a chapel and a hall
On massive columns, like a shorecliff cave,
And cells and chambers: all were fair and dry;
The green light from the meadows underneath
Struck up and lived along the milky roofs;
And in the meadows tremulous aspen-trees
And poplars made a noise of falling showers.
And thither wending there that night they bode.

   But when the next day broke from underground,
And shot red fire and shadows through the cave,
They rose, heard mass, broke fast, and rode away:
Then Lancelot saying, "Hear, but hold my name
Hidden, you ride with Lancelot of the Lake,"
Abashed Lavaine, whose instant reverence,
Dearer to true young hearts than their own praise,
But left him leave to stammer, "Is it indeed?"
And after muttering "The great Lancelot,"
At last he got his breath and answered, "One,
One have I seen--that other, our liege lord,
The dread Pendragon, Britain's King of kings,
Of whom the people talk mysteriously,
He will be there--then were I stricken blind
That minute, I might say that I had seen."

   So spake Lavaine, and when they reached the lists
By Camelot in the meadow, let his eyes
Run through the peopled gallery which half round
Lay like a rainbow fallen upon the grass,
Until they found the clear-faced King, who sat
Robed in red samite, easily to be known,
Since to his crown the golden dragon clung,
And down his robe the dragon writhed in gold,
And from the carven-work behind him crept
Two dragons gilded, sloping down to make
Arms for his chair, while all the rest of them
Through knots and loops and folds innumerable
Fled ever through the woodwork, till they found
The new design wherein they lost themselves,
Yet with all ease, so tender was the work:
And, in the costly canopy o'er him set,
Blazed the last diamond of the nameless king.

   Then Lancelot answered young Lavaine and said,
"Me you call great: mine is the firmer seat,
The truer lance: but there is many a youth
Now crescent, who will come to all I am
And overcome it; and in me there dwells
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch
Of greatness to know well I am not great:
There is the man." And Lavaine gaped upon him
As on a thing miraculous, and anon
The trumpets blew; and then did either side,
They that assailed, and they that held the lists,
Set lance in rest, strike spur, suddenly move,
Meet in the midst, and there so furiously
Shock, that a man far-off might well perceive,
If any man that day were left afield,
The hard earth shake, and a low thunder of arms.
And Lancelot bode a little, till he saw
Which were the weaker; then he hurled into it
Against the stronger: little need to speak
Of Lancelot in his glory! King, duke, earl,
Count, baron--whom he smote, he overthrew.

   But in the field were Lancelot's kith and kin,
Ranged with the Table Round that held the lists,
Strong men, and wrathful that a stranger knight
Should do and almost overdo the deeds
Of Lancelot; and one said to the other, "Lo!
What is he? I do not mean the force alone--
The grace and versatility of the man!
Is it not Lancelot?" "When has Lancelot worn
Favour of any lady in the lists?
Not such his wont, as we, that know him, know."
"How then? who then?" a fury seized them all,
A fiery family passion for the name
Of Lancelot, and a glory one with theirs.
They couched their spears and pricked their steeds, and thus,
Their plumes driven backward by the wind they made
In moving, all together down upon him
Bare, as a wild wave in the wide North-sea,
Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears, with all
Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies,
Down on a bark, and overbears the bark,
And him that helms it, so they overbore
Sir Lancelot and his charger, and a spear
Down-glancing lamed the charger, and a spear
Pricked sharply his own cuirass, and the head
Pierced through his side, and there snapt, and remained.

   Then Sir Lavaine did well and worshipfully;
He bore a knight of old repute to the earth,
And brought his horse to Lancelot where he lay.
He up the side, sweating with agony, got,
But thought to do while he might yet endure,
And being lustily holpen by the rest,
His party--though it seemed half-miracle
To those he fought with,--drave his kith and kin,
And all the Table Round that held the lists,
Back to the barrier; then the trumpets blew
Proclaiming his the prize, who wore the sleeve
Of scarlet, and the pearls; and all the knights,
His party, cried "Advance and take thy prize
The diamond;" but he answered, "Diamond me
No diamonds! for God's love, a little air!
Prize me no prizes, for my prize is death!
Hence will I, and I charge you, follow me not."

   He spoke, and vanished suddenly from the field
With young Lavaine into the poplar grove.
There from his charger down he slid, and sat,
Gasping to Sir Lavaine, "Draw the lance-head:"
"Ah my sweet lord Sir Lancelot," said Lavaine,
"I dread me, if I draw it, you will die."
But he, "I die already with it: draw--
Draw,"--and Lavaine drew, and Sir Lancelot gave
A marvellous great shriek and ghastly groan,
And half his blood burst forth, and down he sank
For the pure pain, and wholly swooned away.
Then came the hermit out and bare him in,
There stanched his wound; and there, in daily doubt
Whether to live or die, for many a week
Hid from the wide world's rumour by the grove
Of poplars with their noise of falling showers,
And ever-tremulous aspen-trees, he lay.

   But on that day when Lancelot fled the lists,
His party, knights of utmost North and West,
Lords of waste marches, kings of desolate isles,
Came round their great Pendragon, saying to him,
"Lo, Sire, our knight, through whom we won the day,
Hath gone sore wounded, and hath left his prize
Untaken, crying that his prize is death."
"Heaven hinder," said the King, "that such an one,
So great a knight as we have seen today--
He seemed to me another Lancelot--
Yea, twenty times I thought him Lancelot--
He must not pass uncared for. Wherefore, rise,
O Gawain, and ride forth and find the knight.
Wounded and wearied needs must he be near.
I charge you that you get at once to horse.
And, knights and kings, there breathes not one of you
Will deem this prize of ours is rashly given:
His prowess was too wondrous. We will do him
No customary honour: since the knight
Came not to us, of us to claim the prize,
Ourselves will send it after. Rise and take
This diamond, and deliver it, and return,
And bring us where he is, and how he fares,
And cease not from your quest until ye find."

   So saying, from the carven flower above,
To which it made a restless heart, he took,
And gave, the diamond: then from where he sat
At Arthur's right, with smiling face arose,
With smiling face and frowning heart, a Prince
In the mid might and flourish of his May,
Gawain, surnamed The Courteous, fair and strong,
And after Lancelot, Tristram, and Geraint
And Gareth, a good knight, but therewithal
Sir Modred's brother, and the child of Lot,
Nor often loyal to his word, and now
Wroth that the King's command to sally forth
In quest of whom he knew not, made him leave
The banquet, and concourse of knights and kings.

   So all in wrath he got to horse and went;
While Arthur to the banquet, dark in mood,
Past, thinking "Is it Lancelot who hath come
Despite the wound he spake of, all for gain
Of glory, and hath added wound to wound,
And ridden away to die?" So feared the King,
And, after two days' tarriance there, returned.
Then when he saw the Queen, embracing asked,
"Love, are you yet so sick?" "Nay, lord," she said.
"And where is Lancelot?" Then the Queen amazed,
"Was he not with you? won he not your prize?"
"Nay, but one like him." "Why that like was he."
And when the King demanded how she knew,
Said, "Lord, no sooner had ye parted from us,
Than Lancelot told me of a common talk
That men went down before his spear at a touch,
But knowing he was Lancelot; his great name
Conquered; and therefore would he hide his name
From all men, even the King, and to this end
Had made the pretext of a hindering wound,
That he might joust unknown of all, and learn
If his old prowess were in aught decayed;
And added, 'Our true Arthur, when he learns,
Will well allow my pretext, as for gain
Of purer glory.' "

                      Then replied the King:
"Far lovelier in our Lancelot had it been,
In lieu of idly dallying with the truth,
To have trusted me as he hath trusted thee.
Surely his King and most familiar friend
Might well have kept his secret. True, indeed,
Albeit I know my knights fantastical,
So fine a fear in our large Lancelot
Must needs have moved my laughter: now remains
But little cause for laughter: his own kin--
Ill news, my Queen, for all who love him, this!--
His kith and kin, not knowing, set upon him;
So that he went sore wounded from the field:
Yet good news too: for goodly hopes are mine
That Lancelot is no more a lonely heart.
He wore, against his wont, upon his helm
A sleeve of scarlet, broidered with great pearls,
Some gentle maiden's gift."

                               "Yea, lord," she said,
"Thy hopes are mine," and saying that, she choked,
And sharply turned about to hide her face,
Past to her chamber, and there flung herself
Down on the great King's couch, and writhed upon it,
And clenched her fingers till they bit the palm,
And shrieked out "Traitor" to the unhearing wall,
Then flashed into wild tears, and rose again,
And moved about her palace, proud and pale.

   Gawain the while through all the region round
Rode with his diamond, wearied of the quest,
Touched at all points, except the poplar grove,
And came at last, though late, to Astolat:
Whom glittering in enamelled arms the maid
Glanced at, and cried, "What news from Camelot, lord?
What of the knight with the red sleeve?" "He won."
"I knew it," she said. "But parted from the jousts
Hurt in the side," whereat she caught her breath;
Through her own side she felt the sharp lance go;
Thereon she smote her hand: wellnigh she swooned:
And, while he gazed wonderingly at her, came
The Lord of Astolat out, to whom the Prince
Reported who he was, and on what quest
Sent, that he bore the prize and could not find
The victor, but had ridden a random round
To seek him, and had wearied of the search.
To whom the Lord of Astolat, "Bide with us,
And ride no more at random, noble Prince!
Here was the knight, and here he left a shield;
This will he send or come for: furthermore
Our son is with him; we shall hear anon,
Needs must we hear." To this the courteous Prince
Accorded with his wonted courtesy,
Courtesy with a touch of traitor in it,
And stayed; and cast his eyes on fair Elaine:
Where could be found face daintier? then her shape
From forehead down to foot, perfect--again
From foot to forehead exquisitely turned:
"Well--if I bide, lo! this wild flower for me!"
And oft they met among the garden yews,
And there he set himself to play upon her
With sallying wit, free flashes from a height
Above her, graces of the court, and songs,
Sighs, and slow smiles, and golden eloquence
And amorous adulation, till the maid
Rebelled against it, saying to him, "Prince,
O loyal nephew of our noble King,
Why ask you not to see the shield he left,
Whence you might learn his name? Why slight your King,
And lose the quest he sent you on, and prove
No surer than our falcon yesterday,
Who lost the hern we slipt her at, and went
To all the winds?" "Nay, by mine head," said he,
"I lose it, as we lose the lark in heaven,
O damsel, in the light of your blue eyes;
But an ye will it let me see the shield."
And when the shield was brought, and Gawain saw
Sir Lancelot's azure lions, crowned with gold,
Ramp in the field, he smote his thigh, and mocked
"Right was the King! our Lancelot! that true man!"
"And right was I," she answerd merrily, "I,
Who dreamed my knight the greatest knight of all."
"And if I dreamed," said Gawain, "that you love
This greatest knight, your pardon! lo, ye know it!
Speak therefore: shall I waste myself in vain?"
Full simple was her answer, "What know I?
My brethren have been all my fellowship;
And I, when often they have talked of love,
Wished it had been my mother, for they talked,
Meseemed, of what they knew not; so myself--
I know not if I know what true love is,
But if I know, then, if I love not him,
I know there is none other I can love."
"Yea, by God's death," said he, "ye love him well,
But would not, knew ye what all others know,
And whom he loves." "So be it," cried Elaine,
And lifted her fair face and moved away:
But he pursued her, calling, "Stay a little!
One golden minute's grace! he wore your sleeve:
Would he break faith with one I may not name?
Must our true man change like a leaf at last?
Nay--like enow: why then, far be it from me
To cross our mighty Lancelot in his loves!
And, damsel, for I deem you know full well
Where your great knight is hidden, let me leave
My quest with you; the diamond also: here!
For if you love, it will be sweet to give it;
And if he love, it will be sweet to have it
From your own hand; and whether he love or not,
A diamond is a diamond. Fare you well
A thousand times!--a thousand times farewell!
Yet, if he love, and his love hold, we two
May meet at court hereafter: there, I think,
So ye will learn the courtesies of the court,
We two shall know each other."

                                    Then he gave,
And slightly kissed the hand to which he gave,
The diamond, and all wearied of the quest
Leapt on his horse, and carolling as he went
A true-love ballad, lightly rode away.

   Thence to the court he past; there told the King
What the King knew, "Sir Lancelot is the knight."
And added, "Sire, my liege, so much I learnt;
But failed to find him, tho' I rode all round
The region: but I lighted on the maid
Whose sleeve he wore; she loves him; and to her,
Deeming our courtesy is the truest law,
I gave the diamond: she will render it;
For by mine head she knows his hiding-place."

   The seldom-frowning King frowned, and replied,
"Too courteous truly! ye shall go no more
On quest of mine, seeing that ye forget
Obedience is the courtesy due to kings."

   He spake and parted. Wroth, but all in awe,
For twenty strokes of the blood, without a word,
Lingered that other, staring after him;
Then shook his hair, strode off, and buzzed abroad
About the maid of Astolat, and her love.
All ears were pricked at once, all tongues were loosed:
"The maid of Astolat loves Sir Lancelot,
Sir Lancelot loves the maid of Astolat."
Some read the King's face, some the Queen's, and all
Had marvel what the maid might be, but most
Predoomed her as unworthy. One old dame
Came suddenly on the Queen with the sharp news.
She, that had heard the noise of it before,
But sorrowing Lancelot should have stooped so low,
Marred her friend's aim with pale tranquillity.
So ran the tale like fire about the court,
Fire in dry stubble a nine-days' wonder flared:
Till even the knights at banquet twice or thrice
Forgot to drink to Lancelot and the Queen,
And pledging Lancelot and the lily maid
Smiled at each other, while the Queen, who sat
With lips severely placid, felt the knot
Climb in her throat, and with her feet unseen
Crushed the wild passion out against the floor
Beneath the banquet, where the meats became
As wormwood, and she hated all who pledged.

   But far away the maid in Astolat,
Her guiltless rival, she that ever kept
The one-day-seen Sir Lancelot in her heart,
Crept to her father, while he mused alone,
Sat on his knee, stroked his gray face and said,
"Father, you call me wilful, and the fault
Is yours who let me have my will, and now,
Sweet father, will you let me lose my wits?"
"Nay," said he, "surely." "Wherefore, let me hence,"
She answered, "and find out our dear Lavaine."
"Ye will not lose your wits for dear Lavaine:
Bide," answered he: "we needs must hear anon
Of him, and of that other." "Ay," she said,
"And of that other, for I needs must hence
And find that other, wheresoe'er he be,
And with mine own hand give his diamond to him,
Lest I be found as faithless in the quest
As yon proud Prince who left the quest to me.
Sweet father, I behold him in my dreams
Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself,
Death-pale, for lack of gentle maiden's aid.
The gentler-born the maiden, the more bound,
My father, to be sweet and serviceable
To noble knights in sickness, as ye know
When these have worn their tokens: let me hence
I pray you." Then her father nodding said,
"Ay, ay, the diamond: wit ye well, my child,
Right fain were I to learn this knight were whole,
Being our greatest: yea, and you must give it--
And sure I think this fruit is hung too high
For any mouth to gape for save a queen's--
Nay, I mean nothing: so then, get you gone,
Being so very wilful you must go."

   Lightly, her suit allowed, she slipt away,
And while she made her ready for her ride,
Her father's latest word hummed in her ear,
"Being so very wilful you must go,"
And changed itself and echoed in her heart,
"Being so very wilful you must die."
But she was happy enough and shook it off,
As we shake off the bee that buzzes at us;
And in her heart she answered it and said,
"What matter, so I help him back to life?"
Then far away with good Sir Torre for guide
Rode o'er the long backs of the bushless downs
To Camelot, and before the city-gates
Came on her brother with a happy face
Making a roan horse caper and curvet
For pleasure all about a field of flowers:
Whom when she saw, "Lavaine," she cried, "Lavaine,
How fares my lord Sir Lancelot?" He amazed,
"Torre and Elaine! why here? Sir Lancelot!
How know ye my lord's name is Lancelot?"
But when the maid had told him all her tale,
Then turned Sir Torre, and being in his moods
Left them, and under the strange-statued gate,
Where Arthur's wars were rendered mystically,
Past up the still rich city to his kin,
His own far blood, which dwelt at Camelot;
And her, Lavaine across the poplar grove
Led to the caves: there first she saw the casque
Of Lancelot on the wall: her scarlet sleeve,
Though carved and cut, and half the pearls away,
Streamed from it still; and in her heart she laughed,
Because he had not loosed it from his helm,
But meant once more perchance to tourney in it.
And when they gained the cell wherein he slept,
His battle-writhen arms and mighty hands
Lay naked on the wolfskin, and a dream
Of dragging down his enemy made them move.
Then she that saw him lying unsleek, unshorn,
Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself,
Uttered a little tender dolorous cry.
The sound not wonted in a place so still
Woke the sick knight, and while he rolled his eyes
Yet blank from sleep, she started to him, saying,
"Your prize the diamond sent you by the King:"
His eyes glistened: she fancied "Is it for me?"
And when the maid had told him all the tale
Of King and Prince, the diamond sent, the quest
Assigned to her not worthy of it, she knelt
Full lowly by the corners of his bed,
And laid the diamond in his open hand.
Her face was near, and as we kiss the child
That does the task assigned, he kissed her face.
At once she slipt like water to the floor.
"Alas," he said, "your ride hath wearied you.
Rest must you have." "No rest for me," she said;
"Nay, for near you, fair lord, I am at rest."
What might she mean by that? his large black eyes,
Yet larger through his leanness, dwelt upon her,
Till all her heart's sad secret blazed itself
In the heart's colours on her simple face;
And Lancelot looked and was perplext in mind,
And being weak in body said no more;
But did not love the colour; woman's love,
Save one, he not regarded, and so turned
Sighing, and feigned a sleep until he slept.

   Then rose Elaine and glided through the fields,
And past beneath the weirdly-sculptured gates
Far up the dim rich city to her kin;
There bode the night: but woke with dawn, and past
Down through the dim rich city to the fields,
Thence to the cave: so day by day she past
In either twilight ghost-like to and fro
Gliding, and every day she tended him,
And likewise many a night: and Lancelot
Would, though he called his wound a little hurt
Whereof he should be quickly whole, at times
Brain-feverous in his heat and agony, seem
Uncourteous, even he: but the meek maid
Sweetly forbore him ever, being to him
Meeker than any child to a rough nurse,
Milder than any mother to a sick child,
And never woman yet, since man's first fall,
Did kindlier unto man, but her deep love
Upbore her; till the hermit, skilled in all
The simples and the science of that time,
Told him that her fine care had saved his life.
And the sick man forgot her simple blush,
Would call her friend and sister, sweet Elaine,
Would listen for her coming and regret
Her parting step, and held her tenderly,
And loved her with all love except the love
Of man and woman when they love their best,
Closest and sweetest, and had died the death
In any knightly fashion for her sake.
And peradventure had he seen her first
She might have made this and that other world
Another world for the sick man; but now
The shackles of an old love straitened him,
His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

   Yet the great knight in his mid-sickness made
Full many a holy vow and pure resolve.
These, as but born of sickness, could not live:
For when the blood ran lustier in him again,
Full often the bright image of one face,
Making a treacherous quiet in his heart,
Dispersed his resolution like a cloud.
Then if the maiden, while that ghostly grace
Beamed on his fancy, spoke, he answered not,
Or short and coldly, and she knew right well
What the rough sickness meant, but what this meant
She knew not, and the sorrow dimmed her sight,
And drave her ere her time across the fields
Far into the rich city, where alone
She murmured, "Vain, in vain: it cannot be.
He will not love me: how then? must I die?"
Then as a little helpless innocent bird,
That has but one plain passage of few notes,
Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er
For all an April morning, till the ear
Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid
Went half the night repeating, "Must I die?"
And now to right she turned, and now to left,
And found no ease in turning or in rest;
And "Him or death," she muttered, "death or him,"
Again and like a burthen, "Him or death."

   But when Sir Lancelot's deadly hurt was whole,
To Astolat returning rode the three.
There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self
In that wherein she deemed she looked her best,
She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought
"If I be loved, these are my festal robes,
If not, the victim's flowers before he fall."
And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid
That she should ask some goodly gift of him
For her own self or hers; "and do not shun
To speak the wish most near to your true heart;
Such service have ye done me, that I make
My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I
In mine own land, and what I will I can."
Then like a ghost she lifted up her face,
But like a ghost without the power to speak.
And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish,
And bode among them yet a little space
Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced
He found her in among the garden yews,
And said, "Delay no longer, speak your wish,
Seeing I go today:" then out she brake:
"Going? and we shall never see you more.
And I must die for want of one bold word."
"Speak: that I live to hear," he said, "is yours."
Then suddenly and passionately she spoke:
"I have gone mad. I love you: let me die."
"Ah, sister," answered Lancelot, "what is this?"
And innocently extending her white arms,
"Your love," she said, "your love--to be your wife."
And Lancelot answered, "Had I chosen to wed,
I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine:
But now there never will be wife of mine."
"No, no," she cried, "I care not to be wife,
But to be with you still, to see your face,
To serve you, and to follow you through the world."
And Lancelot answered, "Nay, the world, the world,
All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart
To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue
To blare its own interpretation--nay,
Full ill then should I quit your brother's love,
And your good father's kindness." And she said,
"Not to be with you, not to see your face--
Alas for me then, my good days are done."
"Nay, noble maid," he answered, "ten times nay!
This is not love: but love's first flash in youth,
Most common: yea, I know it of mine own self:
And you yourself will smile at your own self
Hereafter, when you yield your flower of life
To one more fitly yours, not thrice your age:
And then will I, for true you are and sweet
Beyond mine old belief in womanhood,
More specially should your good knight be poor,
Endow you with broad land and territory
Even to the half my realm beyond the seas,
So that would make you happy: furthermore,
Even to the death, as though ye were my blood,
In all your quarrels will I be your knight.
This will I do, dear damsel, for your sake,
And more than this I cannot."

                                     While he spoke
She neither blushed nor shook, but deathly-pale
Stood grasping what was nearest, then replied:
"Of all this will I nothing;" and so fell,
And thus they bore her swooning to her tower.

   Then spake, to whom through those black walls of yew
Their talk had pierced, her father: "Ay, a flash,
I fear me, that will strike my blossom dead.
Too courteous are ye, fair Lord Lancelot.
I pray you, use some rough discourtesy
To blunt or break her passion."

                                  Lancelot said,
"That were against me: what I can I will;"
And there that day remained, and toward even
Sent for his shield: full meekly rose the maid,
Stript off the case, and gave the naked shield;
Then, when she heard his horse upon the stones,
Unclasping flung the casement back, and looked
Down on his helm, from which her sleeve had gone.
And Lancelot knew the little clinking sound;
And she by tact of love was well aware
That Lancelot knew that she was looking at him.
And yet he glanced not up, nor waved his hand,
Nor bad farewell, but sadly rode away.
This was the one discourtesy that he used.

   So in her tower alone the maiden sat:
His very shield was gone; only the case,
Her own poor work, her empty labour, left.
But still she heard him, still his picture formed
And grew between her and the pictured wall.
Then came her father, saying in low tones,
"Have comfort," whom she greeted quietly.
Then came her brethren saying, "Peace to thee,
Sweet sister," whom she answered with all calm.
But when they left her to herself again,
Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field
Approaching through the darkness, called; the owls
Wailing had power upon her, and she mixt
Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms
Of evening, and the moanings of the wind.

   And in those days she made a little song,
And called her song "The Song of Love and Death,"
And sang it: sweetly could she make and sing.

   "Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

   "Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be:
Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.

   "Sweet love, that seems not made to fade away,
Sweet death, that seems to make us loveless clay,
I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

   "I fain would follow love, if that could be;
I needs must follow death, who calls for me;
Call and I follow, I follow! let me die."

   High with the last line scaled her voice, and this,
All in a fiery dawning wild with wind
That shook her tower, the brothers heard, and thought
With shuddering, "Hark the Phantom of the house
That ever shrieks before a death," and called
The father, and all three in hurry and fear
Ran to her, and lo! the blood-red light of dawn
Flared on her face, she shrilling, "Let me die!"

   As when we dwell upon a word we know,
Repeating, till the word we know so well
Becomes a wonder, and we know not why,
So dwelt the father on her face, and thought
"Is this Elaine?" till back the maiden fell,
Then gave a languid hand to each, and lay,
Speaking a still good-morrow with her eyes.
At last she said, "Sweet brothers, yesternight
I seemed a curious little maid again,
As happy as when we dwelt among the woods,
And when ye used to take me with the flood
Up the great river in the boatman's boat.
Only ye would not pass beyond the cape
That has the poplar on it: there ye fixt
Your limit, oft returning with the tide.
And yet I cried because ye would not pass
Beyond it, and far up the shining flood
Until we found the palace of the King.
And yet ye would not; but this night I dreamed
That I was all alone upon the flood,
And then I said, 'Now shall I have my will:'
And there I woke, but still the wish remained.
So let me hence that I may pass at last
Beyond the poplar and far up the flood,
Until I find the palace of the King.
There will I enter in among them all,
And no man there will dare to mock at me;
But there the fine Gawain will wonder at me,
And there the great Sir Lancelot muse at me;
Gawain, who bad a thousand farewells to me,
Lancelot, who coldly went, nor bad me one:
And there the King will know me and my love,
And there the Queen herself will pity me,
And all the gentle court will welcome me,
And after my long voyage I shall rest!"

   "Peace," said her father, "O my child, ye seem
Light-headed, for what force is yours to go
So far, being sick? and wherefore would ye look
On this proud fellow again, who scorns us all?"

   Then the rough Torre began to heave and move,
And bluster into stormy sobs and say,
"I never loved him: an I meet with him,
I care not howsoever great he be,
Then will I strike at him and strike him down,
Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead,
For this discomfort he hath done the house."

   To whom the gentle sister made reply,
"Fret not yourself, dear brother, nor be wroth,
Seeing it is no more Sir Lancelot's fault
Not to love me, than it is mine to love
Him of all men who seems to me the highest."

   "Highest?" the father answered, echoing "highest?"
(He meant to break the passion in her) "nay,
Daughter, I know not what you call the highest;
But this I know, for all the people know it,
He loves the Queen, and in an open shame:
And she returns his love in open shame;
If this be high, what is it to be low?"

   Then spake the lily maid of Astolat:
"Sweet father, all too faint and sick am I
For anger: these are slanders: never yet
Was noble man but made ignoble talk.
He makes no friend who never made a foe.
But now it is my glory to have loved
One peerless, without stain: so let me pass,
My father, howsoe'er I seem to you,
Not all unhappy, having loved God's best
And greatest, though my love had no return:
Yet, seeing you desire your child to live,
Thanks, but you work against your own desire;
For if I could believe the things you say
I should but die the sooner; wherefore cease,
Sweet father, and bid call the ghostly man
Hither, and let me shrive me clean, and die."

   So when the ghostly man had come and gone,
She with a face, bright as for sin forgiven,
Besought Lavaine to write as she devised
A letter, word for word; and when he asked
"Is it for Lancelot, is it for my dear lord?
Then will I bear it gladly;" she replied,
"For Lancelot and the Queen and all the world,
But I myself must bear it." Then he wrote
The letter she devised; which being writ
And folded, "O sweet father, tender and true,
Deny me not," she said--"ye never yet
Denied my fancies--this, however strange,
My latest: lay the letter in my hand
A little ere I die, and close the hand
Upon it; I shall guard it even in death.
And when the heat is gone from out my heart,
Then take the little bed on which I died
For Lancelot's love, and deck it like the Queen's
For richness, and me also like the Queen
In all I have of rich, and lay me on it.
And let there be prepared a chariot-bier
To take me to the river, and a barge
Be ready on the river, clothed in black.
I go in state to court, to meet the Queen.
There surely I shall speak for mine own self,
And none of you can speak for me so well.
And therefore let our dumb old man alone
Go with me, he can steer and row, and he
Will guide me to that palace, to the doors."

   She ceased: her father promised; whereupon
She grew so cheerful that they deemed her death
Was rather in the fantasy than the blood.
But ten slow mornings past, and on the eleventh
Her father laid the letter in her hand,
And closed the hand upon it, and she died.
So that day there was dole in Astolat.

   But when the next sun brake from underground,
Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows
Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier
Past like a shadow through the field, that shone
Full-summer, to that stream whereon the barge,
Palled all its length in blackest samite, lay.
There sat the lifelong creature of the house,
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck,
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face.
So those two brethren from the chariot took
And on the black decks laid her in her bed,
Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung
The silken case with braided blazonings,
And kissed her quiet brows, and saying to her
"Sister, farewell for ever," and again
"Farewell, sweet sister," parted all in tears.
Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead,
Oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood--
In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter--all her bright hair streaming down--
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled.

   That day Sir Lancelot at the palace craved
Audience of Guinevere, to give at last
The price of half a realm, his costly gift,
Hard-won and hardly won with bruise and blow,
With deaths of others, and almost his own,
The nine-years-fought-for diamonds: for he saw
One of her house, and sent him to the Queen
Bearing his wish, whereto the Queen agreed
With such and so unmoved a majesty
She might have seemed her statue, but that he,
Low-drooping till he wellnigh kissed her feet
For loyal awe, saw with a sidelong eye
The shadow of some piece of pointed lace,
In the Queen's shadow, vibrate on the walls,
And parted, laughing in his courtly heart.

   All in an oriel on the summer side,
Vine-clad, of Arthur's palace toward the stream,
They met, and Lancelot kneeling uttered, "Queen,
Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy,
Take, what I had not won except for you,
These jewels, and make me happy, making them
An armlet for the roundest arm on earth,
Or necklace for a neck to which the swan's
Is tawnier than her cygnet's: these are words:
Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin
In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it
Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words
Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen,
I hear of rumours flying through your court.
Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife,
Should have in it an absoluter trust
To make up that defect: let rumours be:
When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust
That you trust me in your own nobleness,
I may not well believe that you believe."

   While thus he spoke, half turned away, the Queen
Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine
Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off,
Till all the place whereon she stood was green;
Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand
Received at once and laid aside the gems
There on a table near her, and replied:

   "It may be, I am quicker of belief
Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake.
Our bond is not the bond of man and wife.
This good is in it, whatsoe'er of ill,
It can be broken easier. I for you
This many a year have done despite and wrong
To one whom ever in my heart of hearts
I did acknowledge nobler. What are these?
Diamonds for me! they had been thrice their worth
Being your gift, had you not lost your own.
To loyal hearts the value of all gifts
Must vary as the giver's. Not for me!
For her! for your new fancy. Only this
Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart.
I doubt not that however changed, you keep
So much of what is graceful: and myself
Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy
In which as Arthur's Queen I move and rule:
So cannot speak my mind. An end to this!
A strange one! yet I take it with Amen.
So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls;
Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down:
An armlet for an arm to which the Queen's
Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck
O as much fairer--as a faith once fair
Was richer than these diamonds--hers not mine--
Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself,
Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will--
She shall not have them."

                  Saying which she seized,
And, through the casement standing wide for heat,
Flung them, and down they flashed, and smote the stream
Then from the smitten surface flashed, as it were,
Diamonds to meet them, and they past away.
Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain
At love, life, all things, on the window ledge,
Close underneath his eyes, and right across
Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge
Whereon the lily maid of Astolat
Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night.

    But the wild Queen, who saw not, burst away
To weep and wail in secret; and the barge,
On to the palace-doorway sliding, paused.
There two stood armed, and kept the door; to whom,
All up the marble stair, tier over tier,
Were added mouths that gaped, and eyes that asked
"What is it?" but the oarsman's haggard face,
As hard and still as is the face that men
Shape to their fancy's eye from broken rocks
On some cliff-side, appalled them, and they said,
"He is enchanted, cannot speak--and she,
Look how she sleeps--the Fairy Queen, so fair!
Yea, but how pale! what are they? flesh and blood?
Or come to take the King to Fairyland?
For some do hold our Arthur cannot die,
But that he passes into Fairyland."

   While thus they babbled of the King, the King
Came girt with knights: then turned the tongueless man
From the half-face to the full eye, and rose
And pointed to the damsel, and the doors.
So Arthur bad the meek Sir Percivale
And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid;
And reverently they bore her into hall.
Then came the fine Gawain and wondered at her,
And Lancelot later came and mused at her,
And last the Queen herself, and pitied her:
But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,
Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all:

   "Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,
I, sometime called the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.
I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.
And therefore to our Lady Guinevere,
And to all other ladies, I make moan:
Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless."

                                     Thus he read;
And ever in the reading, lords and dames
Wept, looking often from his face who read
To hers which lay so silent, and at times,
So touched were they, half-thinking that her lips,
Who had devised the letter, moved again.

   Then freely spoke Sir Lancelot to them all:
"My lord liege Arthur, and all ye that hear,
Know that for this most gentle maiden's death
Right heavy am I; for good she was and true,
But loved me with a love beyond all love
In women, whomsoever I have known.
Yet to be loved makes not to love again;
Not at my years, however it hold in youth.
I swear by truth and knighthood that I gave
No cause, not willingly, for such a love:
To this I call my friends in testimony,
Her brethren, and her father, who himself
Besought me to be plain and blunt, and use,
To break her passion, some discourtesy
Against my nature: what I could, I did.
I left her and I bad her no farewell;
Though had I dreamt the damsel would have died,
I might have put my wits to some rough use,
And helped her from herself."

                                  Then said the Queen
(Sea was her wrath, yet working after storm)
"Ye might at least have done her so much grace,
Fair lord, as would have helped her from her death."
He raised his head, their eyes met and hers fell,
He adding,

                "Queen, she would not be content
Save that I wedded her, which could not be.
Then might she follow me through the world, she asked;
It could not be. I told her that her love
Was but the flash of youth, would darken down
To rise hereafter in a stiller flame
Toward one more worthy of her--then would I,
More specially were he, she wedded, poor,
Estate them with large land and territory
In mine own realm beyond the narrow seas,
To keep them in all joyance: more than this
I could not; this she would not, and she died."

   He pausing, Arthur answered, "O my knight,
It will be to thy worship, as my knight,
And mine, as head of all our Table Round,
To see that she be buried worshipfully."

   So toward that shrine which then in all the realm
Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went
The marshalled Order of their Table Round,
And Lancelot sad beyond his wont, to see
The maiden buried, not as one unknown,
Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies,
And mass, and rolling music, like a queen.
And when the knights had laid her comely head
Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings,
Then Arthur spake among them, "Let her tomb
Be costly, and her image thereupon,
And let the shield of Lancelot at her feet
Be carven, and her lily in her hand.
And let the story of her dolorous voyage
For all true hearts be blazoned on her tomb
In letters gold and azure!" which was wrought
Thereafter; but when now the lords and dames
And people, from the high door streaming, brake
Disorderly, as homeward each, the Queen,
Who marked Sir Lancelot where he moved apart,
Drew near, and sighed in passing, "Lancelot,
Forgive me; mine was jealousy in love."
He answered with his eyes upon the ground,
"That is love's curse; pass on, my Queen, forgiven."
But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows,
Approached him, and with full affection said,

   "Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have
Most joy and most affiance, for I know
What thou hast been in battle by my side,
And many a time have watched thee at the tilt
Strike down the lusty and long practised knight,
And let the younger and unskilled go by
To win his honour and to make his name,
And loved thy courtesies and thee, a man
Made to be loved; but now I would to God,
Seeing the homeless trouble in thine eyes,
Thou couldst have loved this maiden, shaped, it seems,
By God for thee alone, and from her face,
If one may judge the living by the dead,
Delicately pure and marvellously fair,
Who might have brought thee, now a lonely man
Wifeless and heirless, noble issue, sons
Born to the glory of thy name and fame,
My knight, the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake."

   Then answered Lancelot, "Fair she was, my King,
Pure, as you ever wish your knights to be.
To doubt her fairness were to want an eye,
To doubt her pureness were to want a heart--
Yea, to be loved, if what is worthy love
Could bind him, but free love will not be bound."

   "Free love, so bound, were freëst," said the King.
"Let love be free; free love is for the best:
And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
What should be best, if not so pure a love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
She failed to bind, though being, as I think,
Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know."

   And Lancelot answered nothing, but he went,
And at the inrunning of a little brook
Sat by the river in a cove, and watched
The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes
And saw the barge that brought her moving down,
Far-off, a blot upon the stream, and said
Low in himself, "Ah simple heart and sweet,
Ye loved me, damsel, surely with a love
Far tenderer than my Queen's. Pray for thy soul?
Ay, that will I. Farewell too--now at last--
Farewell, fair lily. 'Jealousy in love?'
Not rather dead love's harsh heir, jealous pride?
Queen, if I grant the jealousy as of love,
May not your crescent fear for name and fame
Speak, as it waxes, of a love that wanes?
Why did the King dwell on my name to me?
Mine own name shames me, seeming a reproach,
Lancelot, whom the Lady of the Lake
Caught from his mother's arms--the wondrous one
Who passes through the vision of the night--
She chanted snatches of mysterious hymns
Heard on the winding waters, eve and morn
She kissed me saying, 'Thou art fair, my child,
As a king's son,' and often in her arms
She bare me, pacing on the dusky mere.
Would she had drowned me in it, where'er it be!
For what am I? what profits me my name
Of greatest knight? I fought for it, and have it:
Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain;
Now grown a part of me: but what use in it?
To make men worse by making my sin known?
Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great?
Alas for Arthur's greatest knight, a man
Not after Arthur's heart! I needs must break
These bonds that so defame me: not without
She wills it: would I, if she willed it? nay,
Who knows? but if I would not, then may God,
I pray him, send a sudden Angel down
To seize me by the hair and bear me far,
And fling me deep in that forgotten mere,
Among the tumbled fragments of the hills."

   So groaned Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain,
Not knowing he should die a holy man.

---

---

MERLIN AND VIVIEN

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an oak, so hollow, huge and old
It looked a tower of ivied masonwork,
At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay.

   For he that always bare in bitter grudge
The slights of Arthur and his Table, Mark
The Cornish King, had heard a wandering voice,
A minstrel of Caerleon by strong storm
Blown into shelter at Tintagil, say
That out of naked knightlike purity
Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl
But the great Queen herself, fought in her name,
Sware by her--vows like theirs, that high in heaven
Love most, but neither marry, nor are given
In marriage, angels of our Lord's report.

   He ceased, and then--for Vivien sweetly said
(She sat beside the banquet nearest Mark),
"And is the fair example followed, Sir,
In Arthur's household?"--answered innocently:

   "Ay, by some few--ay, truly--youths that hold
It more beseems the perfect virgin knight
To worship woman as true wife beyond
All hopes of gaining, than as maiden girl.
They place their pride in Lancelot and the Queen.
So passionate for an utter purity
Beyond the limit of their bond, are these,
For Arthur bound them not to singleness.
Brave hearts and clean! and yet--God guide them--young."

   Then Mark was half in heart to hurl his cup
Straight at the speaker, but forebore: he rose
To leave the hall, and, Vivien following him,
Turned to her: "Here are snakes within the grass;
And you methinks, O Vivien, save ye fear
The monkish manhood, and the mask of pure
Worn by this court, can stir them till they sting."

   And Vivien answered, smiling scornfully,
"Why fear? because that fostered at thy court
I savour of thy--virtues? fear them? no.
As Love, if Love be perfect, casts out fear,
So Hate, if Hate be perfect, casts out fear.
My father died in battle against the King,
My mother on his corpse in open field;
She bore me there, for born from death was I
Among the dead and sown upon the wind--
And then on thee! and shown the truth betimes,
That old true filth, and bottom of the well,
Where Truth is hidden. Gracious lessons thine
And maxims of the mud! 'This Arthur pure!
Great Nature through the flesh herself hath made
Gives him the lie! There is no being pure,
My cherub; saith not Holy Writ the same?'--
If I were Arthur, I would have thy blood.
Thy blessing, stainless King! I bring thee back,
When I have ferreted out their burrowings,
The hearts of all this Order in mine hand--
Ay--so that fate and craft and folly close,
Perchance, one curl of Arthur's golden beard.
To me this narrow grizzled fork of thine
Is cleaner-fashioned--Well, I loved thee first,
That warps the wit."

                     Loud laughed the graceless Mark.
But Vivien, into Camelot stealing, lodged
Low in the city, and on a festal day
When Guinevere was crossing the great hall
Cast herself down, knelt to the Queen, and wailed.

   "Why kneel ye there? What evil have ye wrought?
Rise!" and the damsel bidden rise arose
And stood with folded hands and downward eyes
Of glancing corner, and all meekly said,
"None wrought, but suffered much, an orphan maid!
My father died in battle for thy King,
My mother on his corpse--in open field,
The sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyonnesse--
Poor wretch--no friend!--and now by Mark the King
For that small charm of feature mine, pursued--
If any such be mine--I fly to thee.
Save, save me thou--Woman of women--thine
The wreath of beauty, thine the crown of power,
Be thine the balm of pity, O Heaven's own white
Earth-angel, stainless bride of stainless King--
Help, for he follows! take me to thyself!
O yield me shelter for mine innocency
Among thy maidens!"

                     Here her slow sweet eyes
Fear-tremulous, but humbly hopeful, rose
Fixt on her hearer's, while the Queen who stood
All glittering like May sunshine on May leaves
In green and gold, and plumed with green replied,
"Peace, child! of overpraise and overblame
We choose the last. Our noble Arthur, him
Ye scarce can overpraise, will hear and know.
Nay--we believe all evil of thy Mark--
Well, we shall test thee farther; but this hour
We ride a-hawking with Sir Lancelot.
He hath given us a fair falcon which he trained;
We go to prove it. Bide ye here the while."

   She past; and Vivien murmured after "Go!
I bide the while." Then through the portal-arch
Peering askance, and muttering broke-wise,
As one that labours with an evil dream,
Beheld the Queen and Lancelot get to horse.

   "Is that the Lancelot? goodly--ay, but gaunt:
Courteous--amends for gauntness--takes her hand--
That glance of theirs, but for the street, had been
A clinging kiss--how hand lingers in hand!
Let go at last!--they ride away--to hawk
For waterfowl. Royaller game is mine.
For such a supersensual sensual bond
As that gray cricket chirpt of at our hearth--
Touch flax with flame--a glance will serve--the liars!
Ah little rat that borest in the dyke
Thy hole by night to let the boundless deep
Down upon far-off cities while they dance--
Or dream--of thee they dreamed not--nor of me
These--ay, but each of either: ride, and dream
The mortal dream that never yet was mine--
Ride, ride and dream until ye wake--to me!
Then, narrow court and lubber King, farewell!
For Lancelot will be gracious to the rat,
And our wise Queen, if knowing that I know,
Will hate, loathe, fear--but honour me the more."

   Yet while they rode together down the plain,
Their talk was all of training, terms of art,
Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure.
"She is too noble" he said "to check at pies,
Nor will she rake: there is no baseness in her."
Here when the Queen demanded as by chance
"Know ye the stranger woman?" "Let her be,"
Said Lancelot and unhooded casting off
The goodly falcon free; she towered; her bells,
Tone under tone, shrilled; and they lifted up
Their eager faces, wondering at the strength,
Boldness and royal knighthood of the bird
Who pounced her quarry and slew it. Many a time
As once--of old--among the flowers--they rode.

   But Vivien half-forgotten of the Queen
Among her damsels broidering sat, heard, watched
And whispered: through the peaceful court she crept
And whispered: then as Arthur in the highest
Leavened the world, so Vivien in the lowest,
Arriving at a time of golden rest,
And sowing one ill hint from ear to ear,
While all the heathen lay at Arthur's feet,
And no quest came, but all was joust and play,
Leavened his hall. They heard and let her be.

   Thereafter as an enemy that has left
Death in the living waters, and withdrawn,
The wily Vivien stole from Arthur's court.

   She hated all the knights, and heard in thought
Their lavish comment when her name was named.
For once, when Arthur walking all alone,
Vext at a rumour issued from herself
Of some corruption crept among his knights,
Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair,
Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood
With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice,
And fluttered adoration, and at last
With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more
Than who should prize him most; at which the King
Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by:
But one had watched, and had not held his peace:
It made the laughter of an afternoon
That Vivien should attempt the blameless King.
And after that, she set herself to gain
Him, the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,
Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,
Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;
The people called him Wizard; whom at first
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,
And vivid smiles, and faintly-venomed points
Of slander, glancing here and grazing there;
And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer
Would watch her at her petulance, and play,
Even when they seemed unloveable, and laugh
As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew
Tolerant of what he half disdained, and she,
Perceiving that she was but half disdained,
Began to break her sports with graver fits,
Turn red or pale, would often when they met
Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him
With such a fixt devotion, that the old man,
Though doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times
Would flatter his own wish in age for love,
And half believe her true: for thus at times
He wavered; but that other clung to him,
Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.

   Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy;
He walked with dreams and darkness, and he found
A doom that ever poised itself to fall,
An ever-moaning battle in the mist,
World-war of dying flesh against the life,
Death in all life and lying in all love,
The meanest having power upon the highest,
And the high purpose broken by the worm.

   So leaving Arthur's court he gained the beach;
There found a little boat, and stept into it;
And Vivien followed, but he marked her not.
She took the helm and he the sail; the boat
Drave with a sudden wind across the deeps,
And touching Breton sands, they disembarked.
And then she followed Merlin all the way,
Even to the wild woods of Broceliande.
For Merlin once had told her of a charm,
The which if any wrought on anyone
With woven paces and with waving arms,
The man so wrought on ever seemed to lie
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower,
From which was no escape for evermore;
And none could find that man for evermore,
Nor could he see but him who wrought the charm
Coming and going, and he lay as dead
And lost to life and use and name and fame.
And Vivien ever sought to work the charm
Upon the great Enchanter of the Time,
As fancying that her glory would be great
According to his greatness whom she quenched.

   There lay she all her length and kissed his feet,
As if in deepest reverence and in love.
A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe
Of samite without price, that more exprest
Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,
In colour like the satin-shining palm
On sallows in the windy gleams of March:
And while she kissed them, crying, "Trample me,
Dear feet, that I have followed through the world,
And I will pay you worship; tread me down
And I will kiss you for it;" he was mute:
So dark a forethought rolled about his brain,
As on a dull day in an Ocean cave
The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall
In silence: wherefore, when she lifted up
A face of sad appeal, and spake and said,
"O Merlin, do ye love me?" and again,
"O Merlin, do ye love me?" and once more,
"Great Master, do ye love me?" he was mute.
And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel,
Writhed toward him, slided up his knee and sat,
Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet
Together, curved an arm about his neck,
Clung like a snake; and letting her left hand
Droop from his mighty shoulder, as a leaf,
Made with her right a comb of pearl to part
The lists of such a beard as youth gone out
Had left in ashes: then he spoke and said,
Not looking at her, "Who are wise in love
Love most, say least," and Vivien answered quick,
"I saw the little elf-god eyeless once
In Arthur's arras hall at Camelot:
But neither eyes nor tongue--O stupid child!
Yet you are wise who say it; let me think
Silence is wisdom: I am silent then,
And ask no kiss;" then adding all at once,
"And lo, I clothe myself with wisdom," drew
The vast and shaggy mantle of his beard
Across her neck and bosom to her knee,
And called herself a gilded summer fly
Caught in a great old tyrant spider's web,
Who meant to eat her up in that wild wood
Without one word. So Vivien called herself,
But rather seemed a lovely baleful star
Veiled in gray vapour; till he sadly smiled:
"To what request for what strange boon," he said,
"Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries,
O Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks,
For these have broken up my melancholy."

   And Vivien answered smiling saucily,
"What, O my Master, have ye found your voice?
I bid the stranger welcome. Thanks at last!
But yesterday you never opened lip,
Except indeed to drink: no cup had we:
In mine own lady palms I culled the spring
That gathered trickling dropwise from the cleft,
And made a pretty cup of both my hands
And offered you it kneeling: then you drank
And knew no more, nor gave me one poor word;
O no more thanks than might a goat have given
With no more sign of reverence than a beard.
And when we halted at that other well,
And I was faint to swooning, and you lay
Foot-gilt with all the blossom-dust of those
Deep meadows we had traversed, did you know
That Vivien bathed your feet before her own?
And yet no thanks: and all through this wild wood
And all this morning when I fondled you:
Boon, ay, there was a boon, one not so strange--
How had I wronged you? surely ye are wise,
But such a silence is more wise than kind."

   And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said:
"O did ye never lie upon the shore,
And watch the curled white of the coming wave
Glassed in the slippery sand before it breaks?
Even such a wave, but not so pleasurable,
Dark in the glass of some presageful mood,
Had I for three days seen, ready to fall.
And then I rose and fled from Arthur's court
To break the mood. You followed me unasked;
And when I looked, and saw you following still,
My mind involved yourself the nearest thing
In that mind-mist: for shall I tell you truth?
You seemed that wave about to break upon me
And sweep me from my hold upon the world,
My use and name and fame. Your pardon, child.
Your pretty sports have brightened all again.
And ask your boon, for boon I owe you thrice,
Once for wrong done you by confusion, next
For thanks it seems till now neglected, last
For these your dainty gambols: wherefore ask;
And take this boon so strange and not so strange."

   And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:
"O not so strange as my long asking it,
Not yet so strange as you yourself are strange,
Nor half so strange as that dark mood of yours.
I ever feared ye were not wholly mine;
And see, yourself have owned ye did me wrong.
The people call you prophet: let it be:
But not of those that can expound themselves.
Take Vivien for expounder; she will call
That three-days-long presageful gloom of yours
No presage, but the same mistrustful mood
That makes you seem less noble than yourself,
Whenever I have asked this very boon,
Now asked again: for see you not, dear love,
That such a mood as that, which lately gloomed
Your fancy when ye saw me following you,
Must make me fear still more you are not mine,
Must make me yearn still more to prove you mine,
And make me wish still more to learn this charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me.
The charm so taught will charm us both to rest.
For, grant me some slight power upon your fate,
I, feeling that you felt me worthy trust,
Should rest and let you rest, knowing you mine.
And therefore be as great as ye are named.
Not muffled round with selfish reticence.
How hard you look and how denyingly!
O, if you think this wickedness in me,
That I should prove it on you unawares,
That makes me passing wrathful; then our bond
Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not,
By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth,
As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk:
O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I,
If these unwitty wandering wits of mine,
Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream,
Have tript on such conjectural treachery--
May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell
Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat,
If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon,
Till which I scarce can yield you all I am;
And grant my re-reiterated wish,
The great proof of your love: because I think,
However wise, ye hardly know me yet."

   And Merlin loosed his hand from hers and said,
"I never was less wise, however wise,
Too curious Vivien, though you talk of trust,
Than when I told you first of such a charm.
Yea, if ye talk of trust I tell you this,
Too much I trusted when I told you that,
And stirred this vice in you which ruined man
Through woman the first hour; for howsoe'er
In children a great curiousness be well,
Who have to learn themselves and all the world,
In you, that are no child, for still I find
Your face is practised when I spell the lines,
I call it,--well, I will not call it vice:
But since you name yourself the summer fly,
I well could wish a cobweb for the gnat,
That settles, beaten back, and beaten back
Settles, till one could yield for weariness:
But since I will not yield to give you power
Upon my life and use and name and fame,
Why will ye never ask some other boon?
Yea, by God's rood, I trusted you too much."

   And Vivien, like the tenderest-hearted maid
That ever bided tryst at village stile,
Made answer, either eyelid wet with tears:
"Nay, Master, be not wrathful with your maid;
Caress her: let her feel herself forgiven
Who feels no heart to ask another boon.
I think ye hardly know the tender rhyme
Of 'trust me not at all or all in all.'
I heard the great Sir Lancelot sing it once,
And it shall answer for me. Listen to it.

   'In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.

   'It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.

   'The little rift within the lover's lute
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.

   'It is not worth the keeping: let it go:
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all or all in all.'

O Master, do ye love my tender rhyme?"

   And Merlin looked and half believed her true,
So tender was her voice, so fair her face,
So sweetly gleamed her eyes behind her tears
Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower:
And yet he answered half indignantly:

   "Far other was the song that once I heard
By this huge oak, sung nearly where we sit:
For here we met, some ten or twelve of us,
To chase a creature that was current then
In these wild woods, the hart with golden horns.
It was the time when first the question rose
About the founding of a Table Round,
That was to be, for love of God and men
And noble deeds, the flower of all the world.
And each incited each to noble deeds.
And while we waited, one, the youngest of us,
We could not keep him silent, out he flashed,
And into such a song, such fire for fame,
Such trumpet-blowings in it, coming down
To such a stern and iron-clashing close,
That when he stopt we longed to hurl together,
And should have done it; but the beauteous beast
Scared by the noise upstarted at our feet,
And like a silver shadow slipt away
Through the dim land; and all day long we rode
Through the dim land against a rushing wind,
That glorious roundel echoing in our ears,
And chased the flashes of his golden horns
Until they vanished by the fairy well
That laughs at iron--as our warriors did--
Where children cast their pins and nails, and cry,
'Laugh, little well!' but touch it with a sword,
It buzzes fiercely round the point; and there
We lost him: such a noble song was that.
But, Vivien, when you sang me that sweet rhyme,
I felt as though you knew this cursèd charm,
Were proving it on me, and that I lay
And felt them slowly ebbing, name and fame."

   And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:
"O mine have ebbed away for evermore,
And all through following you to this wild wood,
Because I saw you sad, to comfort you.
Lo now, what hearts have men! they never mount
As high as woman in her selfless mood.
And touching fame, howe'er ye scorn my song,
Take one verse more--the lady speaks it--this:

   'My name, once mine, now thine, is closelier mine,
For fame, could fame be mine, that fame were thine,
And shame, could shame be thine, that shame were mine.
So trust me not at all or all in all.'

   "Says she not well? and there is more--this rhyme
Is like the fair pearl-necklace of the Queen,
That burst in dancing, and the pearls were spilt;
Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept.
But nevermore the same two sister pearls
Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other
On her white neck--so is it with this rhyme:
It lives dispersedly in many hands,
And every minstrel sings it differently;
'Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.'
Yea! Love, though Love were of the grossest, carves
A portion from the solid present, eats
And uses, careless of the rest; but Fame,
The Fame that follows death is nothing to us;
And what is Fame in life but half-disfame,
And counterchanged with darkness? ye yourself
Know well that Envy calls you Devil's son,
And since ye seem the Master of all Art,
They fain would make you Master of all vice."

   And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said,
"I once was looking for a magic weed,
And found a fair young squire who sat alone,
Had carved himself a knightly shield of wood,
And then was painting on it fancied arms,
Azure, an Eagle rising or, the Sun
In dexter chief; the scroll 'I follow fame.'
And speaking not, but leaning over him,
I took his brush and blotted out the bird,
And made a Gardner putting in a graff,
With this for motto, 'Rather use than fame.'
You should have seen him blush; but afterwards
He made a stalwart knight. O Vivien,
For you, methinks you think you love me well;
For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love
Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a proof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,
Being but ampler means to serve mankind,
Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,
But work as vassal to the larger love,
That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.
Use gave me Fame at first, and Fame again
Increasing gave me use. Lo, there my boon!
What other? for men sought to prove me vile,
Because I fain had given them greater wits:
And then did Envy call me Devil's son:
The sick weak beast seeking to help herself
By striking at her better, missed, and brought
Her own claw back, and wounded her own heart.
Sweet were the days when I was all unknown,
But when my name was lifted up, the storm
Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it.
Right well know I that Fame is half-disfame,
Yet needs must work my work. That other fame,
To one at least, who hath not children, vague,
The cackle of the unborn about the grave,
I cared not for it: a single misty star,
Which is the second in a line of stars
That seem a sword beneath a belt of three,
I never gazed upon it but I dreamt
Of some vast charm concluded in that star
To make fame nothing. Wherefore, if I fear,
Giving you power upon me through this charm,
That you might play me falsely, having power,
However well ye think ye love me now
(As sons of kings loving in pupilage
Have turned to tyrants when they came to power)
I rather dread the loss of use than fame;
If you--and not so much from wickedness,
As some wild turn of anger, or a mood
Of overstrained affection, it may be,
To keep me all to your own self,--or else
A sudden spurt of woman's jealousy,--
Should try this charm on whom ye say ye love."

   And Vivien answered smiling as in wrath:
"Have I not sworn? I am not trusted. Good!
Well, hide it, hide it; I shall find it out;
And being found take heed of Vivien.
A woman and not trusted, doubtless I
Might feel some sudden turn of anger born
Of your misfaith; and your fine epithet
Is accurate too, for this full love of mine
Without the full heart back may merit well
Your term of overstrained. So used as I,
My daily wonder is, I love at all.
And as to woman's jealousy, O why not?
O to what end, except a jealous one,
And one to make me jealous if I love,
Was this fair charm invented by yourself?
I well believe that all about this world
Ye cage a buxom captive here and there,
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower
From which is no escape for evermore."

   Then the great Master merrily answered her:
"Full many a love in loving youth was mine;
I needed then no charm to keep them mine
But youth and love; and that full heart of yours
Whereof ye prattle, may now assure you mine;
So live uncharmed. For those who wrought it first,
The wrist is parted from the hand that waved,
The feet unmortised from their ankle-bones
Who paced it, ages back: but will ye hear
The legend as in guerdon for your rhyme?

   "There lived a king in the most Eastern East,
Less old than I, yet older, for my blood
Hath earnest in it of far springs to be.
A tawny pirate anchored in his port,
Whose bark had plundered twenty nameless isles;
And passing one, at the high peep of dawn,
He saw two cities in a thousand boats
All fighting for a woman on the sea.
And pushing his black craft among them all,
He lightly scattered theirs and brought her off,
With loss of half his people arrow-slain;
A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,
They said a light came from her when she moved:
And since the pirate would not yield her up,
The King impaled him for his piracy;
Then made her Queen: but those isle-nurtured eyes
Waged such unwilling though successful war
On all the youth, they sickened; councils thinned,
And armies waned, for magnet-like she drew
The rustiest iron of old fighters' hearts;
And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt
Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back
That carry kings in castles, bowed black knees
Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands,
To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells.
What wonder, being jealous, that he sent
His horns of proclamation out through all
The hundred under-kingdoms that he swayed
To find a wizard who might teach the King
Some charm, which being wrought upon the Queen
Might keep her all his own: to such a one
He promised more than ever king has given,
A league of mountain full of golden mines,
A province with a hundred miles of coast,
A palace and a princess, all for him:
But on all those who tried and failed, the King
Pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning by it
To keep the list low and pretenders back,
Or like a king, not to be trifled with--
Their heads should moulder on the city gates.
And many tried and failed, because the charm
Of nature in her overbore their own:
And many a wizard brow bleached on the walls:
And many weeks a troop of carrion crows
Hung like a cloud above the gateway towers."

   And Vivien breaking in upon him, said:
"I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks,
Thy tongue has tript a little: ask thyself.
The lady never made unwilling war
With those fine eyes: she had her pleasure in it,
And made her good man jealous with good cause.
And lived there neither dame nor damsel then
Wroth at a lover's loss? were all as tame,
I mean, as noble, as the Queen was fair?
Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes,
Or pinch a murderous dust into her drink,
Or make her paler with a poisoned rose?
Well, those were not our days: but did they find
A wizard? Tell me, was he like to thee?

   She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck
Tighten, and then drew back, and let her eyes
Speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride's
On her new lord, her own, the first of men.

   He answered laughing, "Nay, not like to me.
At last they found--his foragers for charms--
A little glassy-headed hairless man,
Who lived alone in a great wild on grass;
Read but one book, and ever reading grew
So grated down and filed away with thought,
So lean his eyes were monstrous; while the skin
Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine.
And since he kept his mind on one sole aim,
Nor ever touched fierce wine, nor tasted flesh,
Nor owned a sensual wish, to him the wall
That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men
Became a crystal, and he saw them through it,
And heard their voices talk behind the wall,
And learnt their elemental secrets, powers
And forces; often o'er the sun's bright eye
Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud,
And lashed it at the base with slanting storm;
Or in the noon of mist and driving rain,
When the lake whitened and the pinewood roared,
And the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned
The world to peace again: here was the man.
And so by force they dragged him to the King.
And then he taught the King to charm the Queen
In such-wise, that no man could see her more,
Nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm,
Coming and going, and she lay as dead,
And lost all use of life: but when the King
Made proffer of the league of golden mines,
The province with a hundred miles of coast,
The palace and the princess, that old man
Went back to his old wild, and lived on grass,
And vanished, and his book came down to me."

   And Vivien answered smiling saucily:
"Ye have the book: the charm is written in it:
Good: take my counsel: let me know it at once:
For keep it like a puzzle chest in chest,
With each chest locked and padlocked thirty-fold,
And whelm all this beneath as vast a mound
As after furious battle turfs the slain
On some wild down above the windy deep,
I yet should strike upon a sudden means
To dig, pick, open, find and read the charm:
Then, if I tried it, who should blame me then?"

   And smiling as a master smiles at one
That is not of his school, nor any school
But that where blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,
On all things all day long, he anwered her:

   "Thou read the book, my pretty Vivien!
O ay, it is but twenty pages long,
But every page having an ample marge,
And every marge enclosing in the midst
A square of text that looks a little blot,
The text no larger than the limbs of fleas;
And every square of text an awful charm,
Writ in a language that has long gone by.
So long, that mountains have arisen since
With cities on their flanks--thou read the book!
And every margin scribbled, crost, and crammed
With comment, densest condensation, hard
To mind and eye; but the long sleepless nights
Of my long life have made it easy to me.
And none can read the text, not even I;
And none can read the comment but myself;
And in the comment did I find the charm.
O, the results are simple; a mere child
Might use it to the harm of anyone,
And never could undo it: ask no more:
For though you should not prove it upon me,
But keep the oath ye sware, ye might, perchance,
Assay it on some one of the Table Round,
And all because ye dream they babble of you."

   And Vivien, frowning in true anger, said:
"What dare the full-fed liars say of me?
They ride abroad redressing human wrongs!
They sit with knife in meat and wine in horn!
They bound to holy vows of chastity!
Were I not woman, I could tell a tale.
But you are man, you well can understand
The shame that cannot be explained for shame.
Not one of all the drove should touch me: swine!"

   Then answered Merlin careless of her words:
"You breathe but accusation vast and vague,
Spleen-born, I think, and proofless. If ye know,
Set up the charge ye know, to stand or fall!"

   And Vivien answered frowning wrathfully:
"O ay, what say ye to Sir Valence, him
Whose kinsman left him watcher o'er his wife
And two fair babes, and went to distant lands;
Was one year gone, and on returning found
Not two but three? there lay the reckling, one
But one hour old! What said the happy sire?
A seven-months' babe had been a truer gift.
Those twelve sweet moons confused his fatherhood."

   Then answered Merlin, "Nay, I know the tale.
Sir Valence wedded with an outland dame:
Some cause had kept him sundered from his wife:
One child they had: it lived with her: she died:
His kinsman travelling on his own affair
Was charged by Valence to bring home the child.
He brought, not found it therefore: take the truth."

   "O ay," said Vivien, "overtrue a tale.
What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore,
That ardent man? 'to pluck the flower in season,'
So says the song, 'I trow it is no treason.'
O Master, shall we call him overquick
To crop his own sweet rose before the hour?"

   And Merlin answered, "Overquick art thou
To catch a loathly plume fallen from the wing
Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole prey
Is man's good name: he never wronged his bride.
I know the tale. An angry gust of wind
Puffed out his torch among the myriad-roomed
And many-corridored complexities
Of Arthur's palace: then he found a door,
And darkling felt the scultpured ornament
That wreathen round it made it seem his own;
And wearied out made for the couch and slept,
A stainless man beside a stainless maid;
And either slept, nor knew of other there;
Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose
In Arthur's casement glimmered chastely down,
Blushing upon them blushing, and at once
He rose without a word and parted from her:
But when the thing was blazed about the court,
The brute world howling forced them into bonds,
And as it chanced they are happy, being pure."

   "O ay," said Vivien, "that were likely too.
What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale
And of the horrid foulness that he wrought,
The saintly youth, the spotless lamb of Christ,
Or some black wether of St. Satan's fold.
What, in the precints of the chapel-yard,
Among the knightly brasses of the graves,
And by the cold Hic Jacets of the dead!"

   And Merlin answered careless of her charge,
"A sober man is Percivale and pure;
But once in life was flustered with new wine,
Then paced for coolness in the chapel-yard;
Where one of Satan's shepherdesses caught
And meant to stamp him with her master's mark:
And that he sinned is not believable;
For, look upon his face!--but if he sinned,
The sin that practice burns into the blood,
And not the one dark hour which brings remorse,
Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be:
Or else were he, the holy king, whose hymns
Are chanted in the minster, worse than all.
But is your spleen frothed out, or have ye more?"

   And Vivien answered frowning yet in wrath:
"O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot, friend
Traitor or true? that commerce with the Queen,
I ask you, is it clamoured by the child,
Or whispered in the corner? do ye know it?"

   To which he answered sadly, "Yea, I know it.
Sir Lancelot went ambassador, at first,
To fetch her, and she watched him from her walls.
A rumour runs, she took him for the King,
So fixt her fancy on him: let them be.
But have ye no one word of loyal praise
For Arthur, blameless King and stainless man?"

   She answered with a low and chuckling laugh:
"Man! is he man at all, who knows and winks?
Sees what his fair bride is and does, and winks?
By which the good King means to blind himself,
And blinds himself and all the Table Round
To all the foulness that they work. Myself
Could call him (were it not for womanhood)
The pretty, popular name such manhood earns,
Could call him the main cause of all their crime;
Yea, were he not crowned King, coward, and fool."

   Then Merlin to his own heart, loathing, said:
"O true and tender! O my liege and King!
O selfless man and stainless gentleman,
Who wouldst against thine own eye-witness fain
Have all men true and leal, all women pure;
How, in the mouths of base interpreters,
From over-fineness not intelligible
To things with every sense as false and foul
As the poached filth that floods the middle street,
Is thy white blamelessness accounted blame!"

   But Vivien, deeming Merlin overborne
By instance, recommenced , and let her tongue
Rage like a fire among the noblest names,
Polluting, and imputing her whole self,
Defaming and defacing, till she left
Not even Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.

   Her words had issue other than she willed.
He dragged his eyebrow bushes down, and made
A snowy penthouse for his hollow eyes,
And muttered in himself, "Tell her the charm!
So, if she had it, would she rail on me
To snare the next, and if she have it not
So will she rail. What did the wanton say?
'Not mount as high;' we scarce can sink as low:
For men at most differ as Heaven and earth,
But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.
I know the Table Round, my friends of old;
All brave, and many generous, and some chaste.
She cloaks the scar of some repulse with lies;
I well believe she tempted them and failed,
Being so bitter: for fine plots may fail,
Though harlots paint their talk as well as face
With colours of the heart that are not theirs.
I will not let her know: nine tithes of times
Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime
Are pronest to it, and impute themselves,
Wanting the mental range; or low desire
Not to feel lowest makes them level all;
Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain,
To leave an equal baseness; and in this
Are harlots like the crowd, that if they find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Inflate themselves with some insane delight,
And judge all nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see
Her godlike head crowned with spiritual fire,
And touching other worlds. I am weary of her."

   He spoke in words part heard, in whispers part,
Half-suffocated in the hoary fell
And many-wintered fleece of throat and chin.
But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his mood,
And hearing "harlot" muttered twice or thrice,
Leapt from her session on his lap, and stood
Stiff as a viper frozen; loathsome sight,
How from the rosy lips of life and love,
Flashed the bare grinning skeleton of death!
White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puffed
Her fairy nostril out; her hand half-clenched
Went faltering sideways downward to her belt,
And feeling; had she found a dagger there
(For in a wink the false love turns to hate)
She would have stabbed him; but she found it not:
His eye was calm, and suddenly she took
To bitter weeping like a beaten child,
A long, long weeping, not consolable.
Then her false voice made way, broken with sobs:

   "O crueller than was ever told in tale,
Or sung in song! O vainly lavished love!
O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange,
Or seeming shameful--for what shame in love,
So love be true, and not as yours is--nothing
Poor Vivien had not done to win his trust
Who called her what he called her--all her crime,
All--all--the wish to prove him wholly hers."

   She mused a little, and then clapt her hands
Together with a wailing shriek, and said:
"Stabbed through the heart's affections to the heart!
Seethed like the kid in its own mother's milk!
Killed with a word worse than a life of blows!
I thought that he was gentle, being great:
O God, that I had loved a smaller man!
I should have found in him a greater heart.
O, I, that flattering my true passion, saw
The knights, the court, the King, dark in your light,
Who loved to make men darker than they are,
Because of that high pleasure which I had
To seat you sole upon my pedestal
Of worship--I am answered, and henceforth
The course of life that seemed so flowery to me
With you for guide and master, only you,
Becomes the sea-cliff pathway broken short,
And ending in a ruin--nothing left,
But into some low cave to crawl, and there,
If the wolf spare me, weep my life away,
Killed with inutterable unkindliness."

   She paused, she turned away, she hung her head,
The snake of gold slid from her hair, the braid
Slipt and uncoiled itself, she wept afresh,
And the dark wood grew darker toward the storm
In silence, while his anger slowly died
Within him, till he let his wisdom go
For ease of heart, and half believed her true:
Called her to shelter, in the hollow oak,
"Come from the storm," and having no reply,
Gazed at the heaving shoulder, and the face
Hand-hidden, as for utmost grief or shame;
Then thrice essayed, by tenderest-touching terms,
To sleek her ruffled peace of mind, in vain.
At last she let herself be conquered by him,
And as the cageling newly flown returns,
The seeming-injured simple-hearted thing
Came to her old perch back, and settled there.
There while she sat, half-falling from his knees,
Half-nestled at his heart, and since he saw
The slow tear creep from her closed eyelid yet,
About her, more in kindness than in love,
The gentle wizard cast a shielding arm.
But she dislinked herself at once and rose,
Her arms upon her breast across, and stood,
A virtuous gentlewoman deeply wronged,
Upright and flushed before him: then she said:

   "There must be now no passages of love
Betwixt us twain henceforward evermore;
Since, if I be what I am grossly called,
What should be granted which your own gross heart
Would reckon worth the taking? I will go.
In truth, but one thing now--better have died
Thrice than have asked it once--could make me stay--
That proof of trust--so often asked in vain!
How justly, after that vile term of yours,
I find with grief! I might believe you then,
Who knows? once more. Lo! what was once to me
Mere matter of the fancy, now hath grown
The vast necessity of heart and life.
Farewell; think gently of me, for I fear
My fate or folly, passing gayer youth
For one so old, must be to love thee still.
But ere I leave thee let me swear once more
That if I schemed against thy peace in this,
May yon just heaven, that darkens o'er me, send
One flash, that, missing all things else, may make
My scheming brain a cinder, if I lie."

   Scarce had she ceased, when out of heaven a bolt
(For now the storm was close above them) struck,
Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining
With darted spikes and splinters of the wood
The dark earth round. He raised his eyes and saw
The tree that shone white-listed through the gloom.
But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard her oath,
And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork,
And deafened with the stammering cracks and claps
That followed, flying back and crying out,
"O Merlin, though you do not love me, save,
Yet save me!" clung to him and hugged him close;
And called him dear protector in her fright,
Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright,
But wrought upon his mood and hugged him close.
The pale blood of the wizard at her touch
Took gayer colours, like an opal warmed.
She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales:
She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept
Of petulancy; she called him lord and liege,
Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve,
Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love
Of her whole life; and ever overhead
Bellowed the tempest, and the rotten branch
Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain
Above them; and in change of glare and gloom
Her eyes and neck glittering went and came;
Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent,
Moaning and calling out of other lands,
Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more
To peace; and what should not have been had been,
For Merlin, overtalked and overworn,
Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept.

   Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,
And lost to life and use and name and fame.

   Then crying "I have made his glory mine,"
And shrieking out "O fool!" the harlot leapt
Adown the forest, and the thicket closed
Behind her, and the forest echoed "fool."

---

---

THE COMING OF ARTHUR

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Leodogran, the King of Cameliard,
Had one fair daughter, and none other child;
And she was fairest of all flesh on earth,
Guinevere, and in her his one delight.

   For many a petty king ere Arthur came
Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war
Each upon other, wasted all the land;
And still from time to time the heathen host
Swarmed overseas, and harried what was left.
And so there grew great tracts of wilderness,
Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
But man was less and less, till Arthur came.
For first Aurelius lived and fought and died,
And after him King Uther fought and died,
But either failed to make the kingdom one.
And after these King Arthur for a space,
And through the puissance of his Table Round,
Drew all their petty princedoms under him,
Their king and head, and made a realm, and reigned.

   And thus the land of Cameliard was waste,
Thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein,
And none or few to scare or chase the beast;
So that wild dog, and wolf and boar and bear
Came night and day, and rooted in the fields,
And wallowed in the gardens of the King.
And ever and anon the wolf would steal
The children and devour, but now and then,
Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat
To human sucklings; and the children, housed
In her foul den, there at their meat would growl,
And mock their foster-mother on four feet,
Till, straightened, they grew up to wolf-like men,
Worse than the wolves. And King Leodogran
Groaned for the Roman legions here again,
And Caesar's eagle: then his brother king,
Urien, assailed him: last a heathen horde,
Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood,
And on the spike that split the mother's heart
Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed,
He knew not whither he should turn for aid.

   But--for he heard of Arthur newly crowned,
Though not without an uproar made by those
Who cried, "He is not Uther's son"--the King
Sent to him, saying, "Arise, and help us thou!
For here between the man and beast we die."

   And Arthur yet had done no deed of arms,
But heard the call, and came: and Guinevere
Stood by the castle walls to watch him pass;
But since he neither wore on helm or shield
The golden symbol of his kinglihood,
But rode a simple knight among his knights,
And many of these in richer arms than he,
She saw him not, or marked not, if she saw,
One among many, though his face was bare.
But Arthur, looking downward as he past,
Felt the light of her eyes into his life
Smite on the sudden, yet rode on, and pitched
His tents beside the forest. Then he drave
The heathen; after, slew the beast, and felled
The forest, letting in the sun, and made
Broad pathways for the hunter and the knight
And so returned.

               For while he lingered there,
A doubt that ever smouldered in the hearts
Of those great Lords and Barons of his realm
Flashed forth and into war: for most of these,
Colleaguing with a score of petty kings,
Made head against him, crying, "Who is he
That he should rule us? who hath proven him
King Uther's son? for lo! we look at him,
And find nor face nor bearing, limbs nor voice,
Are like to those of Uther whom we knew.
This is the son of Gorloïs, not the King;
This is the son of Anton, not the King."

   And Arthur, passing thence to battle, felt
Travail, and throes and agonies of the life,
Desiring to be joined with Guinevere;
And thinking as he rode, "Her father said
That there between the man and beast they die.
Shall I not lift her from this land of beasts
Up to my throne, and side by side with me?
What happiness to reign a lonely king,
Vext--O ye stars that shudder over me,
O earth that soundest hollow under me,
Vext with waste dreams? for saving I be joined
To her that is the fairest under heaven,
I seem as nothing in the mighty world,
And cannot will my will, nor work my work
Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm
Victor and lord. But were I joined with her,
Then might we live together as one life,
And reigning with one will in everything
Have power on this dark land to lighten it,
And power on this dead world to make it live."

   Thereafter--as he speaks who tells the tale--
When Arthur reached a field-of-battle bright
With pitched pavilions of his foe, the world
Was all so clear about him, that he saw
The smallest rock far on the faintest hill,
And even in high day the morning star.
So when the King had set his banner broad,
At once from either side, with trumpet-blast,
And shouts, and clarions shrilling unto blood,
The long-lanced battle let their horses run.
And now the Barons and the kings prevailed,
And now the King, as here and there that war
Went swaying; but the Powers who walk the world
Made lightnings and great thunders over him,
And dazed all eyes, till Arthur by main might,
And mightier of his hands with every blow,
And leading all his knighthood threw the kings
Carados, Urien, Cradlemont of Wales,
Claudias, and Clariance of Northumberland,
The King Brandagoras of Latangor,
With Anguisant of Erin, Morganore,
And Lot of Orkney. Then, before a voice
As dreadful as the shout of one who sees
To one who sins, and deems himself alone
And all the world asleep, they swerved and brake
Flying, and Arthur called to stay the brands
That hacked among the flyers, "Ho! they yield!"
So like a painted battle the war stood
Silenced, the living quiet as the dead,
And in the heart of Arthur joy was lord.
He laughed upon his warrior whom he loved
And honoured most. "Thou dost not doubt me King,
So well thine arm hath wrought for me today."
"Sir and my liege," he cried, "the fire of God
Descends upon thee in the battle-field:
I know thee for my King!" Whereat the two,
For each had warded either in the fight,
Sware on the field of death a deathless love.
And Arthur said, "Man's word is God in man:
Let chance what will, I trust thee to the death."

   Then quickly from the foughten field he sent
Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere,
His new-made knights, to King Leodogran,
Saying, "If I in aught have served thee well,
Give me thy daughter Guinevere to wife."

   Whom when he heard, Leodogran in heart
Debating-- "How should I that am a king,
However much he holp me at my need,
Give my one daughter saving to a king,
And a king's son?"--lifted his voice, and called
A hoary man, his chamberlain, to whom
He trusted all things, and of him required
His counsel: "Knowest thou aught of Arthur's birth?"

   Then spake the hoary chamberlain and said,
"Sir King, there be but two old men that know:
And each is twice as old as I; and one
Is Merlin, the wise man that ever served
King Uther through his magic art; and one
Is Merlin's master (so they call him) Bleys,
Who taught him magic; but the scholar ran
Before the master, and so far, that Bleys
Laid magic by, and sat him down, and wrote
All things and whatsoever Merlin did
In one great annal-book, where after-years
Will learn the secret of our Arthur's birth."

   To whom the King Leodogran replied,
"O friend, had I been holpen half as well
By this King Arthur as by thee today,
Then beast and man had had their share of me:
But summon here before us yet once more
Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere."

   Then, when they came before him, the King said,
"I have seen the cuckoo chased by lesser fowl,
And reason in the chase: but wherefore now
Do these your lords stir up the heat of war,
Some calling Arthur born of Gorloïs,
Others of Anton? Tell me, ye yourselves,
Hold ye this Arthur for King Uther's son?"

   And Ulfius and Brastias answered, "Ay."
Then Bedivere, the first of all his knights
Knighted by Arthur at his crowning, spake--
For bold in heart and act and word was he,
Whenever slander breathed against the King--

   "Sir, there be many rumours on this head:
For there be those who hate him in their hearts,
Call him baseborn, and since his ways are sweet,
And theirs are bestial, hold him less than man:
And there be those who deem him more than man,
And dream he dropt from heaven: but my belief
In all this matter--so ye care to learn--
Sir, for ye know that in King Uther's time
The prince and warrior Gorlois, he that held
Tintagil castle by the Cornish sea,
Was wedded with a winsome wife, Ygerne:
And daughters had she borne him,--one whereof,
Lot's wife, the Queen of Orkney, Bellicent,
Hath ever like a loyal sister cleaved
To Arthur,--but a son she had not borne.
And Uther cast upon her eyes of love:
But she, a stainless wife to Gorloïs,
So loathed the bright dishonour of his love,
That Gorloïs and King Uther went to war:
And overthrown was Gorloïs and slain.
Then Uther in his wrath and heat besieged
Ygerne within Tintagil, where her men,
Seeing the mighty swarm about their walls,
Left her and fled, and Uther entered in,
And there was none to call to but himself.
So, compassed by the power of the King,
Enforced she was to wed him in her tears,
And with a shameful swiftness: afterward,
Not many moons, King Uther died himself,
Moaning and wailing for an heir to rule
After him, lest the realm should go to wrack.
And that same night, the night of the new year,
By reason of the bitterness and grief
That vext his mother, all before his time
Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born
Delivered at a secret postern-gate
To Merlin, to be holden far apart
Until his hour should come; because the lords
Of that fierce day were as the lords of this,
Wild beasts, and surely would have torn the child
Piecemeal among them, had they known; for each
But sought to rule for his own self and hand,
And many hated Uther for the sake
Of Gorloïs. Wherefore Merlin took the child,
And gave him to Sir Anton, an old knight
And ancient friend of Uther; and his wife
Nursed the young prince, and reared him with her own;
And no man knew. And ever since the lords
Have foughten like wild beasts among themselves,
So that the realm has gone to wrack: but now,
This year, when Merlin (for his hour had come)
Brought Arthur forth, and set him in the hall,
Proclaiming, "Here is Uther's heir, your king,"
A hundred voices cried, "Away with him!
No king of ours! a son of Gorloïs he,
Or else the child of Anton, and no king,
Or else baseborn." Yet Merlin through his craft,
And while the people clamoured for a king,
Had Arthur crowned; but after, the great lords
Banded, and so brake out in open war.

   Then while the King debated with himself
If Arthur were the child of shamefulness,
Or born the son of Gorloïs, after death,
Or Uther's son, and born before his time,
Or whether there were truth in anything
Said by these three, there came to Cameliard,
With Gawain and young Modred, her two sons,
Lot's wife, the Queen of Orkney, Bellicent;
Whom as he could, not as he would, the King
Made feast for, saying, as they sat at meat,

   "A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas.
Ye come from Arthur's court. Victor his men
Report him! Yea, but ye--think ye this king--
So many those that hate him, and so strong,
So few his knights, however brave they be--
Hath body enow to hold his foemen down?"

   "O King," she cried, "and I will tell thee: few,
Few, but all brave, all of one mind with him;
For I was near him when the savage yells
Of Uther's peerage died, and Arthur sat
Crowned on the daïs, and his warriors cried,
'Be thou the king, and we will work thy will
Who love thee.' Then the King in low deep tones,
And simple words of great authority,
Bound them by so strait vows to his own self,
That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,
Some flushed, and others dazed, as one who wakes
Half-blinded at the coming of a light.

   "But when he spake and cheered his Table Round
With large, divine, and comfortable words,
Beyond my tongue to tell thee--I beheld
From eye to eye through all their Order flash
A momentary likeness of the King:
And ere it left their faces, through the cross
And those around it and the Crucified,
Down from the casement over Arthur, smote
Flame-colour, vert and azure, in three rays,
One falling upon each of three fair queens,
Who stood in silence near his throne, the friends
Of Arthur, gazing on him, tall, with bright
Sweet faces, who will help him at his need.

   "And there I saw mage Merlin, whose vast wit
And hundred winters are but as the hands
Of loyal vassals toiling for their liege.

   "And near him stood the Lady of the Lake,
Who knows a subtler magic than his own--
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.
She gave the King his huge cross-hilted sword,
Whereby to drive the heathen out: a mist
Of incense curled about her, and her face
Wellnigh was hidden in the minster gloom;
But there was heard among the holy hymns
A voice as of the waters, for she dwells
Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms
May shake the world, and when the surface rolls,
Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.

   "There likewise I beheld Excalibur
Before him at his crowning borne, the sword
That rose from out the bosom of the lake,
And Arthur rowed across and took it--rich
With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,
Bewildering heart and eye--the blade so bright
That men are blinded by it--on one side,
Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,
'Take me,' but turn the blade and ye shall see,
And written in the speech ye speak yourself,
'Cast me away!' And sad was Arthur's face
Taking it, but old Merlin counselled him,
'Take thou and strike! the time to cast away
Is yet far-off.' So this great brand the king
Took, and by this will beat his foemen down."

   Thereat Leodogran rejoiced, but thought
To sift his doubtings to the last, and asked,
Fixing full eyes of question on her face,
"The swallow and the swift are near akin,
But thou art closer to this noble prince,
Being his own dear sister;" and she said,
"Daughter of Gorloïs and Ygerne am I;"
"And therefore Arthur's sister?" asked the King.
She answered, "These be secret things," and signed
To those two sons to pass, and let them be.
And Gawain went, and breaking into song
Sprang out, and followed by his flying hair
Ran like a colt, and leapt at all he saw:
But Modred laid his ear beside the doors,
And there half-heard; the same that afterward
Struck for the throne, and striking found his doom.

   And then the Queen made answer, "What know I?
For dark my mother was in eyes and hair,
And dark in hair and eyes am I; and dark
Was Gorloïs, yea and dark was Uther too,
Wellnigh to blackness; but this King is fair
Beyond the race of Britons and of men.
Moreover, always in my mind I hear
A cry from out the dawning of my life,
A mother weeping, and I hear her say,
'O that ye had some brother, pretty one,
To guard thee on the rough ways of the world.'"
   "Ay," said the King, "and hear ye such a cry?
But when did Arthur chance upon thee first?"

   "O King!" she cried, "and I will tell thee true:
He found me first when yet a little maid:
Beaten I had been for a little fault
Whereof I was not guilty; and out I ran
And flung myself down on a bank of heath,
And hated this fair world and all therein,
And wept, and wished that I were dead; and he--
I know not whether of himself he came,
Or brought by Merlin, who, they say, can walk
Unseen at pleasure--he was at my side,
And spake sweet words, and comforted my heart,
And dried my tears, being a child with me.
And many a time he came, and evermore
As I grew greater grew with me; and sad
At times he seemed, and sad with him was I,
Stern too at times, and then I loved him not,
But sweet again, and then I loved him well.
And now of late I see him less and less,
But those first days had golden hours for me,
For then I surely thought he would be king.

   "But let me tell thee now another tale:
For Bleys, our Merlin's master, as they say,
Died but of late, and sent his cry to me,
To hear him speak before he left his life.
Shrunk like a fairy changeling lay the mage;
And when I entered told me that himself
And Merlin ever served about the King,
Uther, before he died; and on the night
When Uther in Tintagil past away
Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two
Left the still King, and passing forth to breathe,
Then from the castle gateway by the chasm
Descending through the dismal night--a night
In which the bounds of heaven and earth were lost--
Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps
It seemed in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof
A dragon winged, and all from stem to stern
Bright with a shining people on the decks,
And gone as soon as seen. And then the two
Dropt to the cove, and watched the great sea fall,
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet,
Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried, 'The King!
Here is an heir for Uther!' And the fringe
Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand,
Lashed at the wizard as he spake the word,
And all at once all round him rose in fire,
So that the child and he were clothed in fire.
And presently thereafter followed calm,
Free sky and stars: 'And this same child,' he said,
'Is he who reigns; nor could I part in peace
Till this were told.' And saying this the seer
Went through the strait and dreadful pass of death,
Not ever to be questioned any more
Save on the further side; but when I met
Merlin, and asked him if these things were truth--
The shining dragon and the naked child
Descending in the glory of the seas--
He laughed as is his wont, and answered me
In riddling triplets of old time, and said:

   "'Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky!
A young man will be wiser by and by;
An old man's wit may wander ere he die.
   Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow on the lea!
And truth is this to me, and that to thee;
And truth or clothed or naked let it be.
   Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows:
Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?
From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'

   "So Merlin riddling angered me; but thou
Fear not to give this King thine only child,
Guinevere: so great bards of him will sing
Hereafter; and dark sayings from of old
Ranging and ringing through the minds of men,
And echoed by old folk beside their fires
For comfort after their wage-work is done,
Speak of the King; and Merlin in our time
Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn
Though men may wound him that he will not die,
But pass, again to come; and then or now
Utterly smite the heathen underfoot,
Till these and all men hail him for their king."

   She spake and King Leodogran rejoiced,
But musing "Shall I answer yea or nay?"
Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw,
Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew,
Field after field, up to a height, the peak
Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king,
Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope
The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven,
Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick,
In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind,
Streamed to the peak, and mingled with the haze
And made it thicker; while the phantom king
Sent out at times a voice; and here or there
Stood one who pointed toward the voice, the rest
Slew on and burnt, crying, "No king of ours,
No son of Uther, and no king of ours;"
Till with a wink his dream was changed, the haze
Descended, and the solid earth became
As nothing, but the King stood out in heaven,
Crowned. And Leodogran awoke, and sent
Ulfius, and Brastias and Bedivere,
Back to the court of Arthur answering yea.

   Then Arthur charged his warrior whom he loved
And honoured most, Sir Lancelot, to ride forth
And bring the Queen;--and watched him from the gates:
And Lancelot past away among the flowers,
(For then was latter April) and returned
Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.
To whom arrived, by Dubric the high saint,
Chief of the church in Britain, and before
The stateliest of her altar-shrines, the King
That morn was married, while in stainless white,
The fair beginners of a nobler time,
And glorying in their vows and him, his knights
Stood round him, and rejoicing in his joy.
Far shone the fields of May through open door,
The sacred altar blossomed white with May,
The Sun of May descended on their King,
They gazed on all earth's beauty in their Queen,
Rolled incense, and there past along the hymns
A voice as of the waters, while the two
Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love:
And Arthur said, "Behold, thy doom is mine.
Let chance what will, I love thee to the death!"
To whom the Queen replied with drooping eyes,
"King and my lord, I love thee to the death!"
And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake,
"Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world
Other, and may thy Queen be one with thee,
And all this Order of thy Table Round
Fulfil the boundless purpose of their king!"

   So Dubric said; but when they left the shrine
Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood,
In scornful stillness gazing as they past;
Then while they paced a city all on fire
With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew,
And Arthur's knighthood sang before the King:--

   "Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May;
Blow trumpet, the long night hath rolled away!
Blow through the living world-'Let the King reign.'

   "Shall Rome or Heathen rule in Arthur's realm?
Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon helm,
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.

   "Strike for the King and live! his knights have heard
That God hath told the King a secret word.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.

   "Blow trumpet! he will lift us from the dust.
Blow trumpet! live the strength and die the lust!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

   "Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest,
The King is King, and ever wills the highest.
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

   "Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May!
Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

   "The King will follow Christ, and we the King
In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign."

   So sang the knighthood, moving to their hall.
There at the banquet those great Lords from Rome,
The slowly-fading mistress of the world,
Strode in, and claimed their tribute as of yore.
But Arthur spake, "Behold, for these have sworn
To wage my wars, and worship me their King;
The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And we that fight for our fair father Christ,
Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old
To drive the heathen from your Roman wall,
No tribute will we pay:" so those great lords
Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove with Rome.

   And Arthur and his knighthood for a space
Were all one will, and through that strength the King
Drew in the petty princedoms under him,
Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame
The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reigned.

---

---

THE HOLY GRAIL

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale,
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure,
Had passed into the silent life of prayer
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl
The helmet in an abbey far away
From Camelot, there, and not long after, died.

   And one, a fellow-monk among the rest
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest,
And honoured him, and wrought into his heart
A way by love that wakened love within,
To answer that which came: and as they sat
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn
That puffed the swaying branches into smoke
Above them, ere the summer when he died,
The monk Ambrosius questioned Percivale:

   "O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke,
Spring after spring, for half a hundred years:
For never have I known the world without,
Nor ever strayed beyond the pale: but thee,
When first thou camest--such a courtesy
Spake through the limbs and in the voice--I knew
For one of those who eat in Arthur's hall;
For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,
Some true, some light, but every one of you
Stamped with the image of the King; and now
Tell me, what drove thee from the Table Round,
My brother? was it earthly passion crost?"

   "Nay," said the knight; "for no such passion mine.
But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out
Among us in the jousts, while women watch
Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength
Within us, better offered up to Heaven."

   To whom the monk: "The Holy Grail!--I trust
We are green in Heaven's eyes; but here too much
We moulder--as to things without I mean--
Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours,
Told us of this in our refectory,
But spake with such a sadness and so low
We heard not half of what he said. What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?"

   "Nay, monk! what phantom?" answered Percivale.
"The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with his own.
This, from the blessed land of Aromat--
After the day of darkness, when the dead
Went wandering o'er Moriah--the good saint
Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.
And there awhile it bode; and if a man
Could touch or see it, he was healed at once,
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven, and disappeared."

   To whom the monk: "From our old books I know
That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury,
And there the heathen Prince, Arviragus,
Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build;
And there he built with wattles from the marsh
A little lonely church in days of yore,
For so they say, these books of ours, but seem
Mute of this miracle, far as I have read.
But who first saw the holy thing today?"

   "A woman," answered Percivale, "a nun,
And one no further off in blood from me
Than sister; and if ever holy maid
With knees of adoration wore the stone,
A holy maid; though never maiden glowed,
But that was in her earlier maidenhood,
With such a fervent flame of human love,
Which being rudely blunted, glanced and shot
Only to holy things; to prayer and praise
She gave herself, to fast and alms. And yet,
Nun as she was, the scandal of the Court,
Sin against Arthur and the Table Round,
And the strange sound of an adulterous race,
Across the iron grating of her cell
Beat, and she prayed and fasted all the more.

   "And he to whom she told her sins, or what
Her all but utter whiteness held for sin,
A man wellnigh a hundred winters old,
Spake often with her of the Holy Grail,
A legend handed down through five or six,
And each of these a hundred winters old,
From our Lord's time. And when King Arthur made
His Table Round, and all men's hearts became
Clean for a season, surely he had thought
That now the Holy Grail would come again;
But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come,
And heal the world of all their wickedness!
'O Father!' asked the maiden, 'might it come
To me by prayer and fasting?' 'Nay,' said he,
'I know not, for thy heart is pure as snow.'
And so she prayed and fasted, till the sun
Shone, and the wind blew, through her, and I thought
She might have risen and floated when I saw her.

   "For on a day she sent to speak with me.
And when she came to speak, behold her eyes
Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful,
Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful,
Beautiful in the light of holiness.
And 'O my brother, Percivale,' she said,
'Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail:
For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound
As of a silver horn from o'er the hills
Blown, and I thought, "It is not Arthur's use
To hunt by moonlight;" and the slender sound
As from a distance beyond distance grew
Coming upon me--O never harp nor horn,
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,
Was like that music as it came; and then
Streamed through my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colours leaping on the wall;
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Past, and the beam decayed, and from the walls
The rosy quiverings died into the night.
So now the Holy Thing is here again
Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,
And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be healed.'

   "Then leaving the pale nun, I spake of this
To all men; and myself fasted and prayed
Always, and many among us many a week
Fasted and prayed even to the uttermost,
Expectant of the wonder that would be.

   "And one there was among us, ever moved
Among us in white armour, Galahad.
'God make thee good as thou art beautiful,'
Said Arthur, when he dubbed him knight; and none,
In so young youth, was ever made a knight
Till Galahad; and this Galahad, when he heard
My sister's vision, filled me with amaze;
His eyes became so like her own, they seemed
Hers, and himself her brother more than I.

   "Sister or brother none had he; but some
Called him a son of Lancelot, and some said
Begotten by enchantment--chatterers they,
Like birds of passage piping up and down,
That gape for flies--we know not whence they come;
For when was Lancelot wanderingly lewd?

   "But she, the wan sweet maiden, shore away
Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair
Which made a silken mat-work for her feet;
And out of this she plaited broad and long
A strong sword-belt, and wove with silver thread
And crimson in the belt a strange device,
A crimson grail within a silver beam;
And saw the bright boy-knight, and bound it on him,
Saying, 'My knight, my love, my knight of heaven,
O thou, my love, whose love is one with mine,
I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt.
Go forth, for thou shalt see what I have seen,
And break through all, till one will crown thee king
Far in the spiritual city:' and as she spake
She sent the deathless passion in her eyes
Through him, and made him hers, and laid her mind
On him, and he believed in her belief.

   "Then came a year of miracle: O brother,
In our great hall there stood a vacant chair,
Fashioned by Merlin ere he past away,
And carven with strange figures; and in and out
The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll
Of letters in a tongue no man could read.
And Merlin called it 'The Siege perilous,'
Perilous for good and ill; 'for there,' he said,
'No man could sit but he should lose himself:'
And once by misadvertence Merlin sat
In his own chair, and so was lost; but he,
Galahad, when he heard of Merlin's doom,
Cried, 'If I lose myself, I save myself!'

   "Then on a summer night it came to pass,
While the great banquet lay along the hall,
That Galahad would sit down in Merlin's chair.

   "And all at once, as there we sat, we heard
A cracking and a riving of the roofs,
And rending, and a blast, and overhead
Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.
And in the blast there smote along the hall
A beam of light seven times more clear than day:
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail
All over covered with a luminous cloud,
And none might see who bare it, and it past.
But every knight beheld his fellow's face
As in a glory, and all the knights arose,
And staring each at other like dumb men
Stood, till I found a voice and sware a vow.

   "I sware a vow before them all, that I,
Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride
A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it,
Until I found and saw it, as the nun
My sister saw it; and Galahad sware the vow,
And good Sir Bors, our Lancelot's cousin, sware,
And Lancelot sware, and many among the knights,
And Gawain sware, and louder than the rest."

   Then spake the monk Ambrosius, asking him,
"What said the King? Did Arthur take the vow?"

   "Nay, for my lord," said Percivale, "the King,
Was not in hall: for early that same day,
Scaped through a cavern from a bandit hold,
An outraged maiden sprang into the hall
Crying on help: for all her shining hair
Was smeared with earth, and either milky arm
Red-rent with hooks of bramble, and all she wore
Torn as a sail that leaves the rope is torn
In tempest: so the King arose and went
To smoke the scandalous hive of those wild bees
That made such honey in his realm. Howbeit
Some little of this marvel he too saw,
Returning o'er the plain that then began
To darken under Camelot; whence the King
Looked up, calling aloud, 'Lo, there! the roofs
Of our great hall are rolled in thunder-smoke!
Pray Heaven, they be not smitten by the bolt.'
For dear to Arthur was that hall of ours,
As having there so oft with all his knights
Feasted, and as the stateliest under heaven.

   "O brother, had you known our mighty hall,
Which Merlin built for Arthur long ago!
For all the sacred mount of Camelot,
And all the dim rich city, roof by roof,
Tower after tower, spire beyond spire,
By grove, and garden-lawn, and rushing brook,
Climbs to the mighty hall that Merlin built.
And four great zones of sculpture, set betwixt
With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall:
And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,
And in the second men are slaying beasts,
And on the third are warriors, perfect men,
And on the fourth are men with growing wings,
And over all one statue in the mould
Of Arthur, made by Merlin, with a crown,
And peaked wings pointed to the Northern Star.
And eastward fronts the statue, and the crown
And both the wings are made of gold, and flame
At sunrise till the people in far fields,
Wasted so often by the heathen hordes,
Behold it, crying, 'We have still a King.'

   "And, brother, had you known our hall within,
Broader and higher than any in all the lands!
Where twelve great windows blazon Arthur's wars,
And all the light that falls upon the board
Streams through the twelve great battles of our King.
Nay, one there is, and at the eastern end,
Wealthy with wandering lines of mount and mere,
Where Arthur finds the brand Excalibur.
And also one to the west, and counter to it,
And blank: and who shall blazon it? when and how?--
O there, perchance, when all our wars are done,
The brand Excalibur will be cast away.

   "So to this hall full quickly rode the King,
In horror lest the work by Merlin wrought,
Dreamlike, should on the sudden vanish, wrapt
In unremorseful folds of rolling fire.
And in he rode, and up I glanced, and saw
The golden dragon sparkling over all:
And many of those who burnt the hold, their arms
Hacked, and their foreheads grimed with smoke, and seared,
Followed, and in among bright faces, ours,
Full of the vision, prest: and then the King
Spake to me, being nearest, 'Percivale,'
(Because the hall was all in tumult--some
Vowing, and some protesting), 'what is this?'

   "O brother, when I told him what had chanced,
My sister's vision, and the rest, his face
Darkened, as I have seen it more than once,
When some brave deed seemed to be done in vain,
Darken; and 'Woe is me, my knights,' he cried,
'Had I been here, ye had not sworn the vow.'
Bold was mine answer, 'Had thyself been here,
My King, thou wouldst have sworn.' 'Yea, yea,' said he,
'Art thou so bold and hast not seen the Grail?'

   "'Nay, Lord, I heard the sound, I saw the light,
But since I did not see the Holy Thing,
I sware a vow to follow it till I saw.'

   "Then when he asked us, knight by knight, if any
Had seen it, all their answers were as one:
'Nay, Lord, and therefore have we sworn our vows.'

   "'Lo now,' said Arthur, 'have ye seen a cloud?
What go ye into the wilderness to see?'

   "Then Galahad on the sudden, and in a voice
Shrilling along the hall to Arthur, called
'But I, Sir Arthur, saw the Holy Grail,
I saw the Holy Grail and heard a cry--
"O Galahad, and O Galahad, follow me."'

   "' Ah, Galahad, Galahad,' said the King, 'for such
As thou art is the vision, not for these.
Thy holy nun and thou have seen a sign--
Holier is none, my Percivale, than she--
A sign to maim this Order which I made.
But ye, that follow but the leader's bell'
(Brother, the King was hard upon his knights)
'Taliessin is our fullest throat of song,
And one hath sung and all the dumb will sing.
Lancelot is Lancelot, and hath overborne
Five knights at once, and every younger knight,
Unproven, holds himself as Lancelot,
Till overborne by one, he learns--and ye,
What are ye? Galahads?--no, nor Percivales'
(For thus it pleased the King to range me close
After Sir Galahad); 'nay,' said he, 'but men
With strength and will to right the wronged, of power
To lay the sudden heads of violence flat,
Knights that in twelve great battles splashed and dyed
The strong White Horse in his own heathen blood--
But one hath seen, and all the blind will see.
Go, since your vows are sacred, being made:
Yet--for ye know the cries of all my realm
Pass through this hall--how often, O my knights,
Your places being vacant at my side,
This chance of noble deeds will come and go
Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires
Lost in the quagmire! Many of you, yea most,
Return no more: ye think I show myself
Too dark a prophet: come now, let us meet
The morrow morn once more in full field
Of gracious pastime, that once more the King,
Before ye leave him for this Quest, may count
The yet-unbroken strength of all his knights,
Rejoicing in that Order which he made.'

   "So when the sun broke next from under ground,
All the great table of our Arthur closed
And clashed in such a tourney and so full,
So many lances broken--never yet
Had Camelot seen the like, since Arthur came;
And I myself and Galahad, for a strength
Was in us from the vision, overthrew
So many knights that all the people cried,
And almost burst the barriers in their heat,
Shouting, 'Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale!'

   "But when the next day brake from under ground--
O brother, had you known our Camelot,
Built by old kings, age after age, so old
The King himself had fears that it would fall,
So strange, and rich, and dim; for where the roofs
Tottered toward each other in the sky,
Met foreheads all along the street of those
Who watched us pass; and lower, and where the long
Rich galleries, lady-laden, weighed the necks
Of dragons clinging to the crazy walls,
Thicker than drops from thunder, showers of flowers
Fell as we past; and men and boys astride
On wyvern, lion, dragon, griffin, swan,
At all the corners, named us each by name,
Calling 'God speed!' but in the ways below
The knights and ladies wept, and rich and poor
Wept, and the King himself could hardly speak
For grief, and all in middle street the Queen,
Who rode by Lancelot, wailed and shrieked aloud,
'This madness has come on us for our sins.'
So to the Gate of the three Queens we came,
Where Arthur's wars are rendered mystically,
And thence departed every one his way.

   "And I was lifted up in heart, and thought
Of all my late-shown prowess in the lists,
How my strong lance had beaten down the knights,
So many and famous names; and never yet
Had heaven appeared so blue, nor earth so green,
For all my blood danced in me, and I knew
That I should light upon the Holy Grail.

   "Thereafter, the dark warning of our King,
That most of us would follow wandering fires,
Came like a driving gloom across my mind.
Then every evil word I had spoken once,
And every evil thought I had thought of old,
And every evil deed I ever did,
Awoke and cried, 'This Quest is not for thee.'
And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself
Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns,
And I was thirsty even unto death;
And I, too, cried, 'This Quest is not for thee.'

   "And on I rode, and when I thought my thirst
Would slay me, saw deep lawns, and then a brook,
With one sharp rapid, where the crisping white
Played ever back upon the sloping wave,
And took both ear and eye; and o'er the brook
Were apple-trees, and apples by the brook
Fallen, and on the lawns. 'I will rest here,'
I said, 'I am not worthy of the Quest;'
But even while I drank the brook, and ate
The goodly apples, all these things at once
Fell into dust, and I was left alone,
And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns.

   "And then behold a woman at a door
Spinning; and fair the house whereby she sat,
And kind the woman's eyes and innocent,
And all her bearing gracious; and she rose
Opening her arms to meet me, as who should say,
'Rest here;' but when I touched her, lo! she, too,
Fell into dust and nothing, and the house
Became no better than a broken shed,
And in it a dead babe; and also this
Fell into dust, and I was left alone.

   "And on I rode, and greater was my thirst.
Then flashed a yellow gleam across the world,
And where it smote the plowshare in the field,
The plowman left his plowing, and fell down
Before it; where it glittered on her pail,
The milkmaid left her milking, and fell down
Before it, and I knew not why, but thought
'The sun is rising,' though the sun had risen.
Then was I ware of one that on me moved
In golden armour with a crown of gold
About a casque all jewels; and his horse
In golden armour jewelled everywhere:
And on the splendour came, flashing me blind;
And seemed to me the Lord of all the world,
Being so huge. But when I thought he meant
To crush me, moving on me, lo! he, too,
Opened his arms to embrace me as he came,
And up I went and touched him, and he, too,
Fell into dust, and I was left alone
And wearying in a land of sand and thorns.

   "And I rode on and found a mighty hill,
And on the top, a city walled: the spires
Pricked with incredible pinnacles into heaven.
And by the gateway stirred a crowd; and these
Cried to me climbing, 'Welcome, Percivale!
Thou mightiest and thou purest among men!'
And glad was I and clomb, but found at top
No man, nor any voice. And thence I past
Far through a ruinous city, and I saw
That man had once dwelt there; but there I found
Only one man of an exceeding age.
'Where is that goodly company,' said I,
'That so cried out upon me?' and he had
Scarce any voice to answer, and yet gasped,
'Whence and what art thou?' and even as he spoke
Fell into dust, and disappeared, and I
Was left alone once more, and cried in grief,
'Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself
And touch it, it will crumble into dust.'

   "And thence I dropt into a lowly vale,
Low as the hill was high, and where the vale
Was lowest, found a chapel, and thereby
A holy hermit in a hermitage,
To whom I told my phantoms, and he said:

   "'O son, thou hast not true humility,
The highest virtue, mother of them all;
For when the Lord of all things made Himself
Naked of glory for His mortal change,
"Take thou my robe," she said, "for all is thine,"
And all her form shone forth with sudden light
So that the angels were amazed, and she
Followed Him down, and like a flying star
Led on the gray-haired wisdom of the east;
But her thou hast not known: for what is this
Thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy sins?
Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself
As Galahad.' When the hermit made an end,
In silver armour suddenly Galahad shone
Before us, and against the chapel door
Laid lance, and entered, and we knelt in prayer.
And there the hermit slaked my burning thirst,
And at the sacring of the mass I saw
The holy elements alone; but he,
'Saw ye no more? I, Galahad, saw the Grail,
The Holy Grail, descend upon the shrine:
I saw the fiery face as of a child
That smote itself into the bread, and went;
And hither am I come; and never yet
Hath what thy sister taught me first to see,
This Holy Thing, failed from my side, nor come
Covered, but moving with me night and day,
Fainter by day, but always in the night
Blood-red, and sliding down the blackened marsh
Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top
Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below
Blood-red. And in the strength of this I rode,
Shattering all evil customs everywhere,
And past through Pagan realms, and made them mine,
And clashed with Pagan hordes, and bore them down,
And broke through all, and in the strength of this
Come victor. But my time is hard at hand,
And hence I go; and one will crown me king
Far in the spiritual city; and come thou, too,
For thou shalt see the vision when I go.'

   "While thus he spake, his eye, dwelling on mine,
Drew me, with power upon me, till I grew
One with him, to believe as he believed.
Then, when the day began to wane, we went.

   "There rose a hill that none but man could climb,
Scarred with a hundred wintry water-courses--
Storm at the top, and when we gained it, storm
Round us and death; for every moment glanced
His silver arms and gloomed: so quick and thick
The lightnings here and there to left and right
Struck, till the dry old trunks about us, dead,
Yea, rotten with a hundred years of death,
Sprang into fire: and at the base we found
On either hand, as far as eye could see,
A great black swamp and of an evil smell,
Part black, part whitened with the bones of men,
Not to be crost, save that some ancient king
Had built a way, where, linked with many a bridge,
A thousand piers ran into the great Sea.
And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge,
And every bridge as quickly as he crost
Sprang into fire and vanished, though I yearned
To follow; and thrice above him all the heavens
Opened and blazed with thunder such as seemed
Shoutings of all the sons of God: and first
At once I saw him far on the great Sea,
In silver-shining armour starry-clear;
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung
Clothed in white samite or a luminous cloud.
And with exceeding swiftness ran the boat,
If boat it were--I saw not whence it came.
And when the heavens opened and blazed again
Roaring, I saw him like a silver star--
And had he set the sail, or had the boat
Become a living creature clad with wings?
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung
Redder than any rose, a joy to me,
For now I knew the veil had been withdrawn.
Then in a moment when they blazed again
Opening, I saw the least of little stars
Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star
I saw the spiritual city and all her spires
And gateways in a glory like one pearl--
No larger, though the goal of all the saints--
Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot
A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there
Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail,
Which never eyes on earth again shall see.
Then fell the floods of heaven drowning the deep.
And how my feet recrost the deathful ridge
No memory in me lives; but that I touched
The chapel-doors at dawn I know; and thence
Taking my war-horse from the holy man,
Glad that no phantom vext me more, returned
To whence I came, the gate of Arthur's wars."

   "O brother," asked Ambrosius--"for in sooth
These ancient books--and they would win thee--teem,
Only I find not there this Holy Grail,
With miracles and marvels like to these,
Not all unlike; which oftentime I read,
Who read but on my breviary with ease,
Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass
Down to the little thorpe that lies so close,
And almost plastered like a martin's nest
To these old walls--and mingle with our folk;
And knowing every honest face of theirs
As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep,
And every homely secret in their hearts,
Delight myself with gossip and old wives,
And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in,
And mirthful sayings, children of the place,
That have no meaning half a league away:
Or lulling random squabbles when they rise,
Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross,
Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine,
Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs--
O brother, saving this Sir Galahad,
Came ye on none but phantoms in your quest,
No man, no woman?"

                     Then Sir Percivale:
"All men, to one so bound by such a vow,
And women were as phantoms. O, my brother,
Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee
How far I faltered from my quest and vow?
For after I had lain so many nights,
A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake,
In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan
And meagre, and the vision had not come;
And then I chanced upon a goodly town
With one great dwelling in the middle of it;
Thither I made, and there was I disarmed
By maidens each as fair as any flower:
But when they led me into hall, behold,
The Princess of that castle was the one,
Brother, and that one only, who had ever
Made my heart leap; for when I moved of old
A slender page about her father's hall,
And she a slender maiden, all my heart
Went after her with longing: yet we twain
Had never kissed a kiss, or vowed a vow.
And now I came upon her once again,
And one had wedded her, and he was dead,
And all his land and wealth and state were hers.
And while I tarried, every day she set
A banquet richer than the day before
By me; for all her longing and her will
Was toward me as of old; till one fair morn,
I walking to and fro beside a stream
That flashed across her orchard underneath
Her castle-walls, she stole upon my walk,
And calling me the greatest of all knights,
Embraced me, and so kissed me the first time,
And gave herself and all her wealth to me.
Then I remembered Arthur's warning word,
That most of us would follow wandering fires,
And the Quest faded in my heart. Anon,
The heads of all her people drew to me,
With supplication both of knees and tongue:
'We have heard of thee: thou art our greatest knight,
Our Lady says it, and we well believe:
Wed thou our Lady, and rule over us,
And thou shalt be as Arthur in our land.'
O me, my brother! but one night my vow
Burnt me within, so that I rose and fled,
But waild and wept, and hated mine own self,
And even the Holy Quest, and all but her;
Then after I was joined with Galahad
Cared not for her, nor anything upon earth."

   Then said the monk, "Poor men, when yule is cold,
Must be content to sit by little fires.
And this am I, so that ye care for me
Ever so little; yea, and blest be Heaven
That brought thee here to this poor house of ours
Where all the brethren are so hard, to warm
My cold heart with a friend: but O the pity
To find thine own first love once more--to hold,
Hold her a wealthy bride within thine arms,
Or all but hold, and then--cast her aside,
Foregoing all her sweetness, like a weed.
For we that want the warmth of double life,
We that are plagued with dreams of something sweet
Beyond all sweetness in a life so rich,--
Ah, blessed Lord, I speak too earthlywise,
Seeing I never strayed beyond the cell,
But live like an old badger in his earth,
With earth about him everywhere, despite
All fast and penance. Saw ye none beside,
None of your knights?"

                        "Yea so," said Percivale:
"One night my pathway swerving east, I saw
The pelican on the casque of our Sir Bors
All in the middle of the rising moon:
And toward him spurred, and hailed him, and he me,
And each made joy of either; then he asked,
'Where is he? hast thou seen him--Lancelot?-- Once,'
Said good Sir Bors, 'he dashed across me--mad,
And maddening what he rode: and when I cried,
"Ridest thou then so hotly on a quest
So holy," Lancelot shouted, "Stay me not!
I have been the sluggard, and I ride apace,
For now there is a lion in the way."
So vanished.'

                  "Then Sir Bors had ridden on
Softly, and sorrowing for our Lancelot,
Because his former madness, once the talk
And scandal of our table, had returned;
For Lancelot's kith and kin so worship him
That ill to him is ill to them; to Bors
Beyond the rest: he well had been content
Not to have seen, so Lancelot might have seen,
The Holy Cup of healing; and, indeed,
Being so clouded with his grief and love,
Small heart was his after the Holy Quest:
If God would send the vision, well: if not,
The Quest and he were in the hands of Heaven.

   "And then, with small adventure met, Sir Bors
Rode to the lonest tract of all the realm,
And found a people there among their crags,
Our race and blood, a remnant that were left
Paynim amid their circles, and the stones
They pitch up straight to heaven: and their wise men
Were strong in that old magic which can trace
The wandering of the stars, and scoffed at him
And this high Quest as at a simple thing:
Told him he followed--almost Arthur's words--
A mocking fire: 'what other fire than he,
Whereby the blood beats, and the blossom blows,
And the sea rolls, and all the world is warmed?'
And when his answer chafed them, the rough crowd,
Hearing he had a difference with their priests,
Seized him, and bound and plunged him into a cell
Of great piled stones; and lying bounden there
In darkness through innumerable hours
He heard the hollow-ringing heavens sweep
Over him till by a miracle--what else?--
Heavy as it was, a great stone slipt and fell,
Such as no wind could move: and through the gap
Glimmered the streaming scud: then came a night
Still as the day was loud; and through the gap
The seven clear stars of Arthur's Table Round--
For, brother, so one night, because they roll
Through such a round in heaven, we named the stars,
Rejoicing in ourselves and in our King--
And these, like bright eyes of familiar friends,
In on him shone: 'And then to me, to me,'
Said good Sir Bors, 'beyond all hopes of mine,
Who scarce had prayed or asked it for myself--
Across the seven clear stars--O grace to me--
In colour like the fingers of a hand
Before a burning taper, the sweet Grail
Glided and past, and close upon it pealed
A sharp quick thunder.' Afterwards, a maid,
Who kept our holy faith among her kin
In secret, entering, loosed and let him go."

   To whom the monk: "And I remember now
That pelican on the casque: Sir Bors it was
Who spake so low and sadly at our board;
And mighty reverent at our grace was he:
A square-set man and honest; and his eyes,
An out-door sign of all the warmth within,
Smiled with his lips--a smile beneath a cloud,
But heaven had meant it for a sunny one:
Ay, ay, Sir Bors, who else? But when ye reached
The city, found ye all your knights returned,
Or was there sooth in Arthur's prophecy,
Tell me, and what said each, and what the King?"

   Then answered Percivale: "And that can I,
Brother, and truly; since the living words
Of so great men as Lancelot and our King
Pass not from door to door and out again,
But sit within the house. O, when we reached
The city, our horses stumbling as they trode
On heaps of ruin, hornless unicorns,
Cracked basilisks, and splintered cockatrices,
And shattered talbots, which had left the stones
Raw, that they fell from, brought us to the hall.

   "And there sat Arthur on the daïs-throne,
And those that had gone out upon the Quest,
Wasted and worn, and but a tithe of them,
And those that had not, stood before the King,
Who, when he saw me, rose, and bad me hail,
Saying, 'A welfare in thine eye reproves
Our fear of some disastrous chance for thee
On hill, or plain, at sea, or flooding ford.
So fierce a gale made havoc here of late
Among the strange devices of our kings;
Yea, shook this newer, stronger hall of ours,
And from the statue Merlin moulded for us
Half-wrenched a golden wing; but now--the Quest,
This vision--hast thou seen the Holy Cup,
That Joseph brought of old to Glastonbury?'

   "So when I told him all thyself hast heard,
Ambrosius, and my fresh but fixt resolve
To pass away into the quiet life,
He answered not, but, sharply turning, asked
Of Gawain, 'Gawain, was this Quest for thee?'

   "'Nay, lord,' said Gawain, 'not for such as I.
Therefore I communed with a saintly man,
Who made me sure the Quest was not for me;
For I was much awearied of the Quest:
But found a silk pavilion in a field,
And merry maidens in it; and then this gale
Tore my pavilion from the tenting-pin,
And blew my merry maidens all about
With all discomfort; yea, and but for this,
My twelvemonth and a day were pleasant to me.'

   "He ceased; and Arthur turned to whom at first
He saw not, for Sir Bors, on entering, pushed
Athwart the throng to Lancelot, caught his hand,
Held it, and there, half-hidden by him, stood,
Until the King espied him, saying to him,
'Hail, Bors! if ever loyal man and true
Could see it, thou hast seen the Grail;' and Bors,
'Ask me not, for I may not speak of it:
I saw it;' and the tears were in his eyes.

   "Then there remained but Lancelot, for the rest
Spake but of sundry perils in the storm;
Perhaps, like him of Cana in Holy Writ,
Our Arthur kept his best until the last;
'Thou, too, my Lancelot,' asked the King, 'my friend,
Our mightiest, hath this Quest availed for thee?'

   "'Our mightiest!' answered Lancelot, with a groan;
'O King!'--and when he paused, methought I spied
A dying fire of madness in his eyes--
'O King, my friend, if friend of thine I be,
Happier are those that welter in their sin,
Swine in mud, that cannot see for slime,
Slime of the ditch: but in me lived a sin
So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure,
Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung
Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower
And poisonous grew together, each as each,
Not to be plucked asunder; and when thy knights
Sware, I sware with them only in the hope
That could I touch or see the Holy Grail
They might be plucked asunder. Then I spake
To one most holy saint, who wept and said,
That save they could be plucked asunder, all
My quest were but in vain; to whom I vowed
That I would work according as he willed.
And forth I went, and while I yearned and strove
To tear the twain asunder in my heart,
My madness came upon me as of old,
And whipt me into waste fields far away;
There was I beaten down by little men,
Mean knights, to whom the moving of my sword
And shadow of my spear had been enow
To scare them from me once; and then I came
All in my folly to the naked shore,
Wide flats, where nothing but coarse grasses grew;
But such a blast, my King, began to blow,
So loud a blast along the shore and sea,
Ye could not hear the waters for the blast,
Though heapt in mounds and ridges all the sea
Drove like a cataract, and all the sand
Swept like a river, and the clouded heavens
Were shaken with the motion and the sound.
And blackening in the sea-foam swayed a boat,
Half-swallowed in it, anchored with a chain;
And in my madness to myself I said,
"I will embark and I will lose myself,
And in the great sea wash away my sin."
I burst the chain, I sprang into the boat.
Seven days I drove along the dreary deep,
And with me drove the moon and all the stars;
And the wind fell, and on the seventh night
I heard the shingle grinding in the surge,
And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up,
Behold, the enchanted towers of Carbonek,
A castle like a rock upon a rock,
With chasm-like portals open to the sea,
And steps that met the breaker! there was none
Stood near it but a lion on each side
That kept the entry, and the moon was full.
Then from the boat I leapt, and up the stairs.
There drew my sword. With sudden-flaring manes
Those two great beasts rose upright like a man,
Each gript a shoulder, and I stood between;
And, when I would have smitten them, heard a voice,
"Doubt not, go forward; if thou doubt, the beasts
Will tear thee piecemeal." Then with violence
The sword was dashed from out my hand, and fell.
And up into the sounding hall I past;
But nothing in the sounding hall I saw,
No bench nor table, painting on the wall
Or shield of knight; only the rounded moon
Through the tall oriel on the rolling sea.
But always in the quiet house I heard,
Clear as a lark, high o'er me as a lark,
A sweet voice singing in the topmost tower
To the eastward: up I climbed a thousand steps
With pain: as in a dream I seemed to climb
For ever: at the last I reached a door,
A light was in the crannies, and I heard,
"Glory and joy and honour to our Lord
And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail."
Then in my madness I essayed the door;
It gave; and through a stormy glare, a heat
As from a seventimes-heated furnace, I,
Blasted and burnt, and blinded as I was,
With such a fierceness that I swooned away--
O, yet methought I saw the Holy Grail,
All palled in crimson samite, and around
Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes.
And but for all my madness and my sin,
And then my swooning, I had sworn I saw
That which I saw; but what I saw was veiled
And covered; and this Quest was not for me.'

   "So speaking, and here ceasing, Lancelot left
The hall long silent, till Sir Gawain-- nay,
Brother, I need not tell thee foolish words,--
A reckless and irreverent knight was he,
Now boldened by the silence of his King,--
Well, I will tell thee: 'O King, my liege,' he said,
'Hath Gawain failed in any quest of thine?
When have I stinted stroke in foughten field?
But as for thine, my good friend Percivale,
Thy holy nun and thou have driven men mad,
Yea, made our mightiest madder than our least.
But by mine eyes and by mine ears I swear,
I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat,
And thrice as blind as any noonday owl,
To holy virgins in their ecstacies,
Henceforward.'

                  "'Deafer,' said the blameless King,
'Gawain, and blinder unto holy things
Hope not to make thyself by idle vows,
Being too blind to have desire to see.
But if indeed there came a sign from heaven,
Blessed are Bors, Lancelot and Percivale,
For these have seen according to their sight.
For every fiery prophet in old times,
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music through them, could but speak
His music by the framework and the chord;
And as ye saw it ye have spoken truth.

   "'Nay--but thou errest, Lancelot: never yet
Could all of true and noble in knight and man
Twine round one sin, whatever it might be,
With such a closeness, but apart there grew,
Save that he were the swine thou spakest of,
Some root of knighthood and pure nobleness;
Whereto see thou, that it may bear its flower.

   "'And spake I not too truly, O my knights?
Was I too dark a prophet when I said
To those who went upon the Holy Quest,
That most of them would follow wandering fires,
Lost in the quagmire?--lost to me and gone,
And left me gazing at a barren board,
And a lean Order--scarce returned a tithe--
And out of those to whom the vision came
My greatest hardly will believe he saw;
Another hath beheld it afar off,
And leaving human wrongs to right themselves,
Cares but to pass into the silent life.
And one hath had the vision face to face,
And now his chair desires him here in vain,
However they may crown him otherwhere.

   "'And some among you held, that if the King
Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow:
Not easily, seeing that the King must guard
That which he rules, and is but as the hind
To whom a space of land is given to plow.
Who may not wander from the allotted field
Before his work be done; but, being done,
Let visions of the night or of the day
Come, as they will; and many a time they come,
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,
This air that smites his forehead is not air
But vision--yea, his very hand and foot--
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen.'

   "So spake the king: I knew not all he meant."

---

---

THE LAST TOURNAMENT

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood
Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.
And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand,
And from the crown thereof a carcanet
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,
Came Tristram, saying, "Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?"

    For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
Far down beneath a winding wall of rock
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead,
From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,
Clutched at the crag, and started through mid air
Bearing an eagle's nest: and through the tree
Rushed ever a rainy wind, and through the wind
Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree
Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,
This ruby necklace thrice around her neck,
And all unscarred from beak or talon, brought
A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took,
Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen
But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms
Received, and after loved it tenderly,
And named it Nestling; so forgot herself
A moment, and her cares; till that young life
Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold
Past from her; and in time the carcanet
Vext her with plaintive memories of the child:
So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,
"Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence,
And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize."

    To whom the King, "Peace to thine eagle-borne
Dead nestling, and this honour after death,
Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse
Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone
Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear."

    "Would rather you had let them fall," she cried,
"Plunge and be lost--ill-fated as they were,
A bitterness to me!--ye look amazed,
Not knowing they were lost as soon as given--
Slid from my hands, when I was leaning out
Above the river--that unhappy child
Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that they came
Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,
But the sweet body of a maiden babe.
Perchance--who knows?--the purest of thy knights
May win them for the purest of my maids."

   She ended, and the cry of a great jousts
With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways
From Camelot in among the faded fields
To furthest towers; and everywhere the knights
Armed for the day of glory before the King.

    But on the hither side of that loud morn
Into the hall staggered, his visage ribbed
From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his nose
Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one hand off,
And one with shattered fingers dangling lame,
A churl, to whom indignantly the King,

    "My churl, for whom Christ died, what evil beast
Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face? or fiend?
Man was it who marred heaven's image in thee thus?"

    Then, sputtering through the hedge of splintered teeth,
Yet strangers to the tongue, with blunt stump
Pitch-blackened sawing the air, said the maimed churl,

    "He took them and he drave them to his tower--
Some hold he was a table-knight of thine--
A hundred goodly ones--the Red Knight, he--
Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight
Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower;
And when I called upon thy name as one
That doest right by gentle and by churl,
Maimed me and mauled, and would outright have slain,
Save that he sware me to a message, saying,
'Tell thou the king and all his liars, that I
Have founded my Round Table in the North,
And whatsoever his own knights have sworn
My knights have sworn the counter to it--and say
My tower is full of harlots, like his court,
But mine are worthier, seeing they profess
To be none other than themselves--and say
My knights are all adulterers like his own,
But mine are truer, seeing they profess
To be none other; and say his hour is come,
The heathen are upon him, his long lance
Broken, and his Excalibur a straw.'"

    Then Arthur turned to Kay the seneschal,
"Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously
Like a king's heir, till all his hurts be whole.
The heathen--but that ever-climbing wave,
Hurled back again so often in empty foam,
Hath lain for years at rest--and renegades,
Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom
The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere,
Friends, through your manhood and your fëalty,--now
Make their last head like Satan in the North.
My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower
Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds,
Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved,
The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore.
But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place
Enchaired tomorrow, arbitrate the field;
For wherefore shouldst thou care to mingle with it,
Only to yield my Queen her own again?
Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it well?"

    Thereto Sir Lancelot answered, "It is well:
Yet better if the King abide, and leave
The leading of his younger knights to me.
Else, for the King has willed it, it is well."

    Then Arthur rose and Lancelot followed him,
And while they stood without the doors, the King
Turned to him saying, "Is it then so well?
Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he
Of whom was written, 'A sound is in his ears'?
The foot that loiters, bidden go,--the glance
That only seems half-loyal to command,--
A manner somewhat fallen from reverence--
Or have I dreamed the bearing of our knights
Tells of a manhood ever less and lower?
Or whence the fear lest this my realm, upreared,
By noble deeds at one with noble vows,
From flat confusion and brute violences,
Reel back into the beast, and be no more?"

    He spoke, and taking all his younger knights,
Down the slope city rode, and sharply turned
North by the gate. In her high bower the Queen,
Working a tapestry, lifted up her head,
Watched her lord pass, and knew not that she sighed.
Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme
Of bygone Merlin, "Where is he who knows?
From the great deep to the great deep he goes."

    But when the morning of a tournament,
By these in earnest those in mockery called
The Tournament of the Dead Innocence,
Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot,
Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey,
The words of Arthur flying shrieked, arose,
And down a streetway hung with folds of pure
White samite, and by fountains running wine,
Where children sat in white with cups of gold,
Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps
Ascending, filled his double-dragoned chair.

      He glanced and saw the stately galleries,
Dame, damsel, each through worship of their Queen
White-robed in honour of the stainless child,
And some with scattered jewels, like a bank
Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of fire.
He looked but once, and vailed his eyes again.

    The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream
To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll
Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began:
And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf
And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume
Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one
Who sits and gazes on a faded fire,
When all the goodlier guests are past away,
Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists.
He saw the laws that ruled the tournament
Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down
Before his throne of arbitration cursed
The dead babe and the follies of the King;
And once the laces of a helmet cracked,
And showed him, like a vermin in its hole,
Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard
The voice that billowed round the barriers roar
An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,
But newly entered, taller than the rest,
And armoured all in forest green, whereon
There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,
And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,
With ever-scattering berries, and on shield
A spear, a harp, a bugle--Tristram--late
From overseas in Brittany returned,
And marriage with a princess of that realm,
Isolt the White--Sir Tristram of the Woods--
Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain
His own against him, and now yearned to shake
The burthen off his heart in one full shock
With Tristram even to death: his strong hands gript
And dinted the gilt dragons right and left,
Until he groaned for wrath--so many of those,
That ware their ladies' colours on the casque,
Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds,
And there with gibes and flickering mockeries
Stood, while he muttered, "Craven crests! O shame!
What faith have these in whom they sware to love?
The glory of our Round Table is no more."

    So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems,
Not speaking other word than "Hast thou won?
Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand
Wherewith thou takest this, is red!" to whom
Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot's languorous mood,
Made answer, "Ay, but wherefore toss me this
Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound?
Let be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength of heart
And might of limb, but mainly use and skill,
Are winners in this pastime of our King.
My hand--belike the lance hath dript upon it--
No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight,
Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield,
Great brother, thou nor I have made the world;
Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine."

    And Tristram round the gallery made his horse
Caracole; then bowed his homage, bluntly saying,
"Fair damsels, each to him who worships each
Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold
This day my Queen of Beauty is nor here."
And most of these were mute, some angered, one
Murmuring, "All courtesy is dead," and one,
"The glory of our Round Table is no more."

    Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,
And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day
Went glooming down in wet and weariness:
But under her black brows a swarthy one
Laughed shrilly, crying, "Praise the patient saints,
Our one white day of Innocence hath past,
Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.
The snowdrop only, flowering through the year,
Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide.
Come--let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen's
And Lancelot's, at this night's solemnity
With all the kindlier colours of the field."

    So dame and damsel glittered at the feast
Variously gay: for he that tells the tale
Likened them, saying, as when an hour of cold
Falls on the mountain in midsummer snows,
And all the purple slopes of mountain flowers
Pass under white, till the warm hour returns
With veer of wind, and all are flowers again;
So dame and damsel cast the simple white,
And glowing in all colours, the live grass,
Rose-campion, bluebell, kingcup, poppy, glanced
About the revels, and with mirth so loud
Beyond all use, that, half-amazed, the Queen,
And wroth at Tristram and the lawless jousts,
Brake up their sports, then slowly to her bower
Parted, and in her bosom pain was lord.

    And little Dagonet on the morrow morn,
High over all the yellowing Autumn-tide,
Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.
Then Tristram saying, "Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?"
Wheeled round on either heel, Dagonet replied,
"Belike for lack of wiser company;
Or being fool, and seeing too much wit
Makes the world rotten, why, belike I skip
To know myself the wisest knight of all."
"Ay, fool," said Tristram, "but 'tis eating dry
To dance without a catch, a roundelay
To dance to." Then he twangled on his harp,
And while he twangled little Dagonet stood
Quiet as any water-sodden log
Stayed in the wandering warble of a brook;
But when the twangling ended, skipt again;
And being asked, "Why skipt ye not, Sir Fool?"
Made answer, "I had liefer twenty years
Skip to the broken music of my brains
Than any broken music thou canst make."
Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come,
"Good now, what music have I broken, fool?"
And little Dagonet, skipping, "Arthur, the King's;
For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt,
Thou makest broken music with thy bride,
Her daintier namesake down in Brittany--
And so thou breakest Arthur's music too."
"Save for that broken music in thy brains,
Sir Fool," said Tristram, "I would break thy head.
Fool, I came late, the heathen wars were o'er,
The life had flown, we sware but by the shell--
I am but a fool to reason with a fool--
Come, thou art crabbed and sour: but lean me down,
Sir Dagonet, one of thy long asses' ears,
And harken if my music be not true.

    '"Free love--free field--we love but while we may:
The woods are hushed, their music is no more:
The leaf is dead, the yearning past away:
New leaf, new life--the days of frost are o'er:
New life, new love, to suit the newer day:
New loves are sweet as those that went before:
Free love--free field--we love but while we may."

    "Ye might have moved slow-measure to my tune,
Not stood stockstill. I made it in the woods,
And heard it ring as true as tested gold."

    But Dagonet with one foot poised in his hand,
"Friend, did ye mark that fountain yesterday
Made to run wine?--but this had run itself
All out like a long life to a sour end--
And them that round it sat with golden cups
To hand the wine to whosoever came--
The twelve small damosels white as Innocence,
In honour of poor Innocence the babe,
Who left the gems which Innocence the Queen
Lent to the King, and Innocence the King
Gave for a prize--and one of those white slips
Handed her cup and piped, the pretty one,
"Drink, drink, Sir Fool," and thereupon I drank,
Spat--pish--the cup was gold, the draught was mud."

      And Tristram, "Was it muddier than thy gibes?
Is all the laughter gone dead out of thee?--
Not marking how the knighthood mock thee, fool--
"Fear God: honour the King--his one true knight--
Sole follower of the vows"--for here be they
Who knew thee swine enow before I came,
Smuttier than blasted grain: but when the King
Had made thee fool, thy vanity so shot up
It frighted all free fool from out thy heart;
Which left thee less than fool, and less than swine,
A naked aught--yet swine I hold thee still,
For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine."

    And little Dagonet mincing with his feet,
"Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck
In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some touch
Of music, since I care not for thy pearls.
Swine? I have wallowed, I have washed--the world
Is flesh and shadow--I have had my day.
The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind
Hath fouled me--an I wallowed, then I washed--
I have had my day and my philosophies--
And thank the Lord I am King Arthur's fool.
Swine, say ye? swine, goats, asses, rams and geese
Trooped round a Paynim harper once, who thrummed
On such a wire as musically as thou
Some such a fine song--but never a king's fool."

    And Tristram, "Then were swine, goats, asses, geese
The wiser fools, seeing thy Paynim bard
Had such a mastery of his mystery
That he could harp his wife up out of hell."

    Then Dagonet, turning on the ball of his foot,
"And whither harp'st thou thine? down! and thyself
Down! and two more: a helpful harper thou,
That harpest downward! Dost thou know the star
We call the harp of Arthur up in heaven?"

    And Tristram, "Ay, Sir Fool, for when our King
Was victor wellnigh day by day, the knights,
Glorying in each new glory, set his name
High on all hills, and in the signs of heaven."

    And Dagonet answered, "Ay, and when the land
Was freed, and the Queen false, ye set yourself
To babble about him, all to show your wit--
And whether he were King by courtesy,
Or King by right--and so went harping down
The black king's highway, got so far, and grew
So witty that ye played at ducks and drakes
With Arthur's vows on the great lake of fire.
Tuwhoo! do ye see it? do ye see the star?"

    "Nay, fool," said Tristram, "not in open day."
And Dagonet, "Nay, nor will: I see it and hear.
It makes a silent music up in heaven,
And I, and Arthur and the angels hear,
And then we skip." "Lo, fool," he said, "ye talk
Fool's treason: is the King thy brother fool?"
Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrilled,
"Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools!
Conceits himself as God that he can make
Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk
From burning spurge, honey from hornet-combs,
And men from beasts--Long live the king of fools!"

    And down the city Dagonet danced away;
But through the slowly-mellowing avenues
And solitary passes of the wood
Rode Tristram toward Lyonnesse and the west.
Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt
With ruby-circled neck, but evermore
Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood
Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye
For all that walked, or crept, or perched, or flew.
Anon the face, as, when a gust hath blown,
Unruffling waters re-collect the shape
Of one that in them sees himself, returned;
But at the slot or fewmets of a deer,
Or even a fallen feather, vanished again.   

    So on for all that day from lawn to lawn
Through many a league-long bower he rode. At length
A lodge of intertwisted beechen-boughs
Furze-crammed, and bracken-rooft, the which himself
Built for a summer day with Queen Isolt
Against a shower, dark in the golden grove
Appearing, sent his fancy back to where
She lived a moon in that low lodge with him:
Till Mark her lord had past, the Cornish King,
With six or seven, when Tristram was away,
And snatched her thence; yet dreading worse than shame
Her warrior Tristram, spake not any word,
But bode his hour, devising wretchedness.

    And now that desert lodge to Tristram lookt
So sweet, that halting, in he past, and sank
Down on a drift of foliage random-blown;
But could not rest for musing how to smoothe
And sleek his marriage over to the Queen.
Perchance in the lone Tintagil far from all
The tonguesters of the court she had not heard.
But then what folly had sent him overseas
After she left him lonely here? a name?
Was it the name of one in Brittany,
Isolt, the daughter of the King? "Isolt
Of the white hands" they called her: the sweet name
Allured him first, and then the maid herself,
Who served him well with those white hands of hers,
And loved him well, until himself had thought
He loved her also, wedded easily,
But left her all as easily, and returned.
The black-blue Irish hair and Irish eyes
Had drawn him home--what marvel? then he laid
His brows upon the drifted leaf and dreamed.

    He seemed to pace the strand of Brittany
Between Isolt of Britain and his bride,
And showed them both the ruby-chain, and both
Began to struggle for it, till his Queen
Graspt it so hard, that all her hand was red.
Then cried the Breton, "Look, her hand is red!
These be no rubies, this is frozen blood,
And melts within her hand--her hand is hot
With ill desires, but this I gave thee, look,
Is all as cool and white as any flower."
Followed a rush of eagle's wings, and then
A whimpering of the spirit of the child,
Because the twain had spoiled her carcanet.

    He dreamed; but Arthur with a hundred spears
Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed,
And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle,
The wide-winged sunset of the misty marsh
Glared on a huge machicolated tower
That stood with open doors, whereout was rolled
A roar of riot, as from men secure
Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease
Among their harlot-brides, and evil song.
"Lo there," said one of Arthur's youth, for there,
High on a grim dead tree before the tower,
A goodly brother of the Table Round
Swung by the neck: and on the boughs a shield
Showing a shower of blood in a field noir,
And therebeside a horn, inflamed the knights
At that dishonour done the gilded spur,
Till each would clash the shield, and blow the horn.
But Arthur waved them back.   Alone he rode.
Then at the dry harsh roar of the great horn,
That sent the face of all the marsh aloft
An ever upward-rushing storm and cloud
Of shriek and plume, the Red Knight heard, and all,
Even to tipmost lance and topmost helm,
In blood-red armour sallying, howled to the King,   

    "The teeth of Hell flay bare and gnash thee flat!--
Lo! art thou not that eunuch-hearted King
Who fain had clipt free manhood from the world--
The woman-worshipper? Yea, God's curse, and I!
Slain was the brother of my paramour
By a knight of thine, and I that heard her whine
And snivel, being eunuch-hearted too,
Sware by the scorpion-worm that twists in hell,
And stings itself to everlasting death,
To hang whatever knight of thine I fought
And tumbled. Art thou King?--Look to thy life!"

    He ended: Arthur knew the voice; the face
Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name
Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind.
And Arthur deigned not use of word or sword,
But let the drunkard, as he stretched from horse
To strike him, overbalancing his bulk,
Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp
Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave,
Heard in dead night along that table-shore,
Drops flat, and after the great waters break
Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,
Far over the sands marbled with moon and cloud,
From less and less to nothing; thus he fell
Head-heavy; then the knights, who watched him, roared
And shouted and leapt down upon the fallen;
There trampled out his face from being known,
And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves:
Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang
Through open doors, and swording right and left
Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurled
The tables over and the wines, and slew
Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells,
And all the pavement streamed with massacre:
Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower,
Which half that autumn night, like the live North,
Red-pulsing up through Alioth and Alcor,
Made all above it, and a hundred meres
About it, as the water Moab saw
Come round by the East, and out beyond them flushed
The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea.

    So all the ways were safe from shore to shore,
But in the heart of Arthur pain was lord.

    Then, out of Tristram waking, the red dream
Fled with a shout, and that low lodge returned,
Mid-forest, and the wind among the boughs.
He whistled his good warhorse left to graze
Among the forest greens, vaulted upon him,
And rode beneath an ever-showering leaf,
Till one lone woman, weeping near a cross,
Stayed him. "Why weep ye?" "Lord," she said, "my man
Hath left me or is dead;" whereon he thought--
"What, if she hate me now? I would not this.
What, if she love me still? I would not that.
I know not what I would"--but said to her,
"Yet weep not thou, lest, if thy mate return,
He find thy favour changed and love thee not"--
Then pressing day by day through Lyonnesse
Last in a roky hollow, belling, heard
The hounds of Mark, and felt the goodly hounds
Yelp at his heart, but turning, past and gained
Tintagil, half in sea, and high on land,
A crown of towers.

                     Down in a casement sat,
A low sea-sunset glorying round her hair
And glossy-throated grace, Isolt the Queen.
And when she heard the feet of Tristram grind
The spiring stone that scaled about her tower,
Flushed, started, met him at the doors, and there
Belted his body with her white embrace,
Crying aloud, "Not Mark--not Mark, my soul!
The footstep fluttered me at first: not he:
Catlike through his own castle steals my Mark,
But warrior-wise thou stridest through his halls
Who hates thee, as I him--even to the death.
My soul, I felt my hatred for my Mark
Quicken within me, and knew that thou wert nigh."
To whom Sir Tristram smiling, "I am here.
Let be thy Mark, seeing he is not thine."

    And drawing somewhat backward she replied,
"Can he be wronged who is not even his own,
But save for dread of thee had beaten me,
Scratched, bitten, blinded, marred me somehow--Mark?
What rights are his that dare not strike for them?
Not lift a hand--not, though he found me thus!
But harken! have ye met him? hence he went
Today for three days hunting--as he said--
And so returns belike within an hour.
Mark's way, my soul!--but eat not thou with Mark,
Because he hates thee even more than fears;
Nor drink: and when thou passest any wood
Close vizor, lest an arrow from the bush
Should leave me all alone with Mark and hell.
My God, the measure of my hate for Mark
Is as the measure of my love for thee."

    So, plucked one way by hate and one by love,
Drained of her force, again she sat, and spake
To Tristram, as he knelt before her, saying,
"O hunter, and O blower of the horn,
Harper, and thou hast been a rover too,
For, ere I mated with my shambling king,
Ye twain had fallen out about the bride
Of one--his name is out of me--the prize,
If prize she were--(what marvel--she could see)--
Thine, friend; and ever since my craven seeks
To wreck thee villainously: but, O Sir Knight,
What dame or damsel have ye kneeled to last?"

    And Tristram, "Last to my Queen Paramount,
Here now to my Queen Paramount of love
And loveliness--ay, lovelier than when first
Her light feet fell on our rough Lyonnesse,
Sailing from Ireland."

                     Softly laughed Isolt;
"Flatter me not, for hath not our great Queen
My dole of beauty trebled?" and he said,
"Her beauty is her beauty, and thine thine,
And thine is more to me--soft, gracious, kind--
Save when thy Mark is kindled on thy lips
Most gracious; but she, haughty, even to him,
Lancelot; for I have seen him wan enow
To make one doubt if ever the great Queen
Have yielded him her love."

                     To whom Isolt,
"Ah then, false hunter and false harper, thou
Who brakest through the scruple of my bond,
Calling me thy white hind, and saying to me
That Guinevere had sinned against the highest,
And I--misyoked with such a want of man--
That I could hardly sin against the lowest."

    He answered, "O my soul, be comforted!
If this be sweet, to sin in leading-strings,
If here be comfort, and if ours be sin,
Crowned warrant had we for the crowning sin
That made us happy: but how ye greet me--fear
And fault and doubt--no word of that fond tale--
Thy deep heart-yearnings, thy sweet memories
Of Tristram in that year he was away."

    And, saddening on the sudden, spake Isolt,
"I had forgotten all in my strong joy
To see thee--yearnings?--ay! for, hour by hour,
Here in the never-ended afternoon,
O sweeter than all memories of thee,
Deeper than any yearnings after thee
Seemed those far-rolling, westward-smiling seas,
Watched from this tower. Isolt of Britain dashed
Before Isolt of Brittany on the strand,
Would that have chilled her bride-kiss? Wedded her?
Fought in her father's battles? wounded there?
The King was all fulfilled with gratefulness,
And she, my namesake of the hands, that healed
Thy hurt and heart with unguent and caress--
Well--can I wish her any huger wrong
Than having known thee? her too hast thou left
To pine and waste in those sweet memories.
O were I not my Mark's, by whom all men
Are noble, I should hate thee more than love."

    And Tristram, fondling her light hands, replied,
"Grace, Queen, for being loved: she loved me well.
Did I love her? the name at least I loved.
Isolt?--I fought his battles, for Isolt!
The night was dark; the true star set. Isolt!
The name was ruler of the dark--Isolt?
Care not for her! patient, and prayerful, meek,
Pale-blooded, she will yield herself to God."

    And Isolt answered, "Yea, and why not I?
Mine is the larger need, who am not meek,
Pale-blooded, prayerful. Let me tell thee now.
Here one black, mute midsummer night I sat,
Lonely, but musing on thee, wondering where,
Murmuring a light song I had heard thee sing,
And once or twice I spake thy name aloud.
Then flashed a levin-brand; and near me stood,
In fuming sulphur blue and green, a fiend--
Mark's way to steal behind one in the dark--
For there was Mark: 'He has wedded her,' he said,
Not said, but hissed it: then this crown of towers
So shook to such a roar of all the sky,
That here in utter dark I swooned away,
And woke again in utter dark, and cried,
'I will flee hence and give myself to God'--
And thou wert lying in thy new leman's arms."

    Then Tristram, ever dallying with her hand,
"May God be with thee, sweet, when old and gray,
And past desire!" a saying that angered her.
"'May God be with thee, sweet, when thou art old,
And sweet no more to me!' I need Him now.
For when Lancelot uttered aught so gross
Even to the swineherd's malkin in the mast?
The greater man, the greater courtesy.
Far other was the Tristram, Arthur's knight!
But thou, through ever harrying thy wild beasts--
Save that to touch a harp, tilt with a lance
Becomes thee well--art grown wild beast thyself.
How darest thou, if lover, push me even
In fancy from thy side, and set me far
In the gray distance, half a life away,
Her to be loved no more? Unsay it, unswear!
Flatter me rather, seeing me so weak,
Broken with Mark and hate and solitude,
Thy marriage and mine own, that I should suck
Lies like sweet wines: lie to me: I believe.
Will ye not lie? not swear, as there ye kneel,
And solemnly as when ye sware to him,
The man of men, our King--My God, the power
Was once in vows when men believed the King!
They lied not then, who sware, and through their vows
The King prevailing made his realm:--I say,
Swear to me thou wilt love me even when old,
Gray-haired, and past desire, and in despair."

    Then Tristram, pacing moodily up and down,
"Vows! did you keep the vow you made to Mark
More than I mine? Lied, say ye? Nay, but learnt,
The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself--
My knighthood taught me this--ay, being snapt--
We run more counter to the soul thereof
Than had we never sworn. I swear no more.
I swore to the great King, and am forsworn.
For once--even to the height--I honoured him.
'Man, is he man at all?' methought, when first
I rode from our rough Lyonnesse, and beheld
That victor of the Pagan throned in hall--
His hair, a sun that rayed from off a brow
Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes,
The golden beard that clothed his lips with light--
Morevoer, that weird legend of his birth,
With Merlin's mystic babble about his end
Amazed me; then, his foot was on a stool
Shaped as a dragon; he seemed to me no man,
But Michael trampling Satan; so I sware,
Being amazed: but this went by--The vows!
O ay--the wholesome madness of an hour--
They served their use, their time; for every knight
Believed himself a greater than himself,
And every follower eyed him as a God;
Till he, being lifted up beyond himself,
Did mightier deeds that elsewise he had done,
And so the realm was made; but then their vows--
First mainly through that sullying of our Queen--
Began to gall the knighthood, asking whence
Had Arthur right to bind them to himself?
Dropt down from heaven? washed up from out the deep?
They failed to trace him through the flesh and blood
Of our old kings: whence then? a doubtful lord
To bind them by inviolable vows,
Which flesh and blood perforce would violate:
For feel this arm of mine--the tide within
Red with free chase and heather-scented air,
Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me pure
As any maiden child? lock up my tongue
From uttering freely what I freely hear?
Bind me to one? The wide world laughs at it.
And worldling of the world am I, and know
The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour
Woos his own end; we are not angels here
Nor shall be: vows--I am woodman of the woods,
And hear the garnet-headed yaffingale
Mock them: my soul, we love but while we may;
And therefore is my love so large for thee,
Seeing it is not bounded save by love."

    Here ending, he moved toward her, and she said,
"Good: an I turned away my love for thee
To some one thrice as courteous as thyself--
For courtesy wins woman all as well
As valour may, but he that closes both
Is perfect, he is Lancelot--taller indeed,
Rosier and comelier, thou--but say I loved
This knightliest of all knights, and cast thee back
Thine old small saw, 'We love but while we may,'
Well then, what answer?"

                           He that while she spake,
Mindful of what he brought to adorn her with,
The jewels, had let one finger lightly touch
The warm white apple of her throat, replied,
"Press this a little closer, sweet, until--
Come, I am hungered and half-angered--meat,
Wine, wine--and I will love thee to the death,
And out beyond into the dream to come."

    So then, when both were brought to full accord,
She rose, and set before him all he willed;
And after, these had comforted the blood
With meats and wines, and satiated their hearts--
Now talking of their woodland paradise,
The deer, the dews, the fern, the founts, the lawns;
Now mocking at the much ungainliness,
And craven shifts, and long crane legs of Mark--
Then Tristram laughing caught the harp, and sang:

    "Ay, ay, O ay--the winds that bend the brier!
A star in heaven, a star within the mere!
Ay, ay, O ay--a star was my desire,
And one was far apart, and one was near:
Ay, ay, O ay--the winds that bow the grass!
And one was water and one star was fire,
And one will ever shine and one will pass.
Ay, ay, O ay--the winds that move the mere."

    Then in the light's last glimmer Tristram showed
And swung the ruby carcanet. She cried
"The collar of some Order, which our King
Hath newly founded, all for thee, my soul,
For thee, to yield thee grace beyond thy peers."

    "Not so, my Queen," he said, "but the red fruit
Grown on a magic oak-tree in mid-heaven,
And won by Tristram as a tourney-prize,
And hither brought by Tristram for his last
Love-offering and peace-offering unto thee."

   He spoke, he turned, then, flinging round her neck,
Claspt it, and cried "Thine Order, O my Queen!"
But, while he bowed to kiss the jewelled throat,
Out of the dark, just as the lips had touched,
Behind him rose a shadow and a shriek--
"Mark's way," said Mark, and clove him through the brain.

    That night came Arthur home, and while he climbed,
All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom,
The stairway to the hall, and looked and saw
The great Queen's bower was dark,--about his feet
A voice clung sobbing till he questioned it,
"What art thou?" and the voice about his feet
Sent up an answer, sobbing, "I am thy fool,
And I shall never make thee smile again."

---

---

THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur's court,
A tributary prince of Devon, one
Of that great Order of the Table Round,
Had married Enid, Yniol's only child,
And loved her, as he loved the light of Heaven.
And as the light of Heaven varies, now
At sunrise, now at sunset, now by night
With moon and trembling stars, so loved Geraint
To make her beauty vary day by day,
In crimsons and in purples and in gems.
And Enid, but to please her husband's eye,
Who first had found and loved her in a state
Of broken fortunes, daily fronted him
In some fresh splendour; and the Queen herself,
Grateful to Prince Geraint for service done,
Loved her, and often with her own white hands
Arrayed and decked her, as the loveliest,
Next after her own self, in all the court.
And Enid loved the Queen, and with true heart
Adored her, as the stateliest and the best
And loveliest of all women upon earth.
And seeing them so tender and so close,
Long in their common love rejoiced Geraint.
But when a rumour rose about the Queen,
Touching her guilty love for Lancelot,
Though yet there lived no proof, nor yet was heard
The world's loud whisper breaking into storm,
Not less Geraint believed it; and there fell
A horror on him, lest his gentle wife,
Through that great tenderness for Guinevere,
Had suffered, or should suffer any taint
In nature: wherefore going to the King,
He made this pretext, that his princedom lay
Close on the borders of a territory,
Wherein were bandit earls, and caitiff knights,
Assassins, and all flyers from the hand
Of Justice, and whatever loathes a law:
And therefore, till the King himself should please
To cleanse this common sewer of all his realm,
He craved a fair permission to depart,
And there defend his marches; and the King
Mused for a little on his plea, but, last,
Allowing it, the Prince and Enid rode,
And fifty knights rode with them, to the shores
Of Severn, and they past to their own land;
Where, thinking, that if ever yet was wife
True to her lord, mine shall be so to me,
He compassed her with sweet observances
And worship, never leaving her, and grew
Forgetful of his promise to the King,
Forgetful of the falcon and the hunt,
Forgetful of the tilt and tournament,
Forgetful of his glory and his name,
Forgetful of his princedom and its cares.
And this forgetfulness was hateful to her.
And by and by the people, when they met
In twos and threes, or fuller companies,
Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him
As of a prince whose manhood was all gone,
And molten down in mere uxoriousness.
And this she gathered from the people's eyes:
This too the women who attired her head,
To please her, dwelling on his boundless love,
Told Enid, and they saddened her the more:
And day by day she thought to tell Geraint,
But could not out of bashful delicacy;
While he that watched her sadden, was the more
Suspicious that her nature had a taint.

   At last, it chanced that on a summer morn
(They sleeping each by either) the new sun
Beat through the blindless casement of the room,
And heated the strong warrior in his dreams;
Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside,
And bared the knotted column of his throat,
The massive square of his heroic breast,
And arms on which the standing muscle sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,
Running too vehemently to break upon it.
And Enid woke and sat beside the couch,
Admiring him, and thought within herself,
Was ever man so grandly made as he?
Then, like a shadow, past the people's talk
And accusation of uxoriousness
Across her mind, and bowing over him,
Low to her own heart piteously she said:

   "O noble breast and all-puissant arms,
Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men
Reproach you, saying all your force is gone?
I am the cause, because I dare not speak
And tell him what I think and what they say.
And yet I hate that he should linger here;
I cannot love my lord and not his name.
Far liefer had I gird his harness on him,
And ride with him to battle and stand by,
And watch his mightful hand striking great blows
At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world.
Far better were I laid in the dark earth,
Not hearing any more his noble voice,
Not to be folded more in these dear arms,
And darkened from the high light in his eyes,
Than that my lord through me should suffer shame.
Am I so bold, and could I so stand by,
And see my dear lord wounded in the strife,
Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes,
And yet not dare to tell him what I think,
And how men slur him, saying all his force
Is melted into mere effeminacy?
O me, I fear that I am no true wife."

   Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke,
And the strong passion in her made her weep
True tears upon his broad and naked breast,
And these awoke him, and by great mischance
He heard but fragments of her later words,
And that she feared she was not a true wife.
And then he thought, "In spite of all my care,
For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,
She is not faithful to me, and I see her
Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's hall."
Then though he loved and reverenced her too much
To dream she could be guilty of foul act,
Right through his manful breast darted the pang
That makes a man, in the sweet face of her
Whom he loves most, lonely and miserable.
At this he hurled his huge limbs out of bed,
And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried,
"My charger and her palfrey;" then to her,
"I will ride forth into the wilderness;
For though it seems my spurs are yet to win,
I have not fallen so low as some would wish.
And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress
And ride with me." And Enid asked, amazed,
"If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault."
But he, "I charge thee, ask not, but obey."
Then she bethought her of a faded silk,
A faded mantle and a faded veil,
And moving toward a cedarn cabinet,
Wherein she kept them folded reverently
With sprigs of summer laid between the folds,
She took them, and arrayed herself therein,
Remembering when first he came on her
Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it,
And all her foolish fears about the dress,
And all his journey to her, as himself
Had told her, and their coming to the court.

   For Arthur on the Whitsuntide before
Held court at old Caerleon upon Usk.
There on a day, he sitting high in hall,
Before him came a forester of Dean,
Wet from the woods, with notice of a hart
Taller than all his fellows, milky-white,
First seen that day: these things he told the King.
Then the good King gave order to let blow
His horns for hunting on the morrow morn.
And when the Queen petitioned for his leave
To see the hunt, allowed it easily.
So with the morning all the court were gone.
But Guinevere lay late into the morn,
Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love
For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt;
But rose at last, a single maiden with her.
Took horse, and forded Usk, and gained the wood;
There, on a little knoll beside it, stayed
Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard instead
A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint,
Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress
Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand,
Came quickly flashing through the shallow ford
Behind them, and so galloped up the knoll.
A purple scarf, at either end whereof
There swung an apple of purest gold,
Swayed round about him as he galloped up
To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly
In summer suit and silks of holiday.
Low bowed the tributary Prince, and she,
Sweetly and statelily, and with all grace
Of womanhood and queenhood, answered him.
"Late, late, Sir Prince," she said, "later than we!"
"Yea, noble Queen," he answered, "and so late
That I but come like you to see the hunt,
Not join it." "Therefore wait with me," she said;
"For on this little knoll, if anywhere,
There is good chance that we shall hear the hounds:
Here often thy break covert at our feet."

   And while they listened for the distant hunt,
And chiefly for the baying of Cavall,
King Arthur's hound of deepest mouth, there rode
Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf;
Whereof the dwarf lagged latest, and the knight
Had vizor up, and showed a youthful face,
Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments.
And Guinevere, not mindful of his face
In the King's hall, desired his name, and sent
Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf;
Who being vicious, old and irritable,
And doubling all his master's vice of pride,
Made answer sharply that she should not know.
"Then will I ask it of himself," she said.
"Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not," cried the dwarf;
"Thou art not worthy even to speak of him;"
And when she put her horse toward the knight,
Struck at her with his whip, and she returned
Indignant to the Queen: whereat Geraint
Exclaiming, "Surely I will learn the name,"
Made sharply to the dwarf, and asked it of him,
Who answered as before; and when the Prince
Had put his horse in motion toward the knight,
Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek.
The Prince's blood spirted upon the scarf,
Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand
Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him:
But he, from his exceeding manfulness
And pure nobility of temperament,
Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrained
From even a word, and so returning said:

   "I will avenge this insult, noble Queen,
Done in your maiden's person to yourself:
And I will track this vermin to their earths:
For though I ride unarmed, I do not doubt
To find, at some place I shall come at, arms
On loan, or else for pledge; and, being found,
Then will I fight him, and will break his pride,
And on the third day will again be here,
So that I be not fallen in fight. Farewell."

   "Farewell, fair Prince," answered the stately Queen.
"Be prosperous in this journey, as in all;
And may you light on all things that you love,
And live to wed with her whom first you love:
But ere you wed with any, bring your bride,
And I, were she the daughter of a king,
Yea, though she were a beggar from the hedge,
Will clothe her for her bridals like the sun."

   And Prince Geraint, now thinking that he heard
The noble hart at bay, now the far horn,
A little vext at losing of the hunt,
A little at the vile occasion, rode,
By ups and downs, through many a grassy glade
And valley, with fixt eye following the three.
At last they issued from the world of wood,
And climbed upon a fair and even ridge,
And showed themselves against the sky, and sank.
And thither came Geraint, and underneath
Beheld the long street of a little town
In a long valley, on one side whereof,
White from the mason's hand, a fortress rose;
And on one side a castle in decay,
Beyond a bridge that spanned a dry ravine:
And out of town and valley came a noise
As of a broad brook o'er a shingly bed
Brawling, or like a clamour of the rooks
At distance, ere they settle for the night.

   And onward to the fortress rode the three,
And entered, and were lost behind the walls.
"So," thought Geraint, "I have tracked him to his earth."
And down the long street riding wearily,
Found every hostel full, and everywhere
Was hammer laid to hoof, and the hot hiss
And bustling whistle of the youth who scoured
His master's armour; and of such a one
He asked, "What means the tumult in the town?"
Who told him, scouring still, "The sparrow-hawk!"
Then riding close behind an ancient churl,
Who, smitten by the dusty sloping beam,
Went sweating underneath a sack of corn,
Asked yet once more what meant the hubbub here?
Who answered gruffly, "Ugh! the sparrow-hawk."
Then riding further past an armourer's,
Who, with back turned, and bowed above his work,
Sat riveting a helmet on his knee,
He put the self-same query, but the man
Not turning round, nor looking at him, said:
"Friend, he that labours for the sparrow-hawk
Has little time for idle questioners."
Whereat Geraint flashed into sudden spleen:
"A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-hawk!
Tits, wrens, and all winged nothings peck him dead!
Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg
The murmur of the world! What is it to me?
O wretched set of sparrows, one and all,
Who pipe of nothing but sparrow-hawks!
Speak, if ye be not be like the rest, hawk-mad,
Where can I get me harbourage for the night?
And arms, arms, arms to fight my enemy? Speak!"
Whereat the armourer turning all amazed
And seeing one so gay in purple silks,
Came forward with the helmet yet in hand
And answered, "Pardon me, O stranger knight;
We hold a tourney here tomorrow morn,
And there is scantly time for half the work.
Arms? truth! I know not: all are wanted here.
Harbourage? truth, good truth, I know not, save
It may be, at Earl Yniol's, o'er the bridge
Yonder." He spoke and fell to work again.

   Then rode Geraint, a little spleenful yet,
Across the bridge that spanned the dry ravine.
There musing sat the hoary-headed Earl,
(His dress a suit of frayed magnificence,
Once fit for feasts of ceremony) and said:
"Whither, fair son? to whom Geraint replied,
"O friend, I seek a harbourage for the night."
Then Yniol, "Enter therefore and partake
The slender entertainment of a house
Once rich, now poor, but ever open-doored."
"Thanks, venerable friend," replied Geraint;
"So that ye do not serve me sparrow-hawks
For supper, I will enter, I will eat
With all the passion of a twelve hours' fast."
Then sighed and smiled the hoary-headed Earl,
And answered, "Graver cause than yours is mine
To curse this hedgerow thief, the sparrow-hawk:
But in, go in; for save yourself desire it,
We will not touch upon him even in jest."

   Then rode Geraint into the castle court,
His charger trampling many a prickly star
Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones.
He looked and saw that all was ruinous.
Here stood a shattered archway plumed with fern;
And here had fallen a great part of a tower,
Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff,
And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers:
And high above a piece of turret stair,
Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound
Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems
Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms,
And sucked the joining of the stones, and looked
A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove.

   And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labour of his hands,
To think or say, "There is the nightingale;"
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
"Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me."

   It chanced the song that Enid sang was one
Of Fortune and her wheel and Enid sang:

   "Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;
Turn thy wheel through sunshine, storm, and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.

   "Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel, we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

    "Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate.

   "Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd;
Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate."

   "Hark, by the bird's song ye may learn the nest,"
Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then,
Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones,
The dusky-raftered many-cobwebbed hall,
He found an ancient dame in dim brocade;
And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,
That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath,
Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk,
Her daughter. In a moment thought Geraint,
"Here by God's rood is the one maid for me."
But none spake a word except the hoary Earl:
"Enid, the good knight's horse stands in the court;
Take him to stall, and give him corn, and then
Go to the town and buy us flesh and wine;
And we will make us merry as we may.
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great."

   He spake: the Prince, as Enid past him, fain
To follow, strode a stride, but Yniol caught
His purple scarf, and held, and said, "Forbear!
Rest! the good house, though ruined, O my son,
Endures not that her guest should serve himself."
And reverencing the custom of the house
Geraint, from utter courtesy, forbore.

   So Enid took his charger to the stall;
And after went her way across the bridge,
And reached the town, and while the Prince and Earl
Yet spoke together, came again with one,
A youth, that following with a costrel bore
The means of goodly welcome, flesh and wine.
And Enid brought sweet cakes to make them cheer,
And in her veil enfolded, manchet bread.
And then, because their hall must also serve
For kitchen, boiled the flesh, and spread the board,
And stood behind, and waited on the three.
And seeing her so sweet and serviceable,
Geraint had longing in him evermore
To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb,
That crost the trencher as she laid it down:
But after all had eaten, then Geraint,
For now the wine made summer in his veins,
Let his eye rove in following, or rest
On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work,
Now here, now there, about the dusky hall;
Then suddenly addrest the hoary Earl:

   "Fair Host and Earl, I pray your courtesy;
This sparrow-hawk, what is he? tell me of him.
His name? but no, good faith, I will not have it:
For if he be the knight whom late I saw
Ride into that new fortress by your town,
White from the mason's hand, then have I sworn
From his own lips to have it--I am Geraint
Of Devon--for this morning when the Queen
Sent her own maiden to demand his name,
His dwarf, a vicious under-shapen thing,
Struck at her with his whip, and she returned
Indignant to the Queen; and then I swore
That I would track this caitiff to his hold,
And fight and break his pride, and have it of him.
And all unarmed I rode, and thought to find
Arms in your town, where all the men are mad;
They take the rustic murmur of their bourg
For the great wave that echoes round the world;
They would not hear me speak: but if ye know
Where I can light on arms, or if yourself
Should have them, tell me, seeing I have sworn
That I will break his pride and learn his name,
Avenging this great insult done the Queen."

   Then cried Earl Yniol, "Art thou he indeed,
Geraint, a name far-sounded among men
For noble deeds? and truly I, when first
I saw you moving by me on the bridge,
Felt ye were somewhat, yea, and by your state
And presence might have guessed you one of those
That eat in Arthur's hall at Camelot.
Nor speak I now from foolish flattery;
For this dear child hath often heard me praise
Your feats of arms, and often when I paused
Hath asked again, and ever loved to hear;
So grateful is the noise of noble deeds
To noble hearts who see but acts of wrong:
O never yet had woman such a pair
Of suitors as this maiden; first Limours,
A creature wholly given to brawls and wine,
Drunk even when he wooed; and be he dead
I know not, but he past to the wild land.
The second was your foe, the sparrow-hawk,
My curse, my nephew--I will not let his name
Slip from my lips if I can help it--he,
When I that knew him fierce and turbulent
Refused her to him, then his pride awoke;
And since the proud man often is the mean,
He sowed a slander in the common ear,
Affirming that his father left him gold,
And in my charge, which was not rendered to him;
Bribed with large promises the men who served
About my person, the more easily
Because my means were somewhat broken into
Through open doors and hospitality;
Raised my own town against me in the night
Before my Enid's birthday, sacked my house;
From mine own earldom foully ousted me;
Built that new fort to overawe my friends,
For truly there are those who love me yet;
And keeps me in this ruinous castle here,
Where doubtless he would put me soon to death,
But that his pride too much despises me:
And I myself sometimes despise myself;
For I have let men be, and have their way;
Am much too gentle, have not used my power:
Nor know I whether I be very base
Or very manful, whether very wise
Or very foolish; only this I know,
That whatsoever evil happen to me,
I seem to suffer nothing heart or limb,
But can endure it all most patiently."

   "Well said, true heart," replied Geraint, "but arms,
That if the sparrow-hawk, this nephew, fight
In next day's tourney I may break his pride."

   And Yniol answered, "Arms, indeed, but old
And rusty, old and rusty, Prince Geraint,
Are mine, and therefore at thine asking, thine.
But in this tournament no man can tilt,
Except the lady he loves best be there.
Two forks are fixt into the meadow ground,
And over these is placed a silver wand,
And over that a golden sparrow-hawk,
The prize of beauty for the fairest there.
And this, what knight soever be in field
Lays claim to for the lady at his side,
And tilts with my good nephew thereupon,
Who being apt at arms and big of bone
Has ever won it for the lady with him,
And toppling over all antagonism
Has earned himself the name of sparrow-hawk.
But thou, who hast no lady, canst not fight."

   To whom Geraint with eyes all bright replied,
Leaning a little toward him, "Thy leave!
Let me lay lance in rest, O noble host,
For this dear child, because I never saw,
Though having seen all beauties of our time,
Nor can see elsewhere, anything so fair.
And if I fall her name will yet remain
Untarnished as before; but if I live,
So aid me Heaven when at mine uttermost,
As I will make her truly my true wife."

   Then, howsoever patient, Yniol's heart
Danced in his bosom, seeing better days.
And looking round he saw not Enid there,
(Who hearing her own name had stolen away)
But that old dame, to whom full tenderly
And folding all her hand in his he said,
"Mother, a maiden is a tender thing,
And best by her that bore her understood.
Go thou to rest, but ere thou go to rest
Tell her, and prove her heart toward the Prince."

   So spake the kindly-hearted Earl, and she
With frequent smile and nod departing found,
Half disarrayed as to her rest, the girl;
Whom first she kissed on either cheek, and then
On either shining shoulder laid a hand,
And kept her off and gazed upon her face,
And told her all their converse in the hall,
Proving her heart: but never light and shade
Coursed one another more on open ground
Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale
Across the face of Enid hearing her;
While slowly falling as a scale that falls,
When weight is added only grain by grain,
Sank her sweet head upon her gentle breast;
Nor did she lift an eye nor speak a word,
Rapt in the fear and in the wonder of it;
So moving without answer to her rest
She found no rest, and ever failed to draw
The quiet night into her blood, but lay
Contemplating her own unworthiness;
And when the pale and bloodless east began
To quicken to the sun, arose, and raised
Her mother too, and hand in hand they moved
Down to the meadow where the jousts were held,
And waited there for Yniol and Geraint.

   And thither came the twain, and when Geraint
Beheld her first in field, awaiting him,
He felt, were she the prize of bodily force,
Himself beyond the rest pushing could move
The chair of Idris. Yniol's rusted arms
Were on his princely person, but through these
Princelike his bearing shone; and errant knights
And ladies came, and by and by the town
Flowed in, and settling circled all the lists.
And there they fixt the forks into the ground,
And over these they placed the silver wand,
And over that the golden sparrow-hawk.
Then Yniol's nephew, after trumpet blown,
Spake to the lady with him and proclaimed,
"Advance and take, as fairest of the fair,
What I these two years past have won for thee,
The prize of beauty." Loudly spake the Prince,
"Forbear: there is a worthier," and the knight
With some surprise and thrice as much disdain
Turned, and beheld the four, and all his face
Glowed like the heart of a great fire at Yule,
So burnt he was with passion, crying out,
"Do battle for it then," no more; and thrice
They clashed together, and thrice they brake their spears.
Then each, dishorsed and drawing, lashed at each
So often and with such blows, that all the crowd
Wondered, and now and then from distant walls
There came a clapping as of phantom hands.
So twice they fought, and twice they breathed, and still
The dew of their great labour, and the blood
Of their strong bodies, flowing, drained their force.
But either's force was matched till Yniol's cry,
"Remember that great insult done the Queen,"
Increased Geraint's, who heaved his blade aloft,
And cracked the helmet through, and bit the bone,
And felled him, and set foot upon his breast,
And said, "Thy name?" To whom the fallen man
Made answer, groaning, "Edyrn, son of Nudd!
Ashamed am I that I should tell it thee.
My pride is broken: men have seen my fall."
"Then, Edyrn, son of Nudd," replied Geraint,
These two things shalt thou do, or else thou diest.
First, thou thyself, with damsel and with dwarf,
Shalt ride to Arthur's court, and coming there,
Crave pardon for that insult done the Queen,
And shalt abide her judgment on it; next,
Thou shalt give back their earldom to thy kin.
These two things shalt thou do, or thou shalt die."
And Edyrn answered, "These things will I do,
For I have never yet been overthrown,
And thou hast overthrown me, and my pride
Is broken down, for Enid sees my fall!"
And rising up, he rode to Arthur's court,
And there the Queen forgave him easily.
And being young, he changed and came to loathe
His crime of traitor, slowly drew himself
Bright from his old dark life, and fell at last
In the great battle fighting for the King.

   But when the third day from the hunting-morn
Made a low splendour in the world, and wings
Moved in her ivy, Enid, for she lay
With her fair head in the dim-yellow light,
Among the dancing shadows of the birds,
Woke and bethought her of her promise given
No later than last eve to Prince Geraint--
So bent he seemed on going the third day,
He would not leave her, till her promise given--
To ride with him this morning to the court,
And there be made known to the stately Queen,
And there be wedded with all ceremony.
At this she cast her eyes upon her dress,
And thought it never yet had looked so mean.
For as a leaf in mid-November is
To what it was in mid-October, seemed
The dress that now she looked on to the dress
She looked on ere the coming of Geraint.
And still she looked, and still the terror grew
Of that strange bright and dreadful thing, a court,
All staring at her in her faded silk:
And softly to her own sweet heart she said:

   "This noble prince who won our earldom back,
So splendid in his acts and his attire,
Sweet heaven, how much I shall discredit him!
Would he could tarry with us here awhile,
But being so beholden to the Prince,
It were but little grace in any of us,
Bent as he seemed on going this third day,
To seek a second favour at his hands.
Yet if he could but tarry a day or two,
Myself would work eye dim, and finger lame,
Fair liefer than so much discredit him."

   And Enid fell in longing for a dress
All branched and flowered with gold, a costly gift
Of her good mother, given her on the night
Before her birthday, three sad years ago,
That night of fire, when Edyrn sacked their house,
And scattered all they had to all the winds:
For while the mother showed it, and the two
Were turning and admiring it, the work
To both appeared so costly, rose a cry
That Edyrn's men were on them, and they fled
With little save the jewels they had on,
Which being sold and sold had bought them bread:
And Edyrn's men had caught them in their flight,
And placed them in this ruin; and she wished
The Prince had found her in her ancient home;
Then let her fancy flit across the past,
And roam the goodly places that she knew;
And last bethought her how she used to watch,
Near that old home, a pool of golden carp;
And one was patched and blurred and lustreless
Among his burnished brethren of the pool;
And half asleep she made comparison
Of that and these to her own faded self
And the gay court, and fell asleep again;
And dreamt herself was such a faded form
Among her burnished sisters of the pool;
But this was in the garden of a king;
And though she lay dark in the pool, she knew
That all was bright; that all about were birds
Of sunny plume in gilded trellis-work;
That all the turf was rich in plots that looked
Each like a garnet or a turkis in it;
And lords and ladies of the high court went
In silver tissue talking things of state;
And children of the King in cloth of gold
Glanced at the doors or gamboled down the walks;
And while she thought "They will not see me," came
A stately queen whose name was Guinevere,
And all the children in their cloth of gold
Ran to her, crying, "If we have fish at all
Let them be gold; and charge the gardeners now
To pick the faded creature from the pool,
And cast it on the mixen that it die."
And therewithal one came and seized on her,
And Enid started waking, with her heart
All overshadowed by the foolish dream,
And lo! it was her mother grasping her
To get her awake; and in her hand
A suit of bright apparel, which she laid
Flat on the couch, and spoke exultingly:

   "See here, my child, how fresh the colours look
How fast they hold like colours of a shell
That keeps the wear and polish of the wave.
Why not? It never yet was worn, I trow:
Look on it, child, and tell me if ye know it."

   And Enid looked, but all confused at first,
Could scarce divide it from her foolish dream:
Then suddenly she knew it and rejoiced,
And answered, "Yea, I know it; your good gift,
So sadly lost on that unhappy night;
Your own good gift!" "Yea, surely," said the dame,
"And gladly given again this happy morn.
For when the jousts were ended yesterday,
Went Yniol through the town, and everywhere
He found the sack and plunder of our house
All scattered through the houses of the town;
And gave command that all which one was ours
Should now be ours again: and yester-eve,
While ye were talking sweetly with your Prince,
Came one with this and laid it in my hand,
For love or fear, or seeking favour of us,
Because we have our earldom back again.
And yester-eve I would not tell you of it,
But kept it for a sweet surprise at morn.
Yea, truly is it not a sweet surprise?
For I myself unwillingly have worn
My faded suit, as you, my child, have yours,
And howsoever patient, Yniol his.
Ah, dear, he took me from a goodly house,
With store of rich apparel, sumptuous fare,
And page, and maid, and squire, and seneschal,
And pastime both of hawk and hound, and all
That appertains to noble maintenance.
Yea, and he brought me to a goodly house;
But since our fortune swerved from sun to shade,
And all through that young traitor, cruel need
Constrained us, but a better time has come;
So clothe yourself in this, that better fits
Our mended fortunes and a Prince's bride:
For though ye won the prize of fairest fair,
And though I heard him call you fairest fair,
Let never maiden think, however fair,
She is not fairer in new clothes than old.
And should some great court-lady say, the Prince
Hath picked a ragged-robin from the hedge,
And like a madman brought her to the court,
Then were ye shamed, and worse, might shame the Prince
To whom we are beholden; but I know,
When my dear child is set forth at her best,
That neither court nor country, though they sought
Through all the provinces like those of old
That lighted on Queen Esther, has her match."

   Here ceased the kindly mother out of breath;
And Enid listened brightening as she lay;
Then, as the white and glittering star of morn
Parts from a bank of snow, and by and by
Slips into a golden cloud, the maiden rose,
And left her maiden couch, and robed herself,
Helped by the mother's careful hand and eye,
Without a mirror, in the gorgeous gown;
Who, after, turned her daughter round, and said,
She never yet had seen her half so fair;
And called her like that maiden in the tale,
Whom Gwydion made by glamour out of flowers
And sweeter than the bride of Cassivelaun,
Flur, for whose love the Roman Caesar first
Invaded Britain, "But we beat him back,
As this great Prince invaded us, and we,
Not beat him back, but welcomed him with joy
And I can scarcely ride with you to court,
For old am I, and rough the ways and wild;
But Yniol goes, and I full oft shall dream
I see my princess as I see her now,
Clothed with my gift, and gay among the gay."

   But while the women thus rejoiced, Geraint
Woke where he slept in the high hall, and called
For Enid, and when Yniol made report
Of that good mother making Enid gay
In such apparel as might well beseem
His princess, or indeed the stately Queen,
He answered: "Earl, entreat her by my love,
Albeit I give no reason but my wish,
That she ride with me in her faded silk."
Yniol with that hard message went; it fell
Like flaws in summer laying lusty corn:
For Enid, all abashed she knew not why,
Dared not to glance at her good mother's face,
But silently, in all obedience,
Her mother silent too, nor helping her,
Laid from her limbs the costly-broidered gift,
And robed them in her ancient suit again,
And so descended. Never man rejoiced
More than Geraint to greet her thus attired;
And glancing all at once as keenly at her
As careful robins eye the delver's toil,
Made her cheek burn and either eyelid fall,
But rested with her sweet face satisfied;
Then seeing cloud upon the mother's brow,
Her by both hands he caught, and sweetly said,

   "O my new mother, be not wroth or grieved
At thy new son, for my petition to her.
When late I left Caerleon, our great Queen,
In words whose echo lasts, they were so sweet,
Made promise, that whatever bride I brought,
Herself would clothe her like the sun in Heaven.
Thereafter, when I reached this ruined hall,
Beholding one so bright in dark estate,
I vowed that could I gain her, our fair Queen,
No hand but hers, should make your Enid burst
Sunlike from cloud -- and likewise thought perhaps,
That service done so graciously would bind
The two together; fain I would the two
Should love each other: how can Enid find
A nobler friend? Another thought was mine;
I came among you here so suddenly,
That though her gentle presence at the lists
Might well have served for proof that I was loved,
I doubted whether daughter's tenderness,
Or easy nature, might not let itself
Be moulded by your wishes for her weal;
Or whether some false sense in her own self
Of my contrasting brightness, overbore
Her fancy dwelling in this dusky hall;
And such a sense might make her long for court
And all it perilous glories: and I thought,
That could I someday prove such force in her
Linked with such love for me, that at a word
(No reason given her) she could cast aside
A spendour dear to women, new to her,
And therefore dearer; or if not so new,
Yet therefore tenfold dearer by the power
Of intermitted usage; then I felt
That I could rest, a rock in ebbs and flows,
Fixt on her faith. Now, therefore, I do rest,
A prophet certain of my prophecy,
That never shadow of mistrust can cross
Between us. Grant me pardon for my thoughts:
And for my strange petition I will make
Amends hereafter by some gaudy-day,
When your fair child shall wear your costly gift
Beside your own warm hearth, with, on her knees,
Who knows? another gift of the high God,
Which, maybe, shall have learned to lisp you thanks."

   He spoke: the mother smiled, but half in tears,
Then brought a mantle down and wrapt her in it,
And claspt and kissed her, and they rode away.

   Now thrice that morning Guinevere had climbed
The giant tower, from whose high crest, they say,
Men saw the goodly hills of Somerset,
And white sails flying on the yellow sea;
But not to goodly hill or yellow sea
Looked the fair Queen, but up the vale of Usk,
By the flat meadow, till she saw them come;
And then descending met them at the gates,
Embraced her with all welcome as a friend,
And did her honour as the Prince's bride,
And clothed her for her bridals like the sun;
And all that week was old Caerleon gay,
For by the hands of Dubric, the high saint,
They twain were wedded with all ceremony.

   And this was on the last year's Whitsuntide.
But Enid ever kept the faded silk,
Remembering how first he came on her,
Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it,
And all her foolish fears about the dress,
And all his journey toward her, as himself
Had told her, and their coming to the court.

   And now this morning when he said to her,
"Put on your worst and meanest dress," she found
And took it, and arrayed herself therein.

---

---

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest left of all the knights,
Told, when the man was no more than a voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.

   For on their march to westward, Bedivere,
Who slowly paced among the slumbering host,
Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:

   "I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful?
Or else as if the world were wholly fair,
But that these eyes of men are dense and dim,
And have not power to see it as it is:
Perchance, because we see not to the close;--
For I, being simple, thought to work His will,
And have but stricken with the sword in vain;
And all whereon I leaned in wife and friend
Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
Reels back into the beast, and is no more.
My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death:
Nay--God my Christ--I pass but shall not die."

   Then, ere that last weird battle in the west,
There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain killed
In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown
Along a wandering wind, and past his ear
Went shrilling, "Hollow, hollow all delight!
Hail, King! tomorrow thou shalt pass away.
Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee.
And I am blown along a wandering wind,
And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight."
And fainter onward, like wild birds that change
Their season in the night and wail their way
From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream
Shrilled; but in going mingled with dim cries
Far in the moonlit haze among the hills,
As of some lonely city sacked by night,
When all is lost, and wife and child with wail
Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and called,
"Who spake? A dream. O light upon the wind,
Thine, Gawain, was the voice--are these dim cries
Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild
Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?"
This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and spake:
"O me, my King, let pass whatever will,
Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field;
But in their stead thy name and glory cling
To all high places like a golden cloud
For ever: but as yet thou shalt not pass.
Light was Gawain in life, and light in death
Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man;
And care not thou for dreams from him, but rise--
I hear the steps of Modred in the west,
And with him many of thy people, and knights
Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown
Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee.
Right well in heart they know thee for the King.
Arise, go forth and conquer as of old."

   Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"Far other is this battle in the west
Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth,
And brake the petty kings, and fought with Rome,
Or thrust the heathen from the Roman wall,
And shook him through the north. Ill doom is mine
To war against my people and my knights.
The king who fights his people fights himself.
And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke
That strikes them dead is as my death to me.
Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way
Through this blind haze, which ever since I saw
One lying in the dust at Almesbury,
Hath folded in the passes of the world."

   Then rose the King and moved his host by night,
And ever pushed Sir Modred, league by league,
Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse--
A land of old upheaven from the abyss
By fire, to sink into the abyss again;
Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,
And the long mountains ended in a coast
Of ever-shifting sand, and far away
The phantom circle of a moaning sea.
There the pursuer could pursue no more,
And he that fled no further fly the King;
And there, that day when the great light of heaven
Burned at his lowest in the rolling year,
On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed.
Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.
A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold
With formless fear; and even on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought.
For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, many a base,
And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host
Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battleaxes on shattered helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Looked up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.

   Last, as by some one deathbed after wail
Of suffering, silence follows, or through death
Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shivered brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.

   Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere,
And whiter than the mist that all day long
Had held the field of battle was the King:

   "Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world,
And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move,
And beats upon the faces of the dead,
My dead, as though they had not died for me?--
O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fallen
Confusion, till I know not what I am,
Nor whence I am, nor whether I be King.
Behold, I seem but King among the dead."

   Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: "My King,
King everywhere! and so the dead have kings,
There also will I worship thee as King.
Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live
Who love thee; but who hates thee, he that brought
The heathen back among us, yonder stands,
Modred, unharmed, the traitor of thine house."

   Then spake the King: "My house hath been my doom.
But call not thou this traitor of my house
Who hath but dwelt beneath one roof with me.
My house are rather they who sware my vows,
Yea, even while they brake them, owned me King.
And well for thee, saying in my dark hour,
When all the purport of my throne hath failed,
That quick or dead thou holdest me for King.
King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see
Yet, ere I pass." And uttering this the King
Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege
Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword
Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow,
Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,
Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.

   So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord,
King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land:
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

   Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"The sequel of today unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep--the men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made,--
Though Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more; but, let what will be, be,
I am so deeply smitten through the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword--and how I rowed across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king;
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known:
But now delay not: take Excalibur,
And fling him far into the middle mere:
Watch what thou seëst, and lightly bring me word."

   To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:
"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm--
A little thing may harm a wounded man;
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."

   So saying, from the ruined shrine he stept,
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.

   There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon,
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled as he stood,
This way and that dividing the swift mind,
In act to throw: but at the last it seemed
Better to leave Excalibur concealed
There in the many-knotted waterflags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded King.

   Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"Hast thou performed my mission which I gave?
What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"

   And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag."

   To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale:
"Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseemed
Thy fëalty, nor like a noble knight:
For surer sign had followed, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again,
As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing
I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word."

   Then went Sir Bedivere the second time
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought;
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,
How curiously and strangely chased, he smote
His palms together, and he cried aloud:

   "And if indeed I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost for ever from the earth,
Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.
What good should follow this, if this were done?
What harm, undone? Deep harm to disobey,
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey then, if a king demand
An act unprofitable, against himself?
The King is sick, and knows not what he does.
What record, or what relic of my lord
Should be to aftertime, but empty breath
And rumours of a doubt? But were this kept,
Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings,
Some one might show it at a joust of arms,
Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps
Upon the hidden bases of the hills."
So might some old man speak in the aftertime
To all the people, winning reverence.
But now much honour and much fame were lost."

   So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,
And hid Excalibur the second time,
And so strode back slow to the wounded King.

   Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily:
"What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"

   And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds."

   To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:
"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!
Authority forgets a dying king,
Laid widowed of the power in his eye
That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art,
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,
In whom should meet the offices of all,
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
I will arise and slay thee with my hands."

   Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged
Among the bulrush beds, and clutched the sword,
And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the Northern Sea.
So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
And lightly went the other to the King.

   Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath:
"Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.
Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?"

   And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems
Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,
So great a miracle as yonder hilt.
Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him;
But when I looked again, behold an arm,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere."

   And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:
"My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I were gone.
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,
And bear me to the margin; yet I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

   So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded through his tears,
And would have spoken, but he found not words;
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,
And rising bore him through the place of tombs.

   But, as he walked, King Arthur panted hard,
Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed
When all the house is mute. So sighed the King,
Muttering and murmuring at his ear, "Quick, quick!
I fear it is too late, and I shall die."
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walked,
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
Before. His own thought drove him like a goad.
Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels--
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.

   Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were ware
That all the decks were dense with stately forms,
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream--by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose
A cry that shivered to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world.

   Then murmured Arthur, "Place me in the barge."
So to the barge they came. There those three Queens
Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.
But she, that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,
And loosed the shattered casque, and chafed his hands,
And called him by his name, complaining loud,
And dropping bitter tears against a brow
Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white
And colourless, and like the withered moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
And all his greaves and cuisses dashed with drops
Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls--
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the daïs-throne--were parched with dust;
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,
Mixed with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.
So like a shattered column lay the King;
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot through the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

   Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world,
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

   And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst--if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."

   So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.

   But when that moan had past for evermore,
The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groaned, "The King is gone."
And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,
"From the great deep to the great deep he goes."

   Whereat he slowly turned and slowly clomb
The last hard footstep of that iron crag;
Thence marked the black hull moving yet, and cried,
"He passes to be King among the dead,
And after healing of his grievous wound
He comes again; but--if he come no more--
O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat,
Who shrieked and wailed, the three whereat we gazed
On that high day, when, clothed with living light,
They stood before his throne in silence, friends
Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?"

   Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.

   Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Even to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

---

---

MERLIN AND THE GLEAM

by

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

                  I.

   O YOUNG Mariner,
   You from the haven
   Under the sea-cliff,
   You that are watching
   The gray Magician
   With eyes of wonder,
    I am Merlin,
   And I am dying,
    I am Merlin
   Who follow The Gleam.

                  II.

   Mighty the Wizard
   Who found me at sunrise
   Sleeping, and woke me
   And learn'd me Magic!
   Great the Master,
   And sweet the Magic,
   When over the valley,
   In early summers,
   Over the mountain,
   On human faces,
   And all around me,
   Moving to melody,
   Floated The Gleam.

                  III.

   Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it,
   A barbarous people,
   Blind to the magic,
   And deaf to the melody,
   Snarl'd at and cursed me.
   A demon vext me,
   The light retreated,
   The landskip darken'd,
   The melody deaden'd,
   The Master whisper'd
   "Follow The Gleam."

                  IV.

   Then to the melody,
   Over a wilderness
   Gliding, and glancing at
   Elf of the woodland,
   Gnome of the cavern,
   Griffin and Giant,
   And dancing of Fairies
   In desolate hollows,
   And wraiths of the mountain,
   And rolling of dragons
   By warble of water,
   Or cataract music
   Of falling torrents,
   Flitted The Gleam.

                  V.

   Down from the mountain
   And over the level,
   And streaming and shining on
   Silent river,
   Silvery willow,
   Pasture and plowland,
   Horses and oxen,
   Innocent maidens,
   Garrulous children,
   Homestead and harvest,
   Reaper and gleaner,
   And rough-ruddy faces
   Of lowly labour,
   Slided The Gleam.--

                  VI.

   Then, with a melody
   Stronger and statelier,
   Led me at length
   To the city and palace
   Of Arthur the king;
   Touch'd at the golden
   Cross of the churches,
   Flash'd on the Tournament,
   Flicker'd and bicker'd
   From helmet to helmet,
   And last on the forehead
   Of Arthur the blameless
   Rested The Gleam.

                  VII.

   Clouds and darkness
   Closed upon Camelot;
   Arthur had vanish'd
   I knew not whither,
   The king who loved me,
   And cannot die;
   For out of the darkness
   Silent and slowly
   The Gleam, that had waned to a wintry glimmer
   On icy fallow
   And faded forest,
   Drew to the valley
   Named of the shadow,
   And slowly brightening
   Out of the glimmer,
   And slowly moving again to a melody
   Yearningly tender,
   Fell on the shadow,
   No longer a shadow,
   But clothed with The Gleam.

                  VIII.

   And broader and brighter
   The Gleam flying onward,
   Wed to the melody,
   Sang thro' the world;
   And slower and fainter,
   Old and weary,
   But eager to follow,
   I saw, whenever
   In passing it glanced upon
   Hamlet or city,
   That under the Crosses
   The dead man's garden,
   The mortal hillock,
   Would break into blossom;
   And so to the land's
   Last limit I came--
   And can no longer,
   But die rejoicing,
   For thro' the Magic
   Of Him the Mighty,
   Who taught me in childhood,
   There on the border
   Of boundless Ocean,
   And all but in Heaven
   Hovers The Gleam.

                  IX.

   Not of the sunlight,
   Not of the moonlight,
   Not of the starlight!
   O young Mariner,
   Down to the haven,
   Call your companions,
   Launch your vessel,
   And crowd your canvas,
   And, ere it vanishes
   Over the margin,
   After it, follow it,
   Follow The Gleam.

---

---

THE FAIRY OF THE LAKE

by

JOHN THELWALL

A Dramatic Romance in Three Acts

Characters.

ROWENNA, Queen of Britain; a Sorceress.
EDELTHRED, and Agga, Her attendants
ALWIN, a Saxon Chief .
SENESCHAL.
SEWER.
A BRITISH NOBLE, attendant on the Court of Vortigern .
SAXON NOBLES, Soldiers, and other attendants.

ARTHUR, the British Champion .
TRISTRAM, his Esquire .
SCOUT, another Esquire .
TALIESSIN, Chief of the Bards .
GUENEVER, Daughter of Vortigern, betrothed to Arthur .
BARDS, Knights of the Round Table, Nobles, Maskers, &c.

THE FAIRY (or Lady) of The Lake.
SEVERAL FAIRIES, &c. her attendants.

HELA, Queen of the Infernal Regions .
INCUBUS, a frozen demon .

The Fatal Sisters Presiding Over
URD, the past.
VERANDI, the present.
SCHULDA, the future.

THE GIANTS OF FROST; DEMONS of the Frozen
Regions; Demons of the Noon, &c. &c.

ACT I. SCENE I.

A Stately Appartment in one of the Palaces of Vortigern.

Rowenna reclining in a disconsolate attitude .
Edelthred, Agga, and other Attendants sleeping .

Chorus of Invisible Spirits.

Rowenna rise! Thy beauteous eyes
From clouds of sorrow clear;
With Runic spell Each woe repel,
And dry the falling tear.
Semi cho . Rowenna! pride of Woden's race!
With sovran power, with beauty's grace,
And magic numbers blest!
The impassive spirits of the air
Obedient round thy couch repair,
To sooth the troubled breast.
Cho . Rowenna rise! &c.
Semi cho . Thee, Chauntress of the Runic song!
The misty Realms of Frost among,
The shuddering ghosts obey.
Sem . cho . Thy power the Fatal Sisters own,
And Hela, trembling on her throne,
Admits thy potent sway.
Cho . Rowenna, rise, &c.
Sem . cho . For thee Valhalla's halls are mute;
Nor Wassail bowl, nor dire dispute
The warrior chiefs employ.
Sem. cho . While Frea, from Asgardian bowers,
No more among her votaries showers
The genial shafts of joy.
Cho . Rowenna rise! Thy beauteous eyes
From clouds of sorrow clear:
With Runic spell Each woe repel,
And dry the falling tear.

Rowenna ( rushing forward with great emotion .)
Arthur!--Arthur!--Hence, away,
Intrusive spirits of the air;
Nor, with officious zeal, display
How impotent immortal care.
Sem. cho . Hear, Rowenna!--Mistress hear!
Row . Arthur!--Arthur!--In my heart
I feel--I feel the festering dart:
'Tis Arthur!--Arthur! all.
In vain Asgardia's sacred bowers,
In vain Valhalla's shield-built towers,
Asori's gods, and Hela's powers
Their mission'd daughter call.
Sem . cho . Hear, Rowenna!--Mistress, Hear!
Sem . cho . Still thy bosom. Dry the tear.
Sem . cho . Snatch thy wand!--
Sem . cho . Exert thy power!
Sem . cho . O'er Asgard's foes triumphant tower,
And chace the troubled tear.
Cho . And chace the troubled tear.
Row . Arthur!--Arthur!--Hence--away,
Intrusive spirits of the air,
Nor mock me with officious care.
In vain did Frea charms bestow,
And Schulda o'er the realms below
To rule with runic spell.
In vain with Braga I repeat,
In mystic rhyme, Asamael sweet,
And tune the immortal shell.
In vain by me the Saxon name
O'er prostrate Britain towers to fame.
Myself inglorious fall.
The conquering sword--the magic art
Are baffled by the apostate heart.
'Tis Arthur!--Arthur all.

Yes--yes--'tis fruitless. Minister no more,
Ye ever-hovering spirits! 'tis in vain,
To sooth this storm-toss'd bosom. Earth and Air,
And the deep-bosom'd waters, to this wand,
Indeed, pay homage; and the elfin train
That round the harp of Braga, echoing, throng
(Swelling his magic numbers) on my steps
Wait warbling; and with minstrelsey and voice,
Obedient to my wishes, fill the air
With choral melodies. My wiley arts
Have thrall'd the soul of Vortigern; in whom
Britain, my foe, lies prostrate; and the gods
Of Scandinavia in my witching smiles
Build their ensanguin'd altars. Cambria's sons,
And all the Brutean race, already feel
The woman victor. Even the nether world,
Seasons, and circling Elements obey
My potent biddings. Cloud-compelling Thor
Must wield his thundering Gauntlet, or controul,
With lifted Mace, the Giants of the Frost
If I but chaunt The Rhyme. Yet what avails?
Arthur disdains my charms; and o'er his heart,
My spells are powerless. Yet once more I'll try.
Once more the secret dwellings of The Fates
This ken shall pierce. These feet again shall thrid
The abodes of Hela. Rife, ye ministering maids,
Shake from your slothful lids the charmed sleep,
And do your wakeful service. [ They come forward .
Edelthred!
Hast thou heard aught of strange or terrible
Marring thy midnight slumber?
Edelthred . Nothing, Madam.
My sleep was sweet and tranquil.
Row . Well--and yours?
Agga . Full of sweet visions--gentle and serene.
Row . 'Twas as I wish'd. Oh! impotence of power!
Terrestrial, or supernal! To each eye--
All but mine own--to every wearied sense
Or Mara from some brief imperfect dream
Wakes me, delirious, on her phantom'd forms
To gaze with poweless horror. 'Tis too much.
Hell, give me more: or take the power ye gave.
Give me to triumph o'er my Arthur's heart,
And in these arms enfold him! or my spells,
Hence I forswear, this gifted wand I break,
Nor at the altars of Asgardian Gods
Chaunt hence the Runic rhyme.
Haste Edelthred;
Bring here my mystic robes: the same that erst
(While the dire Sisters join'd the fearful chaunt)
I wove in Cimbrian groves.

Air by an invisible Spirit .

Magic Woof, in Cimbrian shade
Woven by the gifted maid,
While the Raven-voice of Fate
Croak'd of slaughters, fears, and hate,
Sem cho . Shuddering Horror listning near.
Row . Tis the fame. Go: bring it here.
Air as before .
There, beneath the blasted yew,
Where reptiles lap the poisonous dew,
While the bird who shuns the day
Hooted loud, and tore his prey--
Semi cho . There 'twas wove--a webb of fear!
Row . Its die it drank from infant gore,
And tears of mothers blotch it o'er;
It is a mystic webb of fear.
Haste my virgins: bring it here.

Ed . Hertha defend! What means our troubled Queen?
Row . Again, in that terrific pall, to thrid
The maze of Hela; and with potent rhyme,
Extort a boon from Fate. Can I controul
The tempest-heaving Nocca? at my will
Brandish the Thunderer's gauntlet? rend the air
With bidden storms? and from the shades of night
Evoke the wandering spirit? yet not quench,
With its desir'd fruition, the fierce flame
That preys upon my vitals? Does the power
Of magic numbers not extend to Love?
Or are our gods fastidious, to deny
An unbelieving paramour?--save such
Whom Weakness to uxorious faith may bow:
Pageants! and Vortigerns! My Pall! My Pall!
By that dread Fiend Unutterable! whose frown
Makes Nature sterrile, I will know my doom.
The Fatal Sisters, who, in Hela's shade,
Weave the dark woof, shall tell me all they know,
And with their magic aid me. Yet--forbear!
Earth and the shuddering elements confess
The approach of feet profane.
Edel . The bugle (hark!)
Wakening the echoes, thro the distant courts
Sounds in the hurried blast.
Row . Some voice, assured,
Of evil omen seeks my wounded ear,
Big with a tale of horrors. Let it come.
What worse can greet Rowenna than the news
That Arthur scorns her passion?

Enter Alwin.
Well: how now?
Thy dark portentous brow and hurried eye
Outstrip thy tongue's intelligence, and make
Thy silence eloquent. Thou hast some tale
Of horrors and disasters. Give it breath.
I have a heart prepar'd for all the worst:
A soul that shall not falter. I forgive
Thy evil tidings, tho they should import
My father's death, the Saxon overthrow,
And Cambria's triumph.
Alwin . Prophetess inspired!
Thy words prevent my message. Such my news.
Hengist, indeed, is fallen: The Saxon power
Crouches to Britain. To the conflict led
By fierce Ambrosius, with Armoric aids,
Sudden they burst upon us, near the towers
Of Connisburg. Arthur's enchanted sword
Gleam'd like a pestilence; and thro' our ranks
Scatter'd dismay and death. His dragon crest
Belch'd streams of living fire; and on his breath
The dread Valkyries hung; where'er he bad,
Singling their victims.
Row . Arthur? Arthur?
Alw . He--
Pendragon's fiercer son. In horrid grace,
Wrathful he strode the field. His glittering mail
And youthful limbs, besmear'd with Saxon blood,
Daz'd every sense. With awful wonder fill'd,
Our hearts were palsy'd: as tho Woden's self,
Fresh from Iduna's banquet, came renew'd,
To ply the work of Fate, and his own race
Whelm in one general wreck. Meantime the king,
Your royal father--
Row . Met his arm; and died?--
By Arthur died?
Alw . Not so--that fatal deed
Ambrosius boasts--who, hoary in his hate,
And full of guile, engorg'd with treacherous wound
The elfe-engaged Hengist: and he fell--
Fell by the Briton!--while our scatter'd ranks
Fled o'er the plain for safety--vainly sought.
Row . Frea! I thank thee. Genial Goddess! hail!
Hail the propitious omen! 'Twas thy care
That Hengist's blood stained not the hand of Arthur.
Pursue thy tale. Some other hour, more fit,
We will select for tears. Occasions press;
And we must find prompt councils. Whether fled
The abject Vortigern?
Alw . From bourg to bourg
(By all alike rejected) with his suit,
Westward he fled, towards his Cambrian wilds,
A hunted fugitive: till join'd, at last,
By those who 'scap'd the slaughter, he attain'd
The heights of bleak Farinioch. There he lurks,
Hem'd by Gwrtheyrnion's towers, whose giant strength
Frowns o'er the midway steep. Thither he bore
(From his incestuos passion unestrang'd)
His fair, reluctant daughter, Guenever.
Row . She scap'd not then into the arms of Arthur?
She is secure. Revenge at least is sure:
And Love has hope! Say, hast thou aught beside
That may import my hearing?
Alw. Sovereign! nought:
But that the exulting victor, to destroy
The Saxon hope, has purpose to depose
Our pageant Vortigern; and, in his place,
Crown the new idol, Arthur.
Row . ( aside ) Arthur crown'd?
And so he shall be. But not crown'd by them.
That is Rowenna's Dower: the dower confirm'd
By the three Fatal Sisters.--While I live,
Thy empire, Albion, waits my spousal love:
And Arthur, if he reigns, must reign by me.
Alwin, what else?
Alw . Your royal will. Beside
Nought now remains untold.
Row . Then, Alwin, thus--
Haste to Gwrtheyrnion with what scatter'd powers
Your speed may gather. See the gates secur'd
Against my soon arrival. I shall bring
Such powerful succours as may best defend
The alpine fortress, should the victors dare
To press us to a siege. Away. Begone. [ Exit Alw .
O Edelthred! O Agga! why should thus
My heart beat lighter, and the breath more free
Distend my sportive bosom? Hengist slain--
The Saxon routed!--Here is the cause of grief
For Nature and Ambition. But my soul
Is full of Love and Arthur. Frea smiles
To my best hopes propitious; and, amidst
The storms of adverse destiny, my heart
Finds anchor in her aid.

Goddess of the genial hour!
Hear, O! hear my votive sigh;
And, tho' adverse Fortune lour,
Fear and Sorrow I defy,
Goddess of the genial hour!
Grief may drop the transient tear,
Wild Ambition heave the breast;
But, if thou in smiles appear,
All is tranquil--all is blest,
Goddess of the genial hour!
Fear and Sorrow I defy,
Tho my adverse fortune lour,
Hear but thou my votive sigh,
Goddess of the genial hour!

Edel . And she will hear it--if we aught may judge
The future by the present. Could we hope
A fairer pledge of promise? Arthur's hand
Slew not your father.--Arthur's conquering aid
Could not redeem his Guenever.
Row . 'Tis there
My fondest hopes are fix'd--Still, still she pines
In hostile bonds--still hears with steadfast hate
(Would it were not so steadfast!) the foul suit
Of that incestuous Vortigern: or writhes,
Perchance, subjected to his foul embrace,
Calling, in vain, on Arthur. I will aid
The lawless passion of this monster king,
Goading his vile desires, and urging on
To their impell'd fruition. Haply so
(For man, with sickly appetite, abhors
Oft from the trick of Fancy) Arthur hence
Shall loath her rifled beauties: She no more
Shall seem or chaste or lovely; and his eyes
Confess superiour merit. Then shall soon
Adultrous Vortigern my vengeance feel;
And his polluted paramour: This hand
Shall lift my Arthur to an envied throne,
And our united sceptres blend the tribes
Of Cimbria and of Britain. Say I well?
Agga . Well: if The Fates ordain.
Row . We will enquire.
And for such purpose in The Secret Grove
Chant we the spell. My double-visag'd Fate
(Ghastly at once and jocund) goads me on
Amidst a storm of passions. To The Grove
Initiate Virgins, and the haunted cave;
There join the fearful chaunt. And ye, unseen--
Ye shapeless spirits of the impassive air,
Lend me your minstrelsey. Yet first evoke
The oafish Incubus. While yet the bat,
Beneath the ominous mantle of the night,
Follows the beetles hum, be it his talk
To scout the country round; if chance he learn
Tidings of Arthur; who, at once impell'd
By love and by ambition, will pursue
The steps of Guenever. Him should he find,
Upon the attendant train let him essay
His numbing tricks: that while they, shivering, sink
In senseless torpor, Arthur, all alone
These eyes once more may meet. Evoke the fiend.
What further I design the mystic grove
And secret cave shall witness. Join me there
Where, in my Cimbrian pall and snaky tire,
I chaunt the spell to Hertha.

Howl of wolves, and ghosts of night,
In the fearful chorus join,
While The Moon withdraws his light,
And the stars, in dim afright,
Veil their orbs, and fear to shine.
Hark!--they wait to swell the rite--
Howl of wolves and ghosts of night!
[ Exeunt Row. Edel. &c.

Scene II. Manet Agga.
Agga . Incubus! Incubus!
Incubus, (below.) Whu-u-u! Whe-e-ether now?
Who-o-o calls so loud?
Agga . You know, I trow.
Incubus! Incubus!
Did you not your mistress hear?
Incub . Ye-e-e-e-yes--
Behold your shivering devil here.

The ground uncloses, and thro the chasm rises a meagre spectre, with a blue and frosty
countenance, sunken eyes, frozen locks and beard, and garments covered with icicles.

Incub . ( Shaking the snow from his sides. ) Whu-u-u-u!
What's the business pr'ythee now?
Agga . Son of Frost! you know I trow.
Did you not your Mistress hear?
Incub . Hear? O yes; there's no fear of that, I
assure you. When 'tis a woman we serve, our orders
are sure to be sufficiently audible! The frosts of Hela
cannot plug up one's ears against the clear tones of
the feminine organ. But pr'ythee now, leave off your
rhyming and your incantations, and blow my fingers
for me a little.--It is half a century since I have
been able to breathe any thing but sleet and hailstones
upon them myself.
Agga . Really I have no warm breath to spare upon so
cold a subject.
Incub . Why I suppose, indeed, I am not very engaging.
Some thousand years hence, when ice-creams are
predestined to become an article of luxury,
some lady of honour, may chance to take a liking to a joint or
two, by way of stomachic: But at present, I believe,
there is no great danger of my being devour'd by
the fair sex.
Agga . Not if they are of my taste, at least.
Incub . But pray, good Mrs. Journeywoman Sorceress!
have you any further instructions? Any snug little
commission for yourself?
Agga . Good Mr. Journeyman Devil! no.--If ever
I admit any of your infernal train into my service, it
shall be a devil of better quality.
Incub . Aye! aye! Mrs. you are for a good plump
roasting devil I suppose. This essence of snow and
icicles might melt before the blaze of your beauty.
Agga. What, you think I have some attractions then?
Incub . Attractions! Before I descended into the
regions of Hela, to have my blood converted into icicles,
I should have been ready to die for you any half hour
of my existience.
Ag . Were you such a Dragon amongst us in your
life time?--Come, come; I suspect it was not for this
you were sent to The Frozen Regions
Inc . Why, no: offences of that sort are punished
in a Hell of a very different description. In short, there
is no dissembling. You know the mysteries of our
faith; and the thing speaks for itself. Our fisticuff
Divinities and I happened not to set up our horses
together on the subject of the exquisite delight of being
hacked and hewed into a thousand pieces. Not
but that I could be valiant enough in my own way:
for my mouth was full of big oaths; and my brow
seemed as dark with danger as a thunder-cloud: till a
disastrous coincidence took the sword of my renown
out of my mouth, and placed it in my hand.
Ag . Ha! ha! poor Incubus! And then I suppose
it was perfectly out of its element.
Inc . In short, the signal for battle was given; when
suddenly a cold sweat coming over me, I slunk from
the ranks; hid myself in a house of conveniency; died
of apprehension, before the conflict was decided; was
conveyed immediately to the Realms of Mist and Frost,
and hung up for an icicle upon the eaves of Hela's
palace; where I might right ruefully have remained,
without remission or intermission, hope or holiday, the
whole predestinated period of my purgation.--
Agga . Purgation? What, then, you do not expect
to await The Twilight of the Gods in your present frozen
state?
Incub . Schulda forbid! Let me see: according to
my calculation, I have now--But if your invisible
musicians will help me out with an accompaniment, I
will describe, in a song, the year of my regeneration.

When the twelvemonth's contention of Cent'ries is done,
Whether eighteen be ended, and nineteen begun,
And Learning and Science their optics shall strain
To find some new nothing to puzzle the brain;
Then the Fates to this world shall my essence restore,
To shudder in Regions of Hela no more.

O! how different the race that my eyes shall behold!
For a soul of my kidney a true age of Gold!
Since none for his fears can be look'd on the worse,
Where they count for their fame not their fears but their purse
Then the Fates to this World, &c.

Then The Fair--Oh! how fair their sweet persons will shine,
When our helmets and scull-caps to them we resign,
When no grace of the form shall in vain be bestow'd,
And nakedness self be the tip of the mode.

Then their motions so easy, their manners so free!
In ferae naturae you'd deem them to be;
And Miss just in her teens, from all bashfulness freed,
Shall now skip o'er the rope, and now skip o'er the tweed:

O! how gay then I'll flirt and I'll flutter around,
Where the belles of the young 19th Cent'ry are found!
Their charms so obtrusive shall kindle a flame;
Shall melt all the ice that now stiffens my frame;
And I'll think, while Love's ardour shall glow in each pore,
Of the Regions of Frost and of Hela no more.
[ Exeunt .

Scene III. The Magic Grove; with the entrance of
the Cave of Incantations--a rude and rocky chasm,
overhung with shattered yew trees, and every species
of gloomy and noxious vegetation. The darkness of
the scene is only imperfectly interruupted by the transient
glare of meteors from above, and the blue vapours,or
fen damps, that play about the Magic Circle described
at the entrance of the Cave. Shrieks and groans, and
bellowing noises, heard occasionally in the air; &c.

Rowenna is discovered, arrayed in her Pall and snaky
hair dishevelled, and intermixed with Ivy, Hemlock,
Nightshade, &c. A Female Child accompanies
them, bearing the Pictured Drum and Double Ham-
mer, with a rosary of Brazen Rings, and images of
serpents, frogs, toads, and other obscene reptiles, used
in the mysteries of Northern Magic.

Row . Strike, strike, The mystic Drum, virgin yet pure
Of passion's secret wish! from sacred folds
Of chill equatic Loomskin, lift on high
The awful Hammer, while the Brazen Ring,
Viper, and venom'd Toad, and Frog that croaks
In pools obscene, and Newt of mouldering wall
Dance o'er the pictur'd surface, and in reel
Prophetic of our wavering destinies,
Lead up The Rites.
Ye Demons of the Storm!
Who thro the mirky clouds with transient glare
Stoop to our incantations, or, appall'd,
Shriek in the midnight blast, with yell or groan
Swelling the chorus of the shuddering Grove,
While growls the distant bear, and in his den
The hungry wold barks fear-chain'd!--it is well;
Ye feel my power, and own it. Aid me then
If these mysterious Rites--or ye who rive
With Thor's own bolts the groaning earth, or ye
Who to the labouring mine's combustion'd womb
Dart the contagious spark, whence Earthquake rends,
Or pent Volcano spits his sulphurous fires,
Wide wafting! for to Hela's misty realms
I force my way, and to The Fatal Three
Who weave the Webb of Destiny. [ Enter Agga.
How now?--
Tardy and shuddering? Hast thou in thy way
Gather'd the spume-froth'd drugs, on which, o'ertoil'd,
The Bat hath crouch'd, and the Night-Swallow drop'd
Her half-churn'd morsels?--
Agga . Mistress, they are here:--
But, use them not! Some hostile star prevails--
Our Gods forsake us. Never, since the hour
When, with initiate feet, I first approach'd
This mystic Circle, felt my soul such horror.
At ever and anon, as, from my speed
Pausing, I stoop'd, some ominous shriek was heard,
Or deathlier groan:--the herbs, o'erconscious, shrunk
My trembling touch; the glare of fiery eyes
Peep'd from the unhallow'd turf; and up mine arm
Darts the benumbing shock--as lighning struck!--
That three-times thrice (while shook the earth beneath)
From my full apron drop'd the unwilling store--
With shuddering toil replac'd. Forbear! forbear
The ill-omen'd spell!
Row . Mere womanish fear. Away!
My soul is all on fire, and I must seek
The quenching stream, or perish. Come: draw near.
Give me The Drugs. Thus from my bruising hands
I press the powerful dews. Now, strike again
The spheric Drum, and in the fawn's warm blood
Stoop, stoop and wash--'Tis done. Begin the chaunt.
Chorus . Hela! hear!
Edel . Queen of Niflheim's misty shade
Agga . Frozen Hela! ghastly maid!
Row . From thy Throne of Horrors--hear!
Edel . By the Giants of the Frost!
Agga . By Ising's fury-beaten coast!
Row . By the Dome of Anguish--hear!
Edel . By thy Table, Famine-spread!
Agga . By thy lean unshelter'd Bed!
Row . Threshold bleak and Chasm dread!
Chorus . Hela! hear!
Edel . Furies dread of Woden's hall!
Agga . By whom the fated heroes fall--
Row . Dread Valkyries!--bend and hear!
Edel . And ye Nornies--fearful three!
Who thro Fate's dark workings see--
Weaving the Webb that mortals fear--
Chorus . Fatal Sisters! list, and hear!

Row. bending towards the earth, with her Wand up-
lifted, as in act to strike .
Hertha! ope thy rock-rib'd side--
Ribs of Ymer's giant pride!
Ribs by Odin, Vile, and Ve--
Awful Godhead! mystic Three!
From Ymer torn, and giv'n to thee.
Adel. and Agga . Hertha! ope thy rock-rib'd side--
Ribs of Ymer's giant pride!
Chorus . Hertha! hear! [ A groan below.
Edel . Hertha labours. Soon the spell
Shall her reluctant womb compel.
Agga . Soon the once-tried depths below
Again their gates shall open throw.

Row . Cease, ye maidens--cease your strains:
Mine the talk that yet remains.
Hertha's rock-rib'd side uncloses;
Hell its hideous womb exposes;
Groans, and shrieks, and plaints of woe
Roar in troubled floods below.
Fly ye maids! To me alone
Hertha's secret ways are known.

Subterranean thunder . Edelthred, Agga, &c. dis-
appear. The cavern bursts open. A swarm of hideous
Phantoms rush, with great clamour, from the cleft;
thro whom Rowenna rushes, and descends. The
Phantoms form themselves into groups, some of
which join in a sort of fantastic and conflicting dance,
striking at each other, and buffetting the air; while
others join in discordant chaunt.

Chorus . Fell enchantress! hold! forbear!
1. Phantom . 'Tis in vain. We beat the air.
2. Ph. Phantom'd Terrors glare in vain.
3. Ph . Nature's laws no more restrain.
All three . Desperate Magic bursts the chain.
Cho . Hertha groans in terrene thunder:
Ribs of Rock are burst asunder.
1. Ph . Sulphur! 2. Ph . Nitre! 3.Ph. Miner's damp,
Fatal to the vital lamp--
All . Thro the cavern'd entrails fume:
2. Ph . And the Wolf-like Serpent's spume.
Chorus Midgard's Serpent, fierce and dread,
Lifts his all-devouring head.
1. Ph . Fiercely writhes his scaly zone.
2. Ph . Nature trembles on her throne.
Cho . Gods and Hela join the groan.
1. Ph . Hark! the Hell-dog's tripple growl!
2. Ph . Rafaen's scream! 3. Ph . And Fenrir's howl!
Cho . Thrillling shriek! and deaf'ning growl!
1. Ph . Fell enchantress! 2. Ph . On she goes--
3. Ph . Eager of impending woes.
All . To the nine-fold realm she goes!
Chorus .
Hertha's rock-rib'd side uncloses;
Niflheim's gloom in vain opposes;
Groans, and shrieks, and plaints of woe
Roar, in bootless floods, below.
They rush into the chasm, and it closes.

Scene IV. The Abodes of Hela.
The stage, at first, appears involoved in darkness and mist,
so that the objects at the back part of the scene are not dis-
cernable. Thunder and occasional flashes of Lightning.

Row . ( without .) Hela!--Hela!--Hela!
Hela . What mortal organs thus aloud proclaim,
With triple invocation, Hela's name?
Row . ( entering ) Regent of the nine-fold shade!
Shuddering Hela! Ghastly Maid!
Bid the mists of darkness fly
Scattering from the nether sky!

Hela . Say who art thou who thus, with daring tread,
Invad'st the dreary mansions of the dead?

Fear! presumptuous mortal! fear!
Draw not to my threshold near.
Draw not near! Confess thy fear!
And shun my fury ere too late.
Row . Hela! no:--I cannot fear;
Tho the Furies all appear,
Sprung from Lok's prolific hate.
Hela . Draw not near. Learn to fear
Fenrir's howl, and Hela's hate.
Row . Hela, no: I cannot fear
Fenrir's howl, or Niflheim's hate.

By the channels twelve that drank
Hevergelmer's vapours dank,
Where the direful rivers flow,
Streams of horror, plaint, and woe!
I have travers'd, void of fear,
To seek the Fatal Sisters here.

Cho . Regent of the nine-fold shade!
Shuddering Hela! Ghastly Maid!
Bid the mists of darkness fly.

Row . O'er the Bridge where Giö rolls--
Fearful pass to dastard souls!
By The Dog of hideous yell,
By the iron grate of Hell,
Ghastly Hela! I have come
To tax The Fates, and know my doom.

Cho . Regent of the nine-fold shade!
Shuddering Hela! ghastly Maid!
Bid the mists of darkness fly.

Trio, and Chorus, by The Fatal Sisters, &c.
Urd and Who art thou who thus presume
Schulda . To tax the Fatal Sisters o'er their loom?
Verandi . Fly! daring mortal!
Urd . Daring mortal! fly.
Schulda . Fly! nor urge thy instant doom.
Cho . Fly, daring mortal! fly: nor urge thy instant doom!

Row . Hela! from thy nether sky
Bid the mists of darkness fly:
Soon shall to your eyes appear
One your shuddering spectres fear.
Soon The Sisters o'er the loom
The shuttled hand shall check, and tell my doom.

Hela! from thy nether sky
Bid the mists of darkness fly,
Ere the looud resistless spell
Shake the dire abodes of Hell--
Ere this wand's terrific stroke
The Unutterable Fiend evoke.

Hela . Fly! ye mists of Nörver--fly!--
Dager claims our nether sky.
Dread Enchantress! stop the spell.
Rowenna!!!-------Now I know thee well.

The mists dispersing, Hela is discovered; a meagre
ghastly spectre, seated on a throne of Ice, on the pre-
cipitous threshold of a palace of the same material:
the whole scene exhibiting a dreary spectacle of Rock,
and Ice, and Snow.
Her Throne is guarded by The Giants of Frost,
a race of deformed and enormous monsters, whose
heads reaching the top of the stage, are involved in
clouds and vapours. Their hair and beards formed
of icicles: their Garments of Snow: their complexions
livid, and their forms mishapen. Meteors play around
their heads; and snow and hailstones issue from their
mouths and nostrils. A throng of shuddering spectres
around; some sauntering about; others root-bound;
and all covered with snow and icicles . The Demons
of Storm and Tempest wait behind the Chair.

On the other side, in a cave apart, are seen The Fatal
Sisters at their loom. Sculls are fixed to the beams
instead of weights; the chamber is lighted by a Lamp
and a blazing Cauldron. Rafaen, i.e. the Raven
of Schulda hovers over their heads.

Trio. Urd, Verandi, Schulda.

Weave The Webb--the webb of Fate!
Ply it early--ply it late!
Fates of falling empires weave!
Woes that suffering mortals grieve!
Spindles turn; the shuttle throw;
Treacherous joys, and lasting woe,
In the fatal texture grow.
Weave the Woof--the woof of Fate!
Ply it early--ply it late!
Urd . Take the sample from the past.
Verandi . Present sorrows thicken fast.
Schulda . But the worst shall come at last,
All . Weave The Woof--the woof of Fate!
Ply it early--ply it late!
Fates of falling empires weave!
Woes that suffering mortals grieve!
Spindles turn--the shuttle throw;
Treacherous joys and lasting woe
In the fatal texture grow.
Chorus . Weave The Webb--the webb of Fate!
Ply it early--ply it late

Row . Cease, fatal hags! the ill-omen'd yell forego.
Speak: for ye can. I come my fate to know.

Schul . Sorceress, yet in early bloom!
Tax us not, but wait thy doom.
Soon enough thy woe shall come.

Row . Whate'er the will of changeful Fortune be,
I murmur not, nor question HER decree.
Weave close the secret woof, ye baleful three.
Not for the gauds of empire now I seek:
Crowns ye may give, and settled sceptres break.
I fathom not, in this, your dire decree:
For what are crowns and sceptres now to me?
But of Arthur I must know--
Doom of joy?--or Doom of Woe?
Urd . When first the fatal bowl you gave,
And Vortigern became your slave,
Then for sovran power you pray'd;
And Fatal Sisters lent their aid.
All . Then for sovran power you pray'd;
And Fatal Sisters lent their aid.
Row Sisters thanks: but this I know.
Veran . But now no more ambition swells:
Thy secret soul on Arthur dwells:
Arthur, who, in Lunvey's groves,
Ev'n now, in wildering anguish, roves.
All . Arthur now, in Lunvey's groves,
In heart-consuming anguish roves.
Row . Sisters thanks that this I know.
But yet a further boon bestow.
Past and present ye have shown:
Make, O! make the future known.
Schulda! say what you decree?
Direfull'st of the direful three!
Quick: divine: Is Arthur mine?
Schulda! say what you decree?
Shul . Woden fits on Asgard hills;
Where Hydrassil's Ash distills
Nectar'd drafts of dew divine.
There alone, in accents clear,
My Raven whispers in His ear,
What the future Fates design.

Row . But I in lore of mystic arts excel,
And Fate's ambiguous book with ease can spell.
Speak, Fatal Sister! speak; and I'll explain:
Tho mystery involve the strain.
Sch . Sister--ere the memory dye,
Speak again of things gone by.
Urd . Once, to snare a monarch's soul,
Fair Rowenna drugg'd a bowl.
Row . I did--I did. Upon my knee,
Vortigern! I gave it thee.
Sch . When the bowl again goes round,
And Vortigern his sleep profound
Heedless quaffs--
Row . Hela laughs!--
Plain the drift my sense descries.
Sisters thanks.---He dies! he dies!
Hela . Wide my iron portals throw:
Perjur'd ghosts descend below.
Open throw. To realms of woe,
Perjur'd ghosts descend below.
Row . Plain the drift my sense descries.
Hela thanks.-------He dies! He dies!
Sch . Then shall close Thy jealous woes,
Arthur's hand shall light the fire
In which thy sorrows all expire.
Row . Propitious Schulda! thanks. But what of her--
The Cambrian viper! hateful Guenever?
Sch . More thy rival to confound,
Fire and Water shall surround;
Ruthless flames, and waves profound.
Arthur's hand no help shall lend,
No mortal arm the maid befriend,
Nor aid from pitying Heaven descend.
Row . Schulda thanks. Enough of her
My hated rival Guenever.
Hela . Wide my iron portals throw:
Perjur'd Ghosts descend below.
Open--open--open throw!
To realms of woe,
Perjur'd ghosts descend below.
Row . Plain the drift my soul descries.
Vortigern---------He dies!--He dies!
Arthur's hand shall light the fire
In which my sorrows all expire.
Hela's ghosts the joy shall feel
Joining in the giddy reel!
Look for Fenrir say me nay:
'Tis Rowenna's holyday.

She waves her wand; and instantly the whole train of
frozen spectres rush to the middle of the stage, and
join in a fantastic dance; while all the vocal characters repeat in

Grand Chorus .
Wide the iron portals throw.
Perjur'd ghosts descend below.
Hela's sons the triumph feel,
Joining in the giddy reel.--
Lok nor Fenrir say us nay:
'Tis Rowenna's Holiday.

End of the First Act.

Act II. Scene I.

Lynn Savadan; or, Langorfe Pool; by Moonlight.

A Dance of Fairies.

1. Fairy . While the Moon with silver sheen
Spangles o'er Savadan's Lake,
Fairies to the margent green
Haste from grotto, bower, and brake,
And in our lunar rites partake.
Chorus . Elves from grotto, bower, and brake,
1. Fa . Frisk it! 2. Fa . Frisk it! 3. Fa . Frisk it!
Ch . Frisk it round the silver lake.
1. Fa . Nor ye who, in your golden boat,
The water lily, love to float.
Chacing oft, with merry Lay,
The beams that o'er the rippling surface play,
These our lunar rites forsake.
Sem. cho . Elves from grotto, bower, and brake--
Fays that skim Savadan's lake--
1. Fa . Ever gay 2. Fa . While ye may.
1. Fa . Trip it. 2. Fa . Trip it! 3. Fa . Trip away!
Cho . Join the dance, and join the lay.
2. Fa . Flowers opprest by noontide heat
Let the breath of Fragrance cheer;
And as we brush with nimble feet,
Blights and Mildews disappear,
And all that taint the vernal year.
Sem. cho . Disappear!--Disappear!--Disappear!--
1. Fa . As we whisk it! 2. Fa . Frisk it! 3. Fa . Whisk it!
1. Fa . Whisk it! frisk it! Frisk it! whisk it!
Cho . Let the breath of Fragrance cheer
The vernal year.

The Lady of the Lake rises on a Throne of Spars
and Coral, in a car, or water chariot, drawn by
Swans .

Lady . Enough, ye elves and fairies!--ye who ride
The lunar beam, or on the surface skim,
Buoyant, of lake or rill, or thro mid air
Bestride the gossamer; and ye who lurk
Beneath my bordering flow'rets, or the leaves
Of pensile shrubs, that from Savadan's marge
Inhale their freshness. Well have ye preform'd
Your modest funtions, from the irriguous haunts,
Chacing the Sterrile Fiend, and all the rout
That hurt with anguish spells, that neither blight,
Canker, nor smut, thro all my favourite bowers,
Insect nor worm appears, of power to mar
The buds of vernal promise. Tis enough.
Now other cares invite; and other fears
Swell in my anxious bosom. Arthur's fate
Hangs on the tremulous balance.

From coral groves and spar-encrusted dome,
Where, enthron'd in virgin pride,
O'er their secret urns preside
The sedg'd-crown'd sisters fair,
Who make the sylvan lakes their care,
I come.
For deep in that sequester'd home
The voice of Anguish pierc'd my ear,
From Lunvey's echoing groves.
There where hostile spells surrounding
(All his rising hopes confounding)
Rack his soul with pangs severe--
There--ah! there--
Mourning----pining--
Every blissful thought resigning--
There bewilder'd Arthur roves.
For him I grieve,
For him my coral grots I leave,
Yoke my white swans, and breathe this terrene air.
Haste ye Fairies, haste ye then--
Search the woodland, search the glen.
For deeds of love forego your vagrant sport,
And in my secret grotto make report.

Cho . Mistress, you shall be obey'd.
1. Fa . Sisters each your province take:
Mount the breeze, or skim the lake:
Thrid with care the leafy shade.
2.F . Frisk it! 3.F . Whisk it! 4.F. Trip it! 5.F . Flit it!
Cho . Mistress you shall be obey'd. [ They vanish .

The Lady returns to her Car, and the scene closes.

Scene II. A hanging Wood on the borders of a little
Stream.

Enter Incubus, shaking his fingers and rubbing
his hands.

Who-o-o-o! what a poor undone devil am I! When
I am freezing and dangling on the eves of Hela's palace,
I do nothing but sigh and pray that my nechromantic
mistress, here, or some other of my terrestrial employers
would be kind enough to stand in need on my assistance,
and give me a blind-man's holiday, in this warmer atmos-
phere; yet here have I been wandering only two or
three hours, and the frost in my joints is converted into
so horrible a hot-ache, that I begin to wish my icicle-
ship had remained undisturbed, in the pure state of sub-
terranean congelation, where the Giants of Frost had
fixed me. But the worst is, the night is almost spent,
and my task not completed. A precious cataplasm will
be clapped to my sores, I'll warrant, if I descend to
Niflheim again with an imperfect account of my mission.
A plague o'that drunken desperado, Tristam! one
by one, I have nabbed all the reft; and laid the whole
Round Table (knights, squires, and all) as quiet as
Mead and Wassail ever laid them at high festival: but
Lok himself (the father of all mischief) cannot get that
dragon-eater out of the reach of Arthur's enchanted
sword: to hazard the vengeance of which requires a
little more of the fool-valiant than belongs to any devil
of my kidney.---But behold!-----A plague on all blun-
derers! How came I not to think of that before?
What sort of an angler, for a devil, must I be, when a
Welchman was to be caught, not to think of Cwrw?
-----Cwrw!! Cwrw!!!--------Cwrw!!!!!!-----But here
they come. Bo-peep's the word, and then to my last
shift. [ Exit.

Enter Arthur; and Tristram, drunk, with a cag .

Arthur . Distraction! furies! whether do we rove?
On what enchanted region have we trod,
Beset with hellish fiends? Mine eyes deceive--
This is not Lunvey. These are not the groves
Where once, with songs prophetic, o'er my head
The ministering fairies danc d, touching my lips
With charm of sweetest numbers, and my limbs
(Yet in their infant swathes) with iron force
Nerving resistless. Or, if such it be,
The Saxon Demons o'er the Isle prevail,
And our Good Spirits leave us.
Tristram ( turning up his cag .) Spirits! O, yes, your
honour's highness!--our spirits are all gone; that's certain.
Here it is, your honour's highness! Round and sleek;
----just the same big belly it set out with. But it's de-
livered your honour's highness! fairly delivered; and so
there's an end to our deliverance.
Hollow! hollow! ( knocking against it with his
knuckles )--Hollow as a false friend, who preaches and
moralises when Necessity is at the door: and then he
rings, just like this--all his swelling words being nothing
but emptiness!
Ar . Oh! Guenever! Guenever! At such a time!
They could not all desert me. Dastards all!
Chieftains renown'd for hardiest enterprise
Turn dastards on the spur?--------I'll not believe it.
Trist . No, your honour's highness! nor little Tristram
neither: any more than he'll believe his costrel is a
perpetual spring: and that it is not, there is heavy proof
in all this lightness. ( Throwing it up and catching it.)
Light! light!--Light as a Courtier's promise--or a Court
Lady's morals.---O that a light costrel and a dark destiny
should go thus together.----( As he is tossing the Costrel
about he tumbles .) Seated your honour's highness!--
Seated!--But what signifies seating now? The round
table ( Placing the cag before him )--ah! your honour's
highness! The round table is quite empty.
Ar . Significant drunkard! dost thou make a scoff
And jest of my afflictions?
Trist . O Lord! your honour's highness! quite the
contrary. Moralising, your honour--moralising. Inspi-
red!--spiritualised!--What were good liquor good for,
if it did not put good thoughts into one's head?
Ar . It is enchantment all. Demoniac spells
Have snar'd their feet, and Hell's suborned fiends
Have with incestuous Vortigern conspir'd
To mock my high rais'd hopes. Oh! sacred wax!
( pulling out a pair of Tablets and pressing them to his lips )
Grav'd with the sweetest words, by fairest hands---
And yet how terrible!------Dear, direful proof
Of chastest constancy!----This night----this night----
With such a cause to charm them to their oaths
Could they have fled, like recreants?
Trist . Fl-e-ed! O yes, your honour's highness; flown,
I'll answer for them: but it was at second hand; as they
trot when they ride o' cockhorse. I'll swear by a full
costrel--(for it would be but an empty oath to swear by
a costrel that was not full--and would shew me, as it
were, to be but a 'squire of hollow faith) I saw the
Devil fly away with half a dozen of them. I sup-
pose if it had not been for my Guardian Spirit ( lifting
up the cag ) I should have known myself what sort of a
poney His Devilship is. And then---ha! ha! ha! ha!
Ar . Peace, babbling Jester! Art thou too possest?
Trist . Ho! ho! ho! I beg pardon, your honour's
highness--but i'faith I can't help laughing, to think--
ha! ha! ha! if the devil had laid hold of me, what a
figure I should have made, charioteering between a pair
of sooty wings, with two great horns in my hands, by
way of reins, and a huge pair of saucer eyes before me,
for lanthorns.---Ho! ho! ho!---What a dash!
Ar . ( still grasping The Tablets, and gazing upon them
with encreased emotion .) This night--this night--
The last permitted to the anxious calm
Of Innocence unviolate!--This Night
That, midst the curtain'd silence, still shall talk
Of its successor's horrors--of the hour
When the soul father lover (so decreed)
Flush'd from the riotous banquet--lust enflam'd!--
Inebriate to incest!---------Hell is there!--
He walks, distractedly several times, to and fro; then
pauses--opens the tablets again, and reads .
"This night, this night!--all means of death remov'd,
"(The last poor respite tears and prayers could gain)
"I give to thoughts of Thee, and to those vows
"Of chastest love inviolate we pledg'd
"On Usk's remember'd banks. This night (yet pure)
"I dare to think I am Arthur's. All beyond--
"All if Gwrtheyrnion's walls----------But haste and save!
"Haste with thy Warrior Knights--Oh! that this breath,
"That never flows but to wing prayers to Heaven
"For thee and for thy safety--that this breath--------
"But worse impends---Worse to thy heart--to mine!
"---To mine! Oh! persecuting Heaven! that aught
"Than Arthur's safety--Arthur's sacred life
"Can be more precious to the shuddering heart
"Of his disastrous Guenever!"
Despair!-----
"But haste and save! Haste with thy warrior knights!"
Alas! where are they? Ho! ye recreants, ho!---
Follow me. Once again, with hopeless search,
Thro the night-thickened labyrinths let us wind,
Wakening the sullen Echoes; if perforce,
With their reverberate aid, our shouts may reach
The chance-bewilder'd straglers---if but Chance,
Not Hell, or fouler Treachery, have sapt
Their faith till now undoubted.----Ho! what ho!
My Guenever!--disastrous guenever! [ Exit .
Trist . Oh! my Costrel!----my sweet, lovely------
poor, miserable, empty Costrel!
Aye---Theres' the Devil! But for that, the adven-
ture would not be desperate. There would still be
three of us--the redoubtable Tristram, the pussiant Ar-
thur, and the all-conquering Cwrw: and what could stand
before us?--Caer Gwrtheyrnion?--Pho! nor all the
Cares in the universe. Why we shouldn't care for Pan-
demonium itself. We'd storm old Belzebub in his
grand keep; and make a rareeshow of all his family.
Send us, ye Guardian Angels! send us but a costrel
of Cwrw! of C-W-R-W. Fal de rol de rol, de ra ra,
lol lol! ( Sings .)
A large cask rises out of the ground, against which
Tristram runs his nose as he is reeling out .
Bawh! What have we here? Ho! ho! a cask! a
cask.--The prayers of the drunken shall be heard; for
they pray in The Spirit. But what is this?--Some magical
inscription I suppose. O thou universal lamplightress,--
thou that see'st many a thing that thy elder brother, the
Sun, never dreamt of!--lend me thy spectacles awhile,
that I may spell. C-W-R-W- Cwrw!!---Spell,
indeed--What are your Runic Rhymes, your Riddles,
your Pharmaceutrias--your Cabals, your Abracadaberas,
to the magical combination of C--W--R--W? (Sings .

Of spells you may talk,
Writ in ink, blood, or chalk,
With which Wizzard and Witch have to do;
But each Welchman can tell
That there never was spell
Like C--W--R--W! Fal de rol. &c.

With this spell, I'll be bound
To make Nature spin round,
As our boys with their whip-tops can do;
And the world all so scurvy
I'd turn topsyturvy
With C--W--R--W. Fal de rol! &c.

Inspir'd--Inspir'd! If it be but as potent to valour as
to verse, the business is done.--And where's the doubt?
What but Cwrw was it, that produced so many famous
heroes of antiquity, from Nimrod to Jack the Giant
Killer. ( Sings .)

O, ye heroes renown'd
Who fought all the world round--
O! ye Cæsars, and fam'd Alexanders!
Pray how had ye thriv'd,
If of Cwrw depriv'd?
Faith you'ad been just as valiant as ganders.
Fal de rol! &c.

If a second you want,
Then, each foeman to daunt,
Then, I'll tell you, my boy, what to do;
Never fear to depend
On the Welchman's best friend,
On C--W--R--W. Fal de rol! &c.

Bravo! bravo, little Tristram! One draught of this
genuine water of the muses, and thou wilt eclipse all the
Knights of the Round Table, and bear away the prize,
in the bardic circles, from Taliessin himself. But how
to get at it? Oh! A spile!---A spile!---I'll answer for
it then it shall not be spoiled. ( Pulls out the spile, and
the ale begins to run .) Genuine! genuine! entire! I'll
be sworn. A choice drop out of the celestial cellar;
brewed by my Guardian Angel for his own private
drinking. Let me take it devoutly. ( Kneeling ) Now,
now shall I be famous, or the devil is in it. ( Drinks.
The head of the cask flies off, out of which Incubus
rises, and seizes him by the ears .)
Inc . Aye, and in it he is: little as you might expect it.
( The cask sinks down and leaves Tristram in the
clutches of Incubus.)
Trist . ( Shivering .) Who-o-o who are you, and be-e
hanged to you?
Inc . A devil!
Trist. The-e-e devil you are. Wha-a-at the devil
makes my teeth chatter so then? In such hands, I should
have expected to be frying in my own grease.
Inc . Aye, that's because you don't know what sort of
devil you have to deal with, my little Tristram. I am
none of your bon-fire devils come to entertain you
with squibs and crackers, and birth-day rockets and illu-
minations: but a good thorough icicle devil, from the
regions of Hela: where I have been freezing, under
the North Pole, for more than half a century.
Trist . Fre-e-e-ezing with a ve-e-e-engeance!
Zounds I am fro-o-o-o-ozen too. I-i-i-i----can't
get to my sw-o-o-o-ord.

Ar-r-r r-Arthur!
Inc . Vainly you for Arthur call:
Your very words are frozen all:
They shall never reach his ear.
Trist . Ar-r-r-r Arthur! Arthur! co-o-o-ome away.
I am lo-o-o-o-lost if yo-u-u-u delay.
Inc . Trust me he shall never hear.
Your words are frozen.
Trist . So-o-o-o I-----fear.
Inc . Thus upon my prey I seize.
Trist . I freeze----I freeze----I freeze!
Ar-r-r Arthur!---Ar-r-r Arthur.
Inc . 'Tis in vain Your lungs you strain.
Trist . I-i-i-i---I see it plain.
Inc . Vassal hind! Your voice I bind--
Trist . S o-o-o I find---
Inc . In Vindsualer's icy chain
Trist . W-w-w-w-wind! wind swallow!
Cold and hollow!
Inc . Grim Vindsualer! Winter's fire!
Trist . Ar-r-r-r Arthur! Arthur! O-o-o-oh! a fire!
Inc . 'Tis in vain; Fruitless pain; Thus to strain.
Arthur, Arthur cannot hear.
Trist . So-o-o-o-o I fear. Inc . It is clear.
So, little Tristram? come you here.
My potent mistress thus to please,
Upon my shivering prey I seize!
Trist . I fre-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eze!
Cho. of Knights without . We fre-e-e-e-e-e-eze!
Tristram sinks down in a state of torpor; over-
powered by the benumbing influence of the Demon;
and Incubus drags him off the stage.

Re-enter Arthur.

Tristram! Tristram!--Art thou also gone?
Vanish'd thro air? or swallow'd by the earth?
The last of all my host! Infernal fiends!
Are there no means to reach ye? Out good sword!
Whose tenfold temper, steep'd in mystic dews
By the fair regent of Savadan's lake,
No goblin spell resists. On stocks and stones,
And each ambiguous thing my eyes shall meet,
I'll try its force. If chance some lurking fiend
Start up reveal'd; ere now this arm, unstaid,
Hath tam'd such foes, and to their hostile hell
Dismiss'd them howling. Nerve it now, ye powers
Who smile on virgin innocence. I strike
In Nature's cause; for love and Guenever! [ Exit .

SCENE III. Enter Fairies .

1.Fa . Sisters! Sisters! 2.Fa . Whist ye! Whist!
1.Fa . Tell me---tell me what ye list.
3.Fa . Things of moment hover nigh.
1.Fa. Who can read them. 2.Fa. I. 3.Fa. And I.
Cho . Things of moment hover nigh.
1.Fa. Sisters! Sisters! 2.Fa. List ye! List!
3.Fa. Tell me fairies what ye wist?
1.Fa. Tell me what ye read on high?
2.Fa. Fading stars, 3.Fa. And morning nigh.
1.Fa. Who can see it? 2.Fa. I. 3.Fa. And I.
Cho. To the Grotto----haste away.
4.Fa. You have seen it? 1.F. Aye! 2.F. Aye! 3.F. Aye!
Cho . To the Grotto whisp away.
1.Fa. Frisk it! 2.Fa. Whisk it!
4.Fa. Trip it! 1.F. Whip it.
4.Fa. To the Grotto---flit away!
Cho . What we've witness'd there display. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. The Lake, seen in a new aspect. The Sun
rising above the neighbouring mountains .

Enter Rowenna [ attended .]

The shades of night disperse, and o'er the hills
(The Eastern bound of Cambria) Balder's steed
Rushes with reinless neck, and to the winds
Gives his bright mane of orient, streaming far
Thro the illumin'd sky. The dazzling ray,
With tint reflective, over stream and lake,
Plays with the morning breeze; and leaf and flow'r,
Moist with the tears of evening, bend surcharg'd
With mimic radiance: every crystal sphere
Each with its fairy fun--a fairy world.
Pencil'd with rays minute--as tho instinct
'Tis splendour all, and gladness--All but here,
Where one lov'd object, filling every thought,
Blots out Creation. Sound nor sight can please,
But what relates to Arthur: and this hope
Of quick possession, from the Fatal maids,
With poignant expectation but enflames
The frenzy it should sooth.

In vain empassion'd Hope I feed
With promis'd boons of hovering joy:
The expected bliss, by Fate decreed,
Doubts and chilling fears annoy.

In vain the empassion'd heart to ease,
The splendid scences of morn I trace:
Whate'er the raptur'd eye should please,
Doubts and chilling fears deface.

Distracting doubts, and chilling fears
What touch of sense can charm away?
A blank the smiling dawn appears:
And mute to me the vernal lay.

Propitious Goddess! hear my pray'r!
Nor long the promis'd bliss delay:
The smiling morn shall then be fair,
And Rapture tune the vernal lay.

Near to this spot, among the bordering woods--
So sung the Fatal Sisters (and the song
But now the oafish Incubus confirm'd)
My Arthur roves, now isolate. O guide
His steps, benignant Frea! that mine eyes
May gaze to fulness, and my pleaded love
Essay his secret heart. 'Tis heard. He comes:
With what a tempest gathering on his brow!
Yet lovely in his anger. We'll observe
A while, unnoted, till the storm is spent:
Then, o'er the waves subsiding, Love shall smile;
And woo The Bird of Peace. [ They retire .

Enter Arthur.

Arth. 'Tis fruitless search--
I toil myself in vain. Enchantment here
Dwells not--or dwells beyond the boasted reach
Of gifted countercharm. And, lo! the Sun,
Climbing his southering arch, with gilded smile,
Mocks at my bootless rage; while grove and vale,
Mountain, and headlong stream, and placid lake
Shine in the record of my baffled hopes,
My shame, and my distraction.
Row . Queen of smiles!
Who blend'st consenting hearts in mutual bliss,
Be it my talk to sooth him,
Arth . Ye twin heights
Of bleak Farinioch!--Ye whose alpine heads
Catch the first rays of Morning! I had hopes,
Ere down your sloping sides encroaching light
Had chac'd the lingering shadows, o'er your brow
(Girt with my warrior knights in firm array)
To have pour'd the shout of battle; on the walls
Of doom'd Gwrtheyrnion, like the vollying cloud,
To have burst in direful thunders; broke the chains
Of Saxon usurpation; from the rape
Of threaten'd incest snatch'd the weeping maid,
And hung the wreaths of Love on Glory's fane.
Row . Empire, and Love, and Glory! Frea, hear--
Make them the three-fold dower, "When Authur's hand
"Shall light the flame in which my woes expire!"
I feel consenting Heav'n. Some whispered voice
Tells me the prayer is heard:--perchance the maid
Whom frequent The Propitious Goddess sends
To cheer the love-lorn votary. ( She comes forward .)
Arthur, hail!
One not to Grief unknown your grief's would heal.
Arth . ( wrapt in soliloquy, and not observing her .)
Sweet bud of virgin innocence! shall he,
The incestuous father, blast thy opening charms,
And rifle thy pure fragrance? while mine arm
(Awful in foriegn conflict) here, at home,
Sinks palfied, and, in Love's,--in Nature's cause,
Hangs powerless by my side!-------Oh Guenever!
Soul of my soul!--Oh charms, above all charm!
Trancendent in their loveliness! once deem'd
My sole sequester'd treasure!--Paradise
Of all my thoughts! and of my nightly dreams
Sole visitant--when, pure as winnow'd snows,
That from the peaky Vans, till spring matures,
Gleam on the dazzled traveller, thou cam'st,
With funny smiles of sanctity and love,
Blessing my pillow'd slumber.---Guenever!
Hope's vital fountain!--
Row . ( aside ) Progeny of Lok!
Does Fenrir howl this discord in mine ear?
Or charnel Grymer bark?--What sounds are these?
Where is thy promise, Frea?----Schulda, where
Thy hopes oracular?
Arth . Oh! Sweet of Sweets!
Personified perfection!--tint! and form!
And types of inward excellence! that shines
Thro the transparent veil. Eyes! lips! and cheeks
Vermeil'd with angel modesty! and swell
Of soft ingenuous bosom, yet unsunn'd
By Love's presumptuous gaze!--all Vortigerns?--
Incestuous Vortigerns!
Row . Can I bear this?
Furies of Hela's shades! Ye Fiends of storm!
What are your tempests to the tempest here?
Are these my hopes? Down, down, my struggling soul,
And trust The Fates. Be calm, or thou art lost.
[ She retires .
Arth . With what a lengthen'd stride the lustful Sun
Hastens the hour of horrors; towards the couch
Of western Thetis straining, ere as yet
The blush of parting from her orient cheek
The winnowing winds have brush'd.
Check, check thy speed!
Restrain thy bridegroom haste: awhile forego
The fiery track, 'till pitying heav'n afford
Means of preventive vengeance: from the clouds
That curtain thy repose, lest Hesper thrust
His guilty lamp, to mark the fated hour,
And light the tyrant Vortigern to deeds
That make Hell tremble.

Rowenna ( re-entering, with Edelthred, at a
distance .) Passion shakes him still:
But I am calm, in confidence renew'd,
And wait predicted bliss.
Arth . My pray'rs are vain.
I war with woman's weapons: fall'n--reduc'd
To woman's impotence: with senseless brawl
Disturbing the calm elements, that laugh
My rage to scorn. Come then, thou sullen Calm
Of concious desperation, thro my soul
Breathe thy narcotic influence--steep each nerve
In opiate dews, and o'er each maddening sense,
Bewilder'd, from their chilling urns pour forth
Thy inanescent torpors, till no more
Reflection wakes, and dull Oblivion drop
The vail by Fancy lifted.
Row . ( aside .) Be it so,
Benignant Frea! then to other scenes,
Joyous, awake reviving Consciousness,
Made happy in the change!
Arthur . Hear, hear them not--
Hear not the shrieks, my soul, that, thro the gloom,
Rending Gwrtheyrnion's towers, with vain appeal,
Call on the name of Arthur.---Rest thou here,
My wearied soul--rest here; even on this oak,
Which, ere matur'd, the lightning's fork hath scath'd,
Or Whirlwind's arm lopt brief:--here sit and muse
In moralising vacancy, abridg'd
Of vital virtue; like this sapless trunk,
To lift no more the flourishing head to heaven,
Or spread the arms of shelter.
Row . Edelthred,
The storm is past.--List how to murmurs soft,
And wailings inarticulate, subsides
The roaring surge of passion. Shall I speak;
Or wait the heavings of these waves, that yet
Would lash themselves to stilness?
Arth . You, ye Pomps
Of unavailing war--fire-plumed helm,
And burnish'd shield emblazon'd; and thou gift
Of her my sometime guardian, lie ye there,
Till the slow rust consumes; or o'er your fame
The monumental weed, with unshorn head,
Bends vailing: for no more shall Arthur's arm,
That fail'd to rescue Guenever, descend
On dint of meaner argument to try
Your charmed temper.

He throws away his helmet, his shield, and his en-
chanted sword; and, seating himself in a disconsolate
attitude, upon the shattered Oak, continues to pore upon
the ground, in vacant agony.

Row . Past my best hopes!--
Propitious Frea! now the webb untwines
Spun by The Destinies. The magic sword
Falls from his grasp, unconcious:--now no more
From power of Runic verse, or magic spell,
Or from Rowenna's charmed wand exempt.
My Fates prevail. Agga! my rod--my rod!

[ Enter Agga, with the wand . Rowenna waves it
over the head of Arthur; and he sleeps .]
Sleep on his troubled lids awhile descend,
Till we the charm of Runic numbers end.

Elves who shun the chilly moon!
Demons of the sultry noon!
Response Whose the voice that now ascends
of Spirits The abodes of Alfheim?
Edel . Hers who rends
With spells the pitchy vail of Night--
Agg . And blots the fetttled orbs of light.
Row . Demons of the sultry noon!
My call attend.
Resp. Soon we greet thee--mistress, soon.
Row . But not in gorgon pomp descend.
Edel . Far hence, ye haggard forms of Fear!
Horror, vail'd in mirky brow,
Rage, that scorns the Pitying tear,
Griefs, that low to Hertha bow.
Other forms than these must move
Soft content, Sweet content---
Soft content and mutual love!
Resp . Other forms than these shall move
Soft content and mutual love.

Agg . Haste in dimpled smiles array'd
Such as sport in Frea's train,
When she tempts the blushing maid,
Half afraid, To the shade,
Sighing, dying, where the swain
Fears the promis'd bliss delay'd.
Resp . Such the smiling forms that move
Soft content, and mutual love.

Row . Thus, to weave the mystic chain,
Demons of the Noon repair:
But to vulgar eyes remain
Viewless as impassive air.

A troop of Demons rush on the stage, in the semblance
of winged boys, crowned with wreaths of flowers, and
arrayed in effeminate apparel.--Strings of roses in
their hands; with which they link themselves together,
in intricate circles, and dance round Arthur , as
he sleeps. Others play with his armour, and one, of supe-
rior size and appearance, takes possession of his sword.

Row . The charm of Runic numbers now complete--
From Arthur's eyes ye drowsy fumes retreat.
Awake to Joy--for every joy is here
To charm the eye and sooth the listening ear.

Cho . Joy sincere Hovers near;
Wake to see; and wake to hear.

Arth . What antic troop are ye, whose mid-day dreams
Disturb a wretch's slumbers? Hence! Avaunt!

He endeavours to disentangle himself. They encircle him
with their fillets, &c. Singing the following Glee.

Doughty hero! lay aside
Sullen looks and martial pride:
Love and Pleasure wait you here.
Love and Pleasure,
Without measure,
Ope their treasure:
Melting Love, and Joy sincere!
Cho . Love and Pleasure revel here.

Arth . My sword! My sword!

They laugh and dance around him; twining their fillets
closer and closer: and repeating, in chorus.

Doughty hero! lay aside
Sullen looks and martial pride:
Love and Pleasure revel here.

Arth . Distraction! Infamy! insnar'd! inthrall'd!
Bound in a fillet, like some harlot's toy!
This --only this, was wanting to complete
My sum of wretchedness.
Row . Of rapture say:
For such I come to offer. Generous Arthur!
Too long by an unworthy flame inthrall'd
To an incestuous wanton: lo! my Charm
Shall set you free: and on a worthier choice
Empire and Love await, and deathless Fame.

In the bosom of youth say what wishes can glow
That my power cannot grant, or my favour bestow?
These beauties that monarchs have struggled to gain,
I offer unask'd.--Shall I offer in vain?
No; heart with heart meeting, and clasp'd in these arms,
Your bosom shall throb to soft passion's alarms.
Heart to heart fondly beating!
Our vows still repeating!
Reclining! Resigning To passions alarms--
Our bosoms still throbbing!--enfolding our arms!

Then the sceptre of Britain, by Schulda decreed
To await on my love, I present as thy meed.
These beauties that monarches have struggled to gain,
I offer thus dower'd.--Can I offer in vain?
While thus, with heart meeting, I stretch forth my arms,
Ambition and Beauty uniting their charms,
Can your heart coldly beating,
From Rapture retreating,
Disdaining! Refraining From passions alarms,
An Empire relinquish, and fly from these arms?
Then my magic shall aid, and my verse shall record
All the deathless exploits of your lance, and your sword;
And the glory that heroes have struggled to gain
I offer secure.--Shall I offer in vain?
No; heart to heart beating, and clasp'd in these arms
Love, Glory, and Empire shall mingle their charms.
Heart to heart fondly beating!
Our vows still repeating!
Reclining! Resigning To passions alarms
Our bosoms still throbbing!--enfolding our arms!

Arth . Sorceress of Elb! devoted Britain's curse!
Hence with thy wanton chant. Tho thus inthrall'd--
Betray'd by Love's affliction (sentient there
Beyond a maiden's softness) in these bonds
Powerless I stand, yet can my soul disdain
Thy blandish'd witcheries. A Crown from thee?
Love, Glory, and Ambition! Are they things
Of such abhor'd conjunction as to blend
With thy pollutions?--I'd abjure them, then--
Flee to some hermit's cave--unsex myself,
And, in the mirkiest mine, drudge out, in toil
Obscene, and servile bonds, the dregs of life
Dishonour'd. For the World to Chaos runs--
The blessed Sun no more his lustrous beam
Sheds on created order, if such gifts
Depend upon such givers.
Row . Down my heart!--
Injurious Arthur! even this from thee,
Rowenna's love can pardon.
Arth . Love!--Thy Love?
The love of Vortigern's polluted wife?
Row . The love of her who was, erewhile, the wife
Of the polluted Vortigern. But crimes
Like his dissolve the settled charities
Of conjugal affiance.
Arth . O! no doubt
With Purity like thine. And he who (urg'd
By lures, by incantations, and the bowl
Spic'd with lascivious philters) made thee room
For royal spousals in a murderer's bed--
He who, seduc'd by thy idolatrous faith,
Forgot the chaste affinities that link
The social frame of Nature--
Row .----Speak--Speak out.
Why does thy struggling soul forbear to name
What yet it dwells on most?--He whose vile lust
Makes wanton revel in a daughter's arms--
(The arms of Guenever!) deserves to pay
The destin'd forfeit of his crime, and hers.
Arth . His crime and Hers! Makes wanton revel! Hers?
He has not sure-----------------
Row . No sure. The diligent speed
With which she scap'd his custody, what time
(Dreadful Saxon slaughter) you pursu'd
This father lover headlong thwart the realm,
Proves with what fix'd abhorrence she regards
His lawless love, and how prepar'd she stands
To Act the virgin coyness she professes.
Arth . Distraction! Furies!
Row . What if now my art
Should stretch thy vision thro intruding space--
Rendering the opaque of matter to thy sight
Pervious and clear (for so by spells I can,)
And shew thee thy delusion--shew, reveal'd,
Their present act! and in what amorous folds
They wanton, shameless?
Arth . Give me first my sword;
Touch'd by whose virtue each delusive birth
Of magic dies--abortive: elfe thy spell,
Mocking the couzen'd senses, might betray,
And damn me with illusion. Easier far
To clothe some air-drawn phantom in the form
Of her thy hate calumniates, than to pierce
With stretch of human ken (however sharpen'd)
Yon mountain's, peaky mass, that bars the fight
Towards Gwrtheyrnion.
Sorceress! dost thou blench
The late-flushed cheek, and, with abated eye,
Admit detection? Yes; thou stand'st reveal'd.
Henceforth thy arts at lower quarry fly;
Nor think to taint, with nechromantic frauds,
The fame of Guenever, whose virtue towers,
(Transcendent, like her beauty) far above
Thy foul contaminations: like the orb
That rules the tranquil night--lustrous and pure!--
That on the wolfish howl of Calumny
Smiles, and shines on, unalter'd.
Row . Death to Hope!
This constancy appals me: and my soul
Scarce in The Fatal Sisters more confides,
Or Frea's whisper'd promise. Yet remains
One only effort. Bind him fast, ye elves,
With your enchanted braids. His eyes shall see
Within Gwrtheyrnion's walls--his ears shall hear
What distant he regards not.
Yes, by Hela! ( aside .)
Charm-bound from voice or motion, he shall view
The consummated rape; and his sick soul,
Loathing what now he dotes on, shall resign
To her predestin'd fate this hated she--
This vaunted Paragon. Then, Vortigern,
Thy Cup awaits thee; and my Arthur's hand
Shall light the flame in which my woes expire.

My Fate is in my hand.
I feel my kindling passions move,
Great with Vengeance, great with Love!
Prophetic scenes of promis'd rapture rise;
Doubts disperse, and hopes expand.
Away with suppliant sighs!
Hope returns: Dejection flies:
I feel the kindling passions rise:
My Fate is in my hand.

As they are binding Arthur , a symphony of soft mu-
sic is heard from the lake. The Lady rises in her
Car. The Demons drop the sword, &c. in great
consternation; and dispersing, are seen flying thro the
air, in their proper appearances of deformity; with a
confused and fearful clamour. Rowenna and her
Attendants run out on the opposite side.

Lady . Goblins avaunt! nor impious, thus profane
My sylvan confines and irriguous reign.
And thou, brave Prince! behold again restor'd
Thy ravish'd freedom, and thy magic sword:
For; not forgetful of my former love,
Your griefs afflict me, and your dangers move.
Your weak despair yourself will freely blame:
Go,--force your pardon in the field of fame.
Your Knights and Squires already marshall'd stand,
By me redeem'd, and wait for your command.
Refresh'd and vigorous from the genial right,
They burn impatient, and demand the fight;
Not far remote from yon embowering screen.
My instant power shall waft you to the scene.

SCENE V. She waves her trident; and the SCENE instant-
ly changes to a thicket at the foot of The Beacons .

The Knights of the Round Table appear as
just rising from their repast.-- Taliessin and other
Bards --playing on their harps. Horses ranged on
each side of the stage, and the 'Squires holding them.
-----Flourish.
As the Knights perceive Arthur , they flock
around him; and Taliessin sings the following
Air--
Arthur comes, to Britain dear:
Bid the brazen trumpets blow.
Led by him, we cannot fear
Civil rage or foreign foe.

Chorus of Bards and Knights .

Arthur hail! to Britain dear:
Loud ye brazen trumpets blow.
Led by Thee, we cannot fear
Civil rage, or foreign foe. [ Flourish .

Arth . No thanks, my gallant comrades! 'Tis no time
For verbiage now. We'll write our courtesies
Deep on the foemen's backs. Gwrtheyrnion falls.
My sword is out. The word is--Guenever.
[ They draw . Flourish .

Tal . Let the streaming banner fly.
Wave your flaming falchions high.
Guenever, and Victory!

Cho . See the streaming banner fly.
See our falchions flaming high.
Guenever, and Victory!

Lady . Go, friends of Virtue, Honour, Justice, Love!
Confirm your glory, and your worth approve.
To higher powers I now resign my care,
Then seek my sparry Grot and coral Chair.
Thee--fire-eye'd Seraph!--thee,
That, on thy saphir throne,
Among The Spheres,
With ever-wakeful ministry,
Brac'd in adamantine zone,
Mak'st sea-girt Albion's cause thy own--
Thee, whom the Warrior Host reveres!
Thee, whom the bleeding Battle fears!
On thee I call.
As oft thy guardian care hath spread
The shield of safety o'er the Patriot's head,
Bidding the iron tempest vainly fall,
Propitious now on Arthur smile,
And guard the warrior boast of Britain's isle.
From Foes uplifted mace, and Treason's secret thrall.
Cho . Thee! whom the warrior host reveres--
Thee! whom the bleeding Battle fears--
On thee we call!

Tal . Spread the fervour--spread the song,
Spread the martial flame along,
Rush to fight with loud acclaim;
Warm'd by that Seraphic Power
Who, high-enthron'd in empyrean bower,
Watchful for Albion, joys to wield
The sword of flame;
And the adamantine shield,
Amid'st the direful conflict, spreads
O'er the consecrated heads
Of chiefs devote to patriot fame.
Chorus . Spread the fervour--spread the song--
Spread the martial flame along.

Ar . Sound drums and trumpets.--Bid the martial fife
Pierce the charm'd ear of Valour. Sound the charge.
The cause is Freedom, Love, and Guenever!

Chorus . Wave the falchion--couch the spear--
Blow the brazen trumpet, blow.--
Arthur leads: we cannot fear
Civil rage, or foreign foe.

The Lady of the Lake descends, while The
Knights march across the stage in order of attack,
amidst a flourish of martial instruments .

End of the Second Act

ACT III. SCENE I.

The inside of the Castle Gwrtheyrnion. Several servants
cross the stage; bearing boughs and strings of flowers,
dishes, Goblets, &c. as in preparation for a sumptuous
banquet .
Enter Tristram and Scout.
Trist . Well, here we are, Scout, sound wind and
limb, within the Castle. Our adventure begins under
most happy auspices. Our tale of desertion passes
muster, without suspicion. Our proffered assistance
seems to be very acceptable: and these preparations be-
token no meagre reception. One would think we had
followed the heel of Victory, rather than trod on the
toe of approaching Action.
Scout . Toe! brother Tristram! why 'tis the very
corn we have trod on, to tell my mind o' the matter.
Would we were well thro with it. It is a project big
with dangers.
Trist . Big with water, like a dropsy, you well-hunter!
You swill your coward Fears with the draught of Tem-
perance, as you call it, till every kilderkin of apprehen-
sion becomes a butt; while I, with more inebriate wis-
dom, never fee dangers, but by reflection, on the out-
side of a goblet, or at the bottom of a well polished
tankard; where the convexity of the medium diminishes
their proportions and shrinks them into insignificance.
But away to your task. There is no time to lose.
And as Providence has blest thee with a fine lying face of
thy own, honour thy creator by making the most of it.
Scout . Never fear me. Remember but your own
part as stoutly.
Trist . Mine. Pho! my memory is on the edge of
my sword:--keen and durable. Do you but lie and
wriggle and intrigue through the first part of the busi-
ness--if I do not fight thro the other, may I never be
drunk again with the 'Squires of the Round Table. So
away to your quirks and your quibbles, and contrive to
give the princess Guenever an item of what is in agitation.
Remember--the lone tower is the place. You will find
my Sword and me at the draw bridge, at the time ap-
pointed. [ Exit Scout.
In the mean time, as I am no dab at intrigue, I will
endeavour to kill time, till the time of killing arrives,
with some fool's sport among these scullions. [ Exit .

SCENE II. The Servants, &c. still continue crossing
the Stage.

Enter Rowenna, musing .

"When the bowl again goes round,
"And Vortigern his sleep profound
"Heedless quaffs!"--
O! impotence of memory! to o'erlook
The fated sign, and, with disordered speed,
Anticipate my destinies! For this
My Gods forsake me: to the adverse power
Of dull Savadan's elfin regent elfe
Not obvious. But with happier omens now,
And preordain'd progression, I advance
The twofold work of Fate. Why aye--proceed
Ye menial herd--Mechanic instruments--
Unconcious pivots in the state machine
With which the powerful work!--prepare the feast--
Dress up the joyous hall, with boughs, and braids
Of flaunting fragrance--hung be every feat
With sweets coronal; and the banquet heap
To feign'd Conciliation: nor suspect
What Fate and I determine. Vortigern!
Now feed thy soul voluptuous. Haste--prepare
To revel out thy last: for, even now,
The bowl is pregnant; and the ambrosial draught
Teems with thy fate matur'd. Soon--soon he quaffs--
Quaffs his last sleep profound. Then comes the crown
Of all my feverish hopes; and Arthur's hand
Lights up the flame in which my woes expire.

But, lo! the Banquet waits. I go to greet
At once the nuptial, and funereal treat.
Yet, ere on Frea's name I dare to call,
Descend ye handmaids of the shield-roof'd hall.

Sisters three, in fearful state,
Who at Valhalla's banquet wait,
Watching the nod
Of him, supreme, The Warrior God,
Who, midst the genial rite,
While blithe the amber goblet circles round,
Thro you, inflicts the destin'd wound,
And thins the ranks of fight!--
On you, who wait by Woden's side,
(The dastard's dread, the warrior's pride)
I call--
To hover round Gwrtheyrnion's hall,
And o'er the funeral--nuptial feast preside. [ Exit .

SCENE III . Enter Tristram, armed with sword and
Target; The Seneschal, and a Sewer.

Trist . And so we are to have feasting before fighting?
master Seneschal!
Seneschal . Aye--and good reasons there be, master
Newcomer.
Trist . Aye--I hope the Raisins are good, master
Seneschal, or they will make an ill part of the desert.
But, for reasons less eatable, which be they?
Sen . They be three in number, master Newcomer.
Trist . Hem!--Three!--But three is a favourite
number, I believe, among you Scandinavians.
Sen . True, master Newcomer--and for good reason.
It is mystical and sacred. For example--there be three
sons of Beör (Woden, Vile, and Ve) who knock'd the
giant Ymer o' the head, created the world out of his
carcase, and set his brains a flying thro the air for clouds.
Trist . Hum!--A hum! I can smell it. ( Aside .)--
A pretty piece of flesh, at this rate, your Ymer must
have been, master Seneschal.--And yet, upon second
thoughts, he was but a moody, muddy, addle-headed
sort of a giant, either; or his brains could not have
been converted to such a use.
Sen . Then there be three Fatal Sisters.
Trist . Aye--three Witches, as one might say, master
Seneschal! the eldest of which, by the way, is no
Witch, i'my way of thinking; for she only fortells
what is past: carrying her eyes behind her, as it were.
Strait forward she cannot see so far as her nose. And,
as for the second, (by your account of her) she has no
more foresight than a hare: and yet, she seems more in-
debted to her eyes than her understanding for her repu-
tation in the world. Her glances go, bolt shot, in all di-
rections, thro all impediments of space and matter: like
a lance thro a battered buckler. She can see all the ble-
mishes that a maid hides with her mantle, or a batchelor
under his gabardine, as plain as a carbuncle on a nose
of four inches; but as for how long the batchelor shall re-
main a batchelor, or the maid a maid, master Seneschal!--
Sen . Why for that, master Newcomer, she refers you
to her younger sister. And this, by the way, brings me,
pat, to three other Sisters, of a very different description,
(not but they, also, have something to do with our des-
tinies, master Newcomer!) I mean the three smirking
damsels, that wait on The Propitious Goddess, to whom
the aforesaid maids and batchelors offer up their vows,
when they wish to be maids and batchelors no longer.
And then there be three Giants of Frost; three War-
hounds, that guard the Gates of Hela; and three Valky-
ries, that wait on the banquet of Woden, in Valhalla.
Sewer . Very true, master Seneschal: but what has
all this to do with the reasons for our banquet?
Sen . Why much, master Sewer:--much.
Trist . Aye, very much, master Sewer: for a Ban-
quet is a Banquet, whether in Valhalla or Gwrtheyrnion:
Is it not? master Seneschal! There's affinity, for you,
imprimus. Then, in the second place--for we can find
three affinities, or similitudes, in this case, also--Can we
not? master Seneschal!--In the second place, a full sto-
mach is better than an empty one, in Gwrtheyrnion as well
as in Valhalla--Is it not, master Seneschal? There's af-
finity for you, again, or the devil's in it. And then, in
the third place, (which brings us to our point;) there are
three reasons for the banquet, in one place, as well as the
other--videlicit--there be victuals to eat--there be people
to eat them--and there is a place in which they may be
eaten. Which, also, may in three diverse ways be
stated--to wit, Imprimus, The passivity, or the victuals
eatable--the locality, or the place of eating--and the
agency, or the persons to eat. Secundo, The prompti-
tude, or or desire of eating--the aptitude, or convenience
of a place to eat in--and the plentitude, or abundance
of things eatable. Tertio, Yearning of the bowels, or
the hungering after--temptation to the eye, or the pre-
sence of the things whereafter we hunger--and ministra-
tion copulative; or the tables and benches, in the great
hall; whereby the parties are enabled to approximate, the
come-at-ability of the desired is facilitated, and the desirers
are fundamentally accommodated.
Sen . Right! right! master Newcomer! Truly, for
all thou beest a Welchman, and I a Saxon, I desire thy
further acquaintance; for thou seemest learned in these
matters, and of an excellent wit.
Sew . Why now, by your leave, master Seneschal, all
these be good reasons for banqueting at all times--but
they be no reasons for banqueting before battle.
Sen . Short--short, master Sewer. If they be good
reasons for banqueting at all times, then be they good
reasons for banqueting before, as well as after.
Sew . Aye; but the specific, master Seneschal! the
specific.
Trist . Why the specifics be three, also, master Sewer.
Imprimus--there is fish to be eaten; and they are best
to be eaten fresh--Secundo, fighting is hard work; and
good eating and drinking minister to strength--Tertio, it
is thought best to eat first, lest a part of the guests should
get their bellies so full of fighting, as to have no appetite
left for any thing else.
Sen . And, if these tripple reasons satisfy not the tender
conscience, there is yet behind, a reason omnipotent,
which is one and indivisible, namely, that The Fates
would have it so.
Trist . The Fates! How so? master Seneschal.
Sen . Why, to tell you a secret--our mistress has been
making a journey into hell.
Trist . ( aside .) Aye, aye, to bespeak apartments I sup-
pose.--Hum!
Sen . And, as she reports it, The Fatal Sisters or-
dered this banquet.
Trist . Did they so? Faith I shall have a better opi-
nion of them, for the future, than I used to have.
Sew . Aye, and so shall I. Od zookers! I cared not
if our Mistress went to hell every day, at this rate.
Sen . It is necessary, it seems, that the reconciliation be-
tween her and the King should be thus celebrated; and
that, in token of their re-union, she should present him
with a Cup of her own mixing; as she did at their first
meeting; and then all is to go well.
Sew . Good! master Seneschal. And yet our priests
will have it that it is not orthodox: because, in Valhalla,
Woden and his Monoheroes always fight first, and ban-
quet afterwards.
Trist . Aye, aye!--they want one half of us to get
a quietus before the banquet, that there may be a double
share of the baked and boiled for them. But as for
those Monoheroes, I have a song about them: and, if the
harpers and trumpeters will bear me out with an accom-
paniment, I care not if I sing it to you.

O! your joys of Valhalla to me they are all mere
Greek, Sirs,
Where you fight till you are kill'd--
[Kill'd?--well: and what of that? If it were but once,
and away, one would not mind it--(&c. &c. ad
libitum .) But there--why
There you're kill'd and kill'd again, every day of the
Week, Sirs!
And after that, you get so drunk that you scarcely can
speak, Sirs!
And these are the joys of Valhalla!

There ten-hundred-times ten-thousand, Sirs, as I am
a sinner,
Hack, and hew, and thrust, for fun--
[O very pretty fun, to be sure--Here a leg, and
there an arm; and there a little scratch; just thro
the scull to the chin; and there a head off, whisp!
--(&c. &c.) for thus
They hack, and hew, and thrust, for fun; and both
the loser and the winner
Are cut up just like pork, ere they set them down
to dinner.
These, these are the joys of Valhalla!

Then for knives they use their swords, and for forks
they use their lances,
And their shields are turned to platters--
[Aye, leave them alone for good spacious trenchers.
Their hacking and hewing, and cutting and thrust-
ing, get them a good appetite, I'll warrant--A
chine of beef, a goose, and a turkey, are nothing
under a Monohero's doublet--and so

Their shields are turn'd to platters; and a thousand
such like fancies,
And a Death's head, for a goblet, their drink very much
enhances.
These, these are the joys of Valhalla!

Now your eating I have some, and your drinking
much delight in;
And I've no great objection to your tilting and
your fighting---
[No, it shall be seen, by-and-by, that, sword and
target, cut and thrust, hack and hew, here a
head, and there a limb, (&c. &c.) little Tristram
will play his part with the best of you:

For I've no great objection to your tilting and your
fighting;
But as to getting drunk after being kill'd,--
Why, that I think, they're not right in.
Altho 'tis the joy of Valhalla!

Then their modus bibendi , to me, it is mightily
droll, Sirs--
And the scull of a foe, is a very strange sort of a
wassail-bowl, Sirs--
[O, lud! I'm all in the horrors to think of it.
Who the devil could set himself soberly to work
to get drunk, with a death's head in his hand? Be-
sides how the devil do they manage it?

For the scull of a foe is such a very strange sort of a
bowl, Sirs,
That I am very sure I should spill--out at either
eye-hole, Sirs,
Ere it got to my mouth in Valhalla!

Then give me still a banquet of your mere mortal cooking--

[Nay, no cooking at all--Radishes and raw turnips;
an apple, and an onion--or a good Welch leek
(&c. &c.) in a thatched cottage, rather than chines
and turkies, in your Hall of Shields--

Yes, give me still a dinner of such plain vulgar cooking;
And ere ale in a scull, I'll drink Adam's ale the brooke in:
And, if there's any other heaven I can find a fly nook in,
I'll be damn'd if I'll go to Valhalla!
[ Exeunt .

SCENE IV. A confused and tumultuous noise within.
Shrieks, and a cry for help.--A deep groan is heard.
Enter several guests and servants, flying, to and fro,
across the stage, in terror and astonishment.
Dirgeful music, from the Harps, within.

Enter Rowenna, in a great agitation. Edelthred.
Agga, &c. following .

Row . 'Tis done!--'Tis done!--The charm is bound:
Vortigern his sleep profound
Has quaft. ( A groan within. )
He dies! ( a groan. ) He dies! ( a groan .) He dies!
For this below ( with half-thaw'd eyes )
Icy Hela, shouting, laught. ( Groan again .)
He dies! He dies!
To the Nine-fold Realm he hies--
Misty region!--cold, and dark!
Hark!-----
Grymer leads the tripple growl.
Now they open. Now they howl. ( Barking below .)
Hark! ( Barking ) Hark! ( Barking ) Hark!
Loud the ravening hell-dogs bark.
Fenrir shakes his chains below:
They yell!--the Giant Sons of Woe!--
And wide the creeking portals throw.
Hark!-----
Clank of chains, and growl, and bark----
Hideous discord! ( Clank of chains ) Hark! ( A deep
growl ) Hark! ( barking ) Hark!-----
Ed. Ag. &c . Hideous discord! Hark! hark! hark!

Accompaniments of barking, howling, &c. Then, a
solemn pause; and a sudden transition to soft and me-
lancholy music; principally of Harps and Flutes.
The body of Vortigern is carried across the stage,
accompanied by Courtiers, Domestics, Sol-
diers, &c. &c. while the Bards sing the follow-
in dirge.

Mourn, Britons, mourn the mighty fall'n:
The sceptred hand is cold.
The imperial brow in dust lies low,
By sudden Fate controll'd
Mourn, Britons, mourn the mighty fall'n:
The sceptred hand is cold!
[ Exeunt with the Body .

Rowenna ( after a pause .)
Why should this moody dirge, these solemn sounds
Of grief-full mockery, and this apish train,
That mourn but by contagion from the harps
Of hireling choristers, infect my eyes,
Or chill my veins with horror?--Up! to arms,
Ye firm Resolves! and fortify my soul
Against invading Conscience. True, he sleeps--
Sleeps with the dead!--my some-time plighted lord--
By me, he sleeps his death. But Fate's, not mine,
Is all the guilt--if guilt. The Fates decreed,
And I but did their biddings.--But a wife?---
A wife!--Away: I never was the wife
Of such a thing as Vortigern. My soul
(That scorns affiance with the low and vile)
Wedded not him, but Empire; and to that
I still am true and loyal: making way,
By this predestin'd act, for happier rule,
And a more worthy master. Arthur's hand
Shall heal thy griefs, and mine--Heav'n-favour'd Isle!
And congregated Britain bless the deed.

Join, then, the chaunt to Frea. Frea now,
Propitious Goddess! may accept the vow;
To her, and Gna, swell soft the melting strains--
For theirs what yet of destiny remains.

Queen of Pleasures! Queen of Smiles!
Goddess of resistless wiles,
And Love's extatic glow!
Thou, who, erst, the golden tear
Shed'st o'er Balder's early bier,
And felt'st the touch of tender woe--
Propitious Goddess! hear.
Ed.Ag.&c . Queen of Love's extatic glow--
Propitious Goddess! hear.

Row . O! send the herald of thy will,
The throbbings of the heart to still,
And whisper Peace and Love!
The imperfect work of Fate complete,
Till sigh with sigh, responsive, meet:
O! first of genial powers above!
Propitious Goddess! hear.
Ed. Ag. &c . First of genial powers above!
Propitious Goddess! hear.

Trumpets, without, and a cry of The foe! The foe!
Alwin enters, with great precipitation .

Alw . Most noble Queen! Arthur has gain'd the heights.
His trumpet sounds defiance at our gates;
And down the steep, to this our mid-way strand,
His shouting legion pours: their banner'd vans
Chiding, with fluttering speed, the buoyant air;
Like wings of eagles, when they downward rush
To pounce their shrieking prey.
Row . Hang out the flag
Of friendly parley. This is welcome news.
The tyrant's death makes way for gentler warfare--
More mild arbitriment than flings and darts:
And this shall first be tried.

Enter a second Messenger.

Messenger . Revolt! revolt!
Treason is in our walls; a treacherous band
Of lawless Britons, headed by the twain,
Who, with their proffer'd service, late arriv'd,
Have borne the Princess to the lonely tower,
By sudden inroad seiz'd, and now maintain'd
In Arthur's hostile name.
Row . ( eagerly .) The lonely tower?
Mes . The same that, circled by the deep-delv'd moat,
Stands insulated: less by tactic art,
Than by the never-ceasing spring, that laves
Its circular base, defended.
Row . Fire the bridge!--
This news is welcome too. My fates prevail!
No weapons use but fire.--Propitious powers!
Ye faithful Fatal Sisters!--Shaft and fling
Were sacrilegious here; were impotent.
Fire, fire, I say. The first that brings me word
The turrets flame (be he the meanest drudge
That ever pioneer'd before a host)
Shall rank, for wealth and power, with Woden's line.
Exeunt Alw. and Mes.
Yes!----"My rival to confound,
"Fire and water shall surround--
"Ruthless flames, and waves profound!"

Sweet Hope my heart beguiles:
My bosom swells--my pulse beat high;
And softer heaves the fluttering sigh.
Propitious Frea smiles! Exeunt .

SCENE V. The outside of the Castle, situated half way
up the Beacons; at that part now occupied by the Lake
back ground. The Keep, or round Tower, appears
detached from the rest of the fortification; and sur-
rounded by a wide moat. The drawbridge, between it
and the Castle is drawn up; and Tristram and
Guenever are seen upon the Walls. The other
parts of the Castle are, also, defended by a moat; the
drawbridge being up. A perpetual shower of fire-
brands is discharged, from the Castle, upon the Keep.

Tristram ( hurling back the brands, as they are thrown .)
Fire for your fire, ye Salamanders! if that's your game.
But here comes one will fire you prettily; I'll warrant.

Trumpet-chorus of Bards and Knights, as Arthur,
and his Train are entering.

Trumpets sounding, falchions flaming!
Rush, ye chiefs to glorious fight:
Fame, the while, your worth proclaiming---

Arth . Destraction!--See upon the keep (surpris'd
By Tristram's politic valour, to secure,
During our fierce assault, from chance of war,
Or worse internal treason, the fair prize
Of all our sleepless perils) what fierce shower
Of hellish engin'ry, incessant, hails,
Threat'ning a fate of horrors. Sound the trump--
The trump of parley.---Guenever!

Guenever . Oh! heav'n!
Arthur! my lord! my hero!--in thy fight---
O! cruel destiny!
Arth . The trumpet sound. [ A parley sounded .
If maid, or child, or matron they would save
From retributive vengeance, let them cease
This war of fire;

(Rowenna, attended by Alwin, and several Saxon
and British Nobles, &c. appears on the walls .)
or, by the Eternal Truth,
Whom my soul worships! soon Gwrtheyrnion's walls,
Prostrate on earth, shall form one common tomb
For every Saxon thing that breathes within;
And these my gallant knights, horribly smear'd
With your idolatrous blood, shall, o'er the heap
Of mingled wreck and carnage, wave their swords,
And shout "Extermination!"
Row . Angry prince!
Why to our flag of conference answer you
With such ungentle outrage? Were we bent
On hostile fury, we have means within
To battle this gay phalanx; tho renown'd,
(As frankly we admit) for warlike deeds,
Thro all the peopled earth. But, in our hears,
The touch humane of cordial sympathy
Is now more vital than revengeful wrath
And national aversions; which too long
Have thin'd our rival tribes. Therefore we arm
Our tongues with gentle courtesies, not hands
With weapons of destruction; and invite
To equal brotherhood your warrior Knights--
Yourself, to equal empire.
Arth . Empire, shar'd
With Vortigern and thee?
Row . That Vortigern
No more presents a barrier to the hopes
Of Anglia and of Britain; cold he lies
Beneath the fresh-laid turf; and, with his sleep,
The bleeding realm is pacified.
Arth . How?---How?---
Did I then prophecy? Most murderous fiend!
Thy husband, and thy sovereign!
Row . Why on me
(Injurious!) charge the sure decrees of Fate?
Arth . Fate, that would deal in murders and in crimes,
Shall never want (while thou infest'st the earth)
A ready instrument. No more. Break off
The impious parle. The martial chorus raise;
And let our battering enginery upheap,
Of these polluted stones, a monument
To Britain's murder'd King: foul tho he were,
Of these, not meriting so foul an end.

Cho . Trumpets sounding, falchions flaming,
Rush, ye Chiefs, to glorious fight---

A Briton ( from the Walls .)
A while forbear!--For what do we contend?
For what deform the enamell'd turf of peace
With our unnatural slaughters? Arthur, hear--
Rowenna, and the undisputed crown
Of Britain and the auxilliar tribes of Elb,
Are thine, without a crime.
Arth . Without a crime,
Vile Briton!--This from thee, whose King, even now
(Your own elected King!) in death lies low
By her abhor'd contrivance!--Without crime?
Is it no crime to league with Murder, then--
Domestic Murder, Witchcraft, and the rage
Of foul adultrous Lust, and all the swarm
Of most abhor'd pollutions, that combine
In her detested nature, and infect
The very air she breathes in?--making all
That come within thy atmosphere of crimes,
As hateful as thyself--thou, World of Sins!
Guilt's fair, yet foul epitome!
Row . Ye Gods
Of Asgard and of Niflheim! is it thus
Ye cheat my hopes?
Yet, fair! He owns me fair!
That's something. And, perchance, when yonder witch
No more with philtering charms can drug the sense,
I may seem fair alone; and, rivalry
No more obtruding, the impassion'd touch
Of Nature's strong propension may subdue
This pride of ethic reason. The loos'd eye
Of youthful appetite, that, 'mong the forms
Of soft obstrusive beauty, somewhere must
Dwell with more ardent gaze, from mine, perchance,
May catch contagious fire; and Arthur yet
Light up the flame in which my woes expire. ( Aside .)
Why cease the brands, ye tardy ministers
Of our imperial mandate? Who again,
(Command who will) till yonder turrets flame,
Does in the fiery warfare but relax,
The pains of Treason wait him.
( The assault on the Keep is renewed .)
Arthur ( who, during the foregoing soliloquy, had
conversed with Guenever, across the moat, in
dumb show .) Quick---repeal
That hideous mandate; or, by utmost hell,
Whate'er of torment human wit can frame--
Whate'er of ignominy (torturous more
To thy imperious spirit) shall avenge
The damned deed.
What? ha! No respite? Fiends!
Sound--sound the trumpet. Peal the assailing hymn,
Ye bards, and rush to combat. ( The assault begins ).

Chorus . Trumpets sounding, falchions flaming,
Rush, ye chiefs! to glorious fight:
Fame, the while, your worth proclaiming,
Thro the nations wings her flight.
Rush to conquest! rush to glory!
Like the brave of ancient story.
Trumpets sounding, falchions flaming,
Rush to conquest--rush to glory!

The Bards join in the conflict. The drawbridge of the
Castle falls; and that of the Keep, together with the
Keep itself, is fired, at the same time. Shouts and
flourish, as of triumph, from both parties.

Arth . The drawbridge falls. Assail! assail the gates.
Distraction!--Guenever!
Guenever . Oh, Arthur! Arthur!
They reach--they scorch me. O, the flames! the flames!
Arth . My arm avails not. Conquest is in vain!
Distraction! vengeance!--O, some vast revenge!
Some mighty ruin!--that the world might crack,
And Universal Nature, with her wreck,
Hood yon devouring flames!
Row . The Phoenix burns!
And, from the odorous ruin, mine the love,
With renovated wing, shall soar aloft,
Gorgeous in natal triumph.-----'Tis complete. ( Aside .)

Schulda, thanks! The charm is bound.
Now, my rival to confound,
Fire and water both surround.

Arthur's arm no help shall lend,
No mortal power the Maid befriend,
Nor aid from pitying heaven descend.

Schulda thanks! My doubts retire.
Arthur soon shall light the fire
In which my sorrows all expire.

Arth . A brand! A brand! Hell-hag--thy prophecy
(Whatever juggling demon gave it shape)
Soon I fulfil. Tristram, a brand! a brand!

Tristram throws several brands to Arthur and
the Knights: Rowenna starts, with a terrific
shriek, as they seize, and brandish them on high.

Row . Furies of Hela's shades! Is this the flame?
Arth . Oh! Guenever! thus at thy funeral pyre,
I offer up thy hecatombs. Come on,
If not for preservation, we are arm'd
At least for vengeance. Hell-hag! thus I light
The fated flame in which thy woes expire.

He fires the Gates; and presently the whole castle ap
pears to be in flames, in the midst of which Rowenna
and her partizans sink. In the mean time, the flames
make a more feeble progress in the Keep; where
Guenever and Tristram stand .

Air and chorus of unseen Spirts .
She shrieks!--She dies!--Our mistress dies!
Spirits--Spirits!--haste away:
Scatter thro the lurid skies.
Asi's Gods in pow'r decay.
Demon Gods confess, with fear,
Their fated twilight hovering near.

Ar . Vengeance! thy dues are paid. But Love! O, Love!
Hast thou no interest at The Mercy Seat?--
Nor suffering Innocence?-------My Guenever!
( She disappears and Tristram follows .)
Oh! torment!---torment! Thus, before mine eyes!--
Not even the wretched privilege resev'd
To perish with her--in one dear embrace
Forget the searching fury of the flames,
And mix our wedded ashes! Might one not,
Of desperate resolution, make a bridge
Enough substantial for a lover's weight,
Buoy'd by such dire extremity? At least,
We'll try the hazard. Ho! for Guenever!

[ He runs towards the moat, which he is about to leap;
when suddenly the whole pile of building, Castle and
Keep together, and all the ground they occupied, sink
down. The space becomes filled by a pool of Water.
In the place where the round tower stood, The Lady
of the Lake appears in her chariot, with Guen-
ever seated by her side, and Tristram behind .
The Chariot and, &c approaches the shore. Scout comes
swimming after. Arthur and Guenever rush into
each other's arms.
Arth . All-gracious powers!
Guen . My hero!
Arth . O! My Love!
Trist . ( springing upon land ) Huzza! Huzza! Didn't
I tell you little Tristram would fight his way thro it.
If there was no help from Heaven above, or the Earth
beneath, there was some in the Waters that are under
the earth, my blinking prophetess!
Why, how now, Scout?--What, my amphibious! my
water-spaniel! You've had enough of the draught of tem-
perance, I hope. This comes of your fears and pre-
cautions. If you had drank valiant Cwrw, as I do, and
stood, to the last, at the post of danger--why you had
arrived on Terra Firma, with dry breeches, my boy.
Arth . And is it realis'd?--And art thou safe?--
Safe and unhurt, from those devouring flames
That threaten'd thy chaste beauties?
Guen . Free! Unhurt!--
Save in thy frantic terrors!--There I bleed--
Here--in this storm-rent bosom. ( Laying her hand upon
his heart .) Arth . 'Tis at rest:
If blessedness be rest.-- O, sacred power
Of flame-defying Chastity!--And thou! ( To the Fairy .
Lady . See, Arthur, see! to crown your matchless worth,
Nature relents, and miracles have birth,
The tribute spring that wont its course to take,
Thro secret veins, to feed my broader Lake,
A lake itself now spreads at my command,
And long, an emblem of your Fame, shall stand,
An alpine wonder in the Cambrian land.
Meantime accept, from two-fold dangers freed,
This beauteous maid, your Valour's noblest meed.

Beauty, Truth, and Innocence,
Sweetly blending all their charms,
Valour's guerdon, I dispense:
Take them, Hero, to thy arms.
Virtue with such Graces blending,
'Twas a prize well worth contending:
Worth thy perils, toils, alarms:
Take her, hero, to thy arms:--
Feast of Reason! feast of Sense!
Beauty, Truth, and Innocence.

Chorus . Valour true to Virtue's side,
Worth, by sharp affliction tried,
Merit well the blooming bride
On whom propitious Fates dispense
Beauty, Truth, and Innocence.

Arth . O! sacred Guardian!--But all words are weak:
I can but sigh my raptures; gaze my thanks,
And, in the precious gift, the giver prize.

Tali . Trumpet's clangors, Arms that rattle,
Dreadful thro the bleeding battle,
Now, a while,
For kindling Beauty's roseate smile--
Soothing softness! we forego.
Haste Thee, Love! the wreath bestow.
Witching smile
And sportive wile
That sense of wearied worth beguile;
And Stelth, that love's coy nectar sips;
And tilt and toy of parrying lips;
Eyes that swim; and hearts that glow;
And parly with the yielding foe;--
These, for laurels, Love! bestow;
And we again will fight thy battle.

Bard . Haste thee, Boy! But wing thy arrows
With the dove's plume; not the sparrow's:
Turtle, that, in thickest grove,
Guards the nest of absent love.
And still, as Valour's meed, dispense
Beauty, Truth, and Innocence.
So, when storms of danger rattle,
We again will fight thy battle.

Chorus . Beauty, Truth, and Innocence
Still, as Valour's meed dispense;
And, when storms of danger rattle,
Valour's sons shall fight thy battle.

Lady . But see below, how from the misty vale
The day retires, and twilight shades prevail.
Soon shall those shadows up the mountain spread,
And Night involve Farinioch's peaky head.
One thing remains: to wast my chosen son
To Ca&emul;r Leon: then my talk is done.
There Britain's chiefs assembled, even now,
Prepare the regal fillet for thy brow.
Ye sightless agents of the charmed air!
Sustain our weight. Behold: for we are there.

Scene VI. She waves her silver Trident, and the
scene changes to Caer-Leon, in all its fabled grandeur;
splendidly illuminated, and decorated with martial
trophies, banners, wreaths, and braids of flowers,
and other sumptuous preparations for the coronation of
Arthur. Nobles, Bards, Ladies, Youths,
and Maidens with baskets of Flowers, Maskers,
Revellers, &c.

La . Here youths and maids your gather'd fragrance fling:
Behold your promis'd Chief--your patriot King.

The Youths and Maidens strew their flowers; and the
Chiefs, &c. prevent the regal fillet to Arthur, who
binds it on the brow of Guenever.

Tal . Hail Britian's pride! immortal Arthur hail!
Thy honour, name, and praise shall never fail!
Cho . Hail Britain's pride! immortal Arthur hail!
Thy honour, name, and praise shall never fail!
Lady . Thus cover'd with glory, thus blest in thy love,
To empire promoted, thy virtue to prove,
Forget not that worth, in the sunshine of joy,
That griefs could not quench, or afflictions annoy.
Let your valour protect, but not ravage the state;
And cherish the Low, while you rule o'er the great;
So the bard, yet unborn, shall your triumphs proclaim,
And the nations around thus re-echo your Fame--
"Hail Britain's pride! immortal Arthur, hail!
"Your honour, name, and praise shall never fail."
Chorus . Hail Britain's pride! &c.--

Talies . Wake the Harp to strains of pleasure!
Let the sportive train advance:
Ring of shields, and pyrrhic measure!
Warriors, lead the nuptial dance.

A Dance of Warriors .

War and Toil have done their duty:
Let your weary'd worth repose.
Love succeeds; and smiling Beauty,
With our laurel twines the rose.

A Dance of Virgins who crown Arthur and his
Knights with chaplets.

Chorus . Love and Glory, thus uniting,
All their mingled boons confer.
Arthur, lo! thy worth requiting,
Empire, Fame, and Guenever.
Lady . Now, my talk perform'd, I fly
To my secret bowers, that lie
Where the Day-Star never came,
Peering---Fleering,
With his searching eye of flame.
There, in virgin state, I rove
Thro' sparry dome, and coral grove,
Self-illum'd with many a Gem
Might grace a monarch's diadem.
Response below, as the Chariot rises .
Lady! Lady! haste to rove
Thro' sparry dome and coral grove.
See your Swans their traces shake,
Regent of the silver lake!

Lady . There, where bubbling fonts arise
And the blue-eye'd Naides
Thro the chinks, in many a rill,
Tinkling---Sprinkling,
Their salubrius boons distill--
There I join the virgin throng,
Warbling oft the choral song
That brooks and echoing falls repeat,
To Fancy's ear, in numbers sweet.
Response of Nymphs below .
Lady! Lady! haste along:
Join the Choir, and join the song;
Gurgling--tinkling,
Murmuring--sprinkling,
Sadly sweet, the rocks among.

Lady, as she seats herself in the Chariot .
Sisters, I the call obey,
Seek the Grot, and join the lay;
Murmuring--tinkling,
Bubbing--sprinkling,
Where the chrystal fountains,
From their mountains,
Gushing--Rushing,
To their vallies haste away.

Talliessin.
May those fountains, Lady kind!
Still their wonted channels find,
Nor ever water-nymph neglect
The silent tribute of respect,
But, thro many a secret vein,
Still the purer essence strain,
And thy mystic urn supply;
Never turbid, never dry:--
Urn so pure, that Lunvey's tide,
Thro its waters doom'd to glide,
Silent, with unmingling wave,
Hastes the wooddy glen to lave,
And there, to list'ning groves, complains
Of Love o'erawed, and stifled pains;
With virgin beauties aye embrac'd
Which yet he must not hope to taste.
May ever on thy brink appear
The earliest fragrance of the year,
And lingering Autumn in thy face
Reflected see his latest grace;
While still, as circling hours prevail,
The matin Lark and Nightingale
The song of lengthen'd rapture wake
To hail the Lady of the Lake.

Chorus.
Blow the martial trump again,
Give to Fame the closing strain--
Fame, that shall her wreaths confer
On Arthur and on Guenever;
And bid her loudest clarion wake,
To hail the Lady of the Lake.

The Curtain Drops.

---

---

KATHANAL

by

KATRINA TRASK

The sky was one unbroken pall of gray,
Casting a gloom upon the restless sea,
Dulling her sapphire splendour to a dark
And minor beauty. All the rock-bound shore
Was silent, save a widowed song-bird sang
Far off at intervals a mournful note,
And on the broken crags of dark gray rock
The waves dashed ceaselessly. Sir Kathanal
Stood with uncovered head and folded arms,
His soul as restless as the surging sea
Lashed into passion by the coming storm.
His helmet lay upon the sand; its crest,
A floating plume of deep-hued violet,
Was tossed and torn in fury by the wind
Until it seemed a thing of life. He stood
And watched it, only half aware at first
That it was there, then scarce aware of aught
Besides the plume. As in the room of death
Some iterated sound or motion holds
Attent the stricken mind, benumbed, and keeps
The horror of its grief awhile at bay
As by a spell, so now, though Kathanal
Had sought the sea-shore to be free of men
Because of his sore agony of heart,
And all the passion of his daring soul
Was tossing like the sea in fierce revolt,
His thoughts and gaze were centred on his crest.
Before the gray of sea and sky he saw
Naught but the waving, waving of the plume;
Before the vision of his love, Leorre,
Her tender eyes aglow with changeless light,
The golden splendour of her sunny hair,
Her winning smiles of grace and sweetness blent,
There came the waving, waving, of the plume;
Between his sorrow and his weary soul,
Between his trouble and his clear-eyed self,
There came the waving, waving of the plume;
Until he felt, in some half-conscious way,
It was his heart, and he a stranger there
That looked down, from a height, indifferent
Upon it at the mercy of the wind.

Sudden, with that long lingering trace of youth
That gave to him the fascinating charm
Which other men were fain to emulate,
He quickly stooped, and tore it from his helm,
And cast it far out on the tossing sea.
It lighted on the waves a purple bird,
Floating with swan-like grace before the wind.
The action quenched impatience. Kathanal,
Impulsive, passionate and sensitive,
In moods was ever ready with response
To omen and to change of circumstance.
He stood a moment, and then forward sprang
To catch it ere it vanished out of reach.
It was too late--the outward-flowing tide
Bore it from wave to wave beyond his sight.

"Ah, God!" he cried aloud, "what have I done?
It is the omen of a curse to me;
My crest is gone, my knightly symbol lost,
My helm dishonoured through an act of mine."

Then came the memory of early youth,
The recollection of a high resolve
To keep his manhood free from touch of stain,
To be a knight like Galahad, pure and true.
So few short years had passed since that resolve,
And yet he had forgotten loyalty
And truth and honour for the fair Leorre,
The wife of Reginault, his patron knight,--
The brave old man who treated him as son.
Long had he loved her with a knightly love,
And fought for her, and chosen her the queen
Of many a tournament. She still was young,
Fairer than morning in the early spring.
When she had come, a gladsome bride, to grace
The castle of old Reginault, and warm
His grand old spirit into youth again,
Sir Kathanal had bowed before her, saying,
"My gracious lady, take me as your knight";
And she had answered, with her winning smile,
"You are Sir Reginault's, and therefore mine."
Well had he loved her from that very hour,
Giving her honour as his old friend's bride,
Making the castle ring with merriment
To do her service, and fulfil the hest
Of Reginault, who bade him use his grace
To make her life a round of holidays.
But day by day his selfish love had grown
From friendly service to a lover's claim,
Until he had forgotten Reginault
In her fair eyes, and all things else but her,
Who granted him no boon, no smallest act
Of love or tenderness.

At last the strife
Between deep yearning for some touch of love,
And brave endeavour for self-mastery,
Had driven him to madness and despair.
To the lone sea he brought his agony
To face it boldly, and his spirit, quick
To wear new moods, caught a despondent gloom
From the dark omen that oppressed his soul.

"Love is divine," he said, "and it is well
To love Leorre, wife though she be, for love
Is free to noble natures; but at last,
When in her shining eyes I see response,
Albeit unconscious, to my longing pain,
I cannot rest content with boonless love,
Although divine. I fear me, if I stay
Within the circle of her tempting charm,
I shall, through some wild impulse, wantonly
Fling my unsullied knighthood to the winds,
As now I flung the plume from out my helm."

He went at even-song time to Leorre,
And told her of his struggle by the sea,
Of his determined purpose and resolve.
"Leorre, I love you with a love unsung
By poets, and unknown by other men,
Undreamed by women; I must leave you, dear;
I cannot see you fair for Reginault,
I cannot watch your sweetness not for me.
I will go far upon some distant quest
Until this frenzy ceases, and the quest
Shall be for you, my love, for you alone.

"Dear, sunny head that lights my darkened way
With its bright, golden glory, let me seek
A crown that well befits it for my quest.
Fair waist that curves beneath the heart I love,
I shall engirdle you with priceless gems
Won by my prowess for your perfect grace.
O wondrous neck! great lustrous, flawless pearls,
That shall be royal in their worth, to match
The white enchantment of your beauty fair,
Shall be my quest for you.

"I will not come
Back to the court of Constantine, Leorre,
Until I bring that which shall honour you,
And winning which, I shall have cooled my pain."

She came and knelt beside him, took his hand,
Looked deep into his ardent eyes,--her own
Like stars that shone into his inmost soul.

"Will you, indeed, go forth," she answered low,
"Across the world upon a quest for me?
And will you falter not, nor swerve, nor fail,
Nor turn aside from seeking, night nor day,
Until you conquer with your prowess rare
The prize for me? And may I choose the quest
I most desire?"

"Ah! surely, what you will,"
Said Kathanal, as echo to his eyes,
Which answered ere the words could form themselves.

She waited, silently; the room was still;
Sir Kathanal was faint from drinking deep,
With thirsty eyes, the beauty of her face.

At last she spoke, almost inaudibly,
But evermore the thought of her low speech
Made melody within his memory.

"Go forth, my knight of love, o'er land and sea,
And purify your spirit and your life,
And seek until you find the Holy Grail,
Keeping the vision ever in your thought,
The inspiration ever in your soul.
Let Tristram yield his loyalty and honour
for fair Isoud, and die inglorious,--
Let Launcelot in Guenever's embrace
Forget the consecrated vows he swore,
And bring dark desolation on the land,--
My knight must grow the greater through his love,
The better for my favour, the more pure!
More than all gifts, or wealth of royal dower,
I want, I crave, I claim this boon of thee."

Between the bronze-brown of his eyes and her,
There sudden came a faint and misty veil;
Through the wide-open window a sun's beam
Flashed on it, making o'er her bowèd head
A halo from his own unfallen tears.
He rose and lifted her, loosed her sweet hands,
And fell upon his knees low at her feet.
"Leorre, my love, my queen, my woman-saint,
I am not worthy, but I take your quest;
I will not falter and I will not swerve
Until I see the Grail, or pass to where
I see the glory it but symbols here,
In Paradise. Beloved, all the world
Is better for your living, all the air
Is sweeter for your breathing, and all love
Is holier, purer, that you may be loved."

"Rise, Kathanal, stand still and let me gaze
Upon you with that purpose in your face!
So brave, so resolute! I love you Kathanal!
Nay! do not touch me, listen to my words!
Surely it cannot be a sin to speak,
Perchance it is a debt I owe my knight
For his life's consecration, once to say
To him, as I have said to my own heart,
Just how I love him.

"I would follow you
Across the world, if it might be, a slave,
To serve you at your bidding night and day;
Or I would rouse me to my highest pride
That I might be your queen, and lead you on
To glory. I am strong to do and bear
The uttermost my mind can think, for you,
To cheer you, help you, strengthen you; and yet--
I am a woman, and my senses thrill
If you but touch the border of my robe,
And if you take my hand, before the court,
And raise it to your lips, I faint, I die,
With the vast tide of my unconquered love."

"Great Christ! how can I hear you and depart?
I did not know you loved me. O my sweet,
Here by your side I stay; my quest shall be
The love-light dawning in your shining eyes."

"Is this your answer, Kathanal," she sighed,
"To the unveiling of my heart of hearts?
No! now, if ever, you will surely go
On the sole quest that makes that action right."

"Leorre, come once to me!" he said with arms
Outstretched to her. Quickly she backward drew
With one swift whispered "Kathanal!"

"Leorre,
You cannot love and be so calm and still;
My soul would sacrifice both earth and heaven
For one full, rapturous kiss from those sweet lips
That lure me on to madness by their spell."

"It is my love that keeps me calm," she said;
"Love makes us strong for what is bitterest;
Were we faint-hearted through imperfect love
We could not part; but loving perfectly
We are full strong for that, and all things else.

"Farewell, my Kathanal, take as you go
This spotless scarf, the girdle from my robe,
And put it where the purple plume has been,
And wear it as my favour in your helm.
If that lost plume was darksome omen ill,
Let this defy it with an omen fair,
A prophecy to spur you on your quest.
My heart says it is better as it is;
I joy me that you flung into the sea
That purple plume my loving, longing gaze
Has often followed in the tournament.
Remember, purple doth betoken pain,
And white betokens conquest, purity;
Look, Kathanal, beloved, in my eyes!
I know that you will find the Holy Grail."

She stood immaculate, and from those eyes
That oft had kindled passionate desire
He drew an inspiration high and pure,
A prescient sense of victory and peace;
And falling on his knees once more, he bowed,
Kissed her white robe, and left her standing there.

Then followed days of struggle and dark gloom.
Far from the court he found a lonely cell,
Where morn and night he prayed, and, praying, wrought
A score of earnest, unrecorded deeds
To purify and cleanse himself from sin.

Oft the old passion would arise and sweep
His spirit bare of every conquest. Once
The longing and the yearning were so great,
So strong beyond all thought of holiness,
He sprang up from his bed at dead of night
And stopped not, night nor day, until he reached
His old home by the sea, and saw Leorre.
Her hair had its untarnished golden glow,
Her beauty was unchanged, but her sweet mouth
Had caught a touch of pathos in its smile;
She wore a purple robe, and stood in state
Beside Sir Reginault,--who greeted him
With tender, grave, and kind solicitude,--
And lifted eyes that smote upon his heart
With a long gaze of passionate appeal
That held a pain at bay deep in their depths.

"So weak," he whispered to his heart, "for self,
I will be strong for her; she needs my strength."

Again he hurried from her sight, half glad
For the remembered pain within her eyes;
Ashamed of his own soul that it was glad.

For years he struggled, prayed, and fought his fight;
And sometimes when his soul was desolate
And he was weary from his eager quest,
When such a sense of deep humility
Would fall upon his praying, watching heart
That he would fain forego all in despair,
A marvellous ray of light, mysterious,
Would slant athwart the darkness of his cell,
Then he would rouse him to his quest once more
And say, "Perchance the Holy Grail is near!"

One night at midnight came the ray again,
And with it came a strange expectancy
Of spirit as the light waxed radiant.
The cell was filled with spicy odours sweet,
And on the midnight stillness song was borne
As sweet as heaven's harmony--the words,--
The same Sir Launcelot had heard of old,--
"Honour and joy be to the Father of Heaven."
With wide eyes searching his lone cell for cause
He waited: as the ray became more clear
And more effulgent than the mid-day sun,
He trembled with that chill of mortal flesh
Beholding spiritual things. At last--
Now vaguely as though veiled by light, and then
With shining clearness, perfectly--he saw
The sight unspeakable, transcending words .

Forth from his barren cell came Kathanal,
Strong and inspired, born anew for deeds.
Straightway he grew to be the bravest knight
Under King Constantine, since Sir Sanpeur;
The boldest in the battles for the right;
The kindest in his judgment of the wrong.
His eyes that held the vision of the Grail
Were ever clear to see and know the truth;
His lips that had been touched by holy chrism
Were strong to utter holy living words;
He sang of life in life, and life in death,
And taught the lesson that his heart had learned--
All love should be a glory, not a doom;
Love for love's sake, albeit bliss-denied.

To his old home beside the sapphire sea
Floated his songs and his far-reaching fame;
For in the land no name was loved so well
As Kathanal the peerless Minstrel Knight.

Lone in her chamber sat Leorre, and heard
The songs of Kathanal by courtiers sung--
Arousing words, like a clear clarion call
To truth and virtue, purity and faith.
She clasped her hands and bent her head, and wept
In silent passion pent-up tears, for joy;
For now she knew--far off, beyond her sight--
Her love had seen the sacred Holy Grail.
And as she listened, inspiration came,
Irradiating all her spirit, lifting it
Beyond her sorrow and her daily want
Of Kathanal. soft through her soul there crept
The echo of a benedicite,
Enwrapping her in calm, triumphant peace.

Then she arose, put on her whitest robe,
And went out radiant, strong, and full of joy.

---

---

MERLIN

by

JOHN VEITCH

The Merlin of this poem is Merlin Caledonius, known also as Merlin Wylt and Silvestris. He ought not to be identified with Myrdin Emrys, or Merlin Ambrosius, who was the vates of Vortigern, and also apparently of Aurelius Ambrosianus,--the man of Roman descent who superseded Vortigern in the Cymric supremacy, and lost it again about 465. This Myrdin Emrys was probably also the Merlin of Uther Pendragon and of Arthur. While the name of the latter is associated with Dinas Emrys, or Fort of Emrys, in the Vale of the Waters--Nant Gwynant, which circles round the rugged grandeur of the southern slopes of Snowdon--that of the former, Merlin Caledonius, is inseparably joined to the wavy, far-spreading , and heather-streaked hills between which the Powsail Burn makes its way to the Tweed in the haugh of Drummelzier. Out of the two Merlins--the earlier and the later--the romancers of the eleventh and following centuries formed a third or legendary Merlin. Now the personage appears as a vulgar wizard and soothsayer, master of the art of glamoury, to be finally overcome by a woman's wiles, and kept for ever in hopeless captivity.
   The Caledonian Merlin is a sufficiently distinct historical personage. He was the son of Morvryn, who was descended from Coel Godebawc, the head of one of the main royal lines of the Cymri. He had a twin-sister Gwendydd. He was the friend of the Prince Gwenddoleu, a lord or king of the North, and he was present at the decisive battle of Ardderyd in 573, when the contest lay between the Pagan and Christian forces of the time. Merlin was on the Pagan or losing side. After the defeat and the death of his leader Gwenddoleu, he fled to the wilds of Drummelzier, in the wood of Caledon. There he spent some years, reputed insane, probably only heart-broken, and despairing of the Cymric cause and his own fortunes,--perhaps doubting the trustworthiness of his original faith or Nature-worship. Finally, he is said to have died at the hands--rather stones and clubs--of the herdsmen of a princeling of the district, then incorporated in the kingdom afterwards known as Strathclyde, and ruled over by Rydderch Hael, originally lord of Llanerch, or Lanark. Merlin's grave is pointed out by tradition near the village of Drummelzier, by the side of the Powsail Burn as it joins the Tweed. There can be little doubt, looking to external and internal evidence, that this Merlin was the author of certain poems now preserved in the "Four Ancient Books of Wales," and that to him also are to be assigned portions of the Merlinian poems, in which there occur interpolations of a later date. The poems show a peculiarly delicate feeling for nature and natural objects--tree, hill, and fountain--and they are pervaded by a cry of wailing and despair for the fortunes of the Cymric race. Many of the lines show the deepest pathos; some of them are incorporated in the following poem.
   Merlin's relation to the Christianity of the time is indicated in the poem. Originally a Nature-worshipper--probably with priestly functions--one who reverenced the powers and objects of Nature, and the sun above all, as the lord and symbol of creative and sustaining power, he was more or less affected by the Christianity of the time, but he never fully embraced it. If it ever had a hold on him, he appears to have relapsed from it in his later years; although conceptions from the faith which was making progress around him mingled with his original beliefs and pretensions to supernatural power and prophetic insight. This is the Merlin as depicted in the poem. It opens immediately after the battle of Ardderyd, when, in doubt and despair, the hopes of his life broken, he had fled to the retreat and shelter afforded by the hills and glens of Upper Tweeddale, where, more than a thousand years afterwards, men whose faith was of quite another type found refuge. Here, in the centre of the wood of Caledon, frequenting a fountain on the hills, he is said to have lived for some years ere he met his violent fate. Merlin was to a certain extent contemporary with Kentigern, who is said to have met him on the wilds which he haunted, and sought to convert him to the Christianity of the time, with, however, but partial and temporary effect. The details of the interview, as given hundreds of years afterwards in the "Scotichronicon," are of course a priestly invention, and wholly untrustworthy. The character of the Merlin of the poem is, I venture to think, in accordance with all the earliest and genuine information we have regarding him. His sister Gwendydd, The Dawn,--her affection and companionship in his life and troubles--and his early love, Hwimleian, The Gleam,--have their warrant in the original poems, and in the later ones, still of a very early time, in which reference is made to the Bard and Seer of this semi-historic, semi-mythic epoch of the ancient Cymri.
J.V.

PERSONS

Merlin--Bard, Seer, Wizard.
Gwendydd (The Dawn)--His twin-sister.
Hwimleian (The Gleam)--His early love.

Merlin ( in the Glen, and on Drummelzier Law ).

All night I've wandered in the glen, 'mid hum
Of hidden waters moving in the gloom,
And eerie sounds, strange voices from th' unseen,
And things have shaped themselves upon the air,
Some mocking me, and some soliciting
My evil will;--dim, weird sprites, that pass
'Twixt sky and earth in dark hours ere the morn,--
Form after form in crowding mystery,
Where none can mark the mien of living thing,
Or pause upon a face for love or light;
But all that seems to be doth also pass
In mockery of show to mortal eye.

The hill-top now is gained, and lo! afar
The eastern summits redden with the dawn;
The moor around me wakes to growing sound
And stir of life, all tremulous before
The high on-coming of the lord of day.

This morn I bow before thee, lord of light
And life!--my hope, my fear, my reverence!
Of thee unworthy, and my early vows.
Far-gleaming arrows, piercing feeble mists,
Herald thine uprise; low down in the vales,
That pour their loving tribute to the Tweed,
The waters shimmer 'mid the morning's joy;
Around me burn-heads croon, and moorland birds
Awake, a-wing, pipe brief glad notes to thee,
The brightening lord of happy melody.
Now part in twain the curtains of the dawn,
Each hill-top is aflame, and thou hast set
Thyself, full-orbed, in empire o'er the day:--
Aglow as in that dawn when first enthroned,
The wasting ages taking nought from thee,
Nor tainted by the evil of this earth,
Thou layest now, as new birth of the morn,
Thy strength of glory on the circling hills.
I worship thee, O sovereign of the sky,
The symbol of the God who is unseen.

Inspirer, thou, of life and hope and joy,
My pulses beat with thine. Again I feel
The blood that leaps to high ambition's quest,
And wakes, as sudden flash, my vanished dream,
To hold in leash the powers of all this world,
Be lord of nature and of human lives,--
Phantasm of youth that beckoned and beguiled
To empire and emprise, wild, subtle, vain--
As if this feeble hand could pluck from thee,
O king of day, thy lofty radiance,
And usurp thy throne.

To know the soul of things has been my quest,
To feel the beating of the inmost heart
That pulses through the world,--to know and be
As God,--a king o'er kings, with subtler power
Than that of lords who rule by force of arm,
Or wavering tie of human sympathy,--
This, this, the dream that dazzled all my youth;
And I have dared and done, in this my quest,
What no man knows, seen what no eye hath seen--
Weird sights not utterable in mortal words,
Strange forms o' morn, shapes in the weather-gleam,
That silent move and pass along the rim,
Clear-set, of the dim world that engirds the hills.
Ay, at grey dawn, I've struggled with the bird
Of wrath, until the sun came to mine aid,
And smote the hovering shadow, beak and wing.--
And now the dream is riven, shatterëd,
As when the great west wind in strength has struck
The summer heaven; and lo! we see but shreds
Of all its gilded towers, and broken shapes
Athwart the storm-cleft sky.

To stand supreme in mystery of might;
To lead the battle on to victory;
Mine was the pledge, assurance, and the hope,
The inspiration, and the faith of men.
Their trusting look to me as on the morn
They passed, fiend-blessed, to that green plain that lay
Between the Liddel's tide and Carwinelow;
This lives for aye deep scarred upon my heart.
I see the shock, and hear the frusch of spears,
Edge grinding edge, all through the fatal hours;
Twice seven armies locked in deadly grip,
Until at length that Cross, upraised against
The evening sky, shot o'er the struggling hosts
One blinding ray, as of the wrath of heaven;
And in that hour supreme of fate my power
Was stricken, and each sprite grew palsied-pale,
And passed away before my 'wildered eye,
Dissolved as phantom of the feeble air;
And then--was nought but faces of the dead,
Upturned, upbraiding, in the gloamin' grey;
And all was laid 'neath cover of the shade,
And all was hushed save the unheeding stream.

My prince, my Gwenddoleu, whose golden torques
I wore, and thou, well-lovëd Gwendydd's son,
Thou fearless bearer of the white-rimmed shield,
Where may I seek you now? Where are my dead,
The dead of Ardderyd? To me ye come
No more; no more again your hands I touch,--
To me your eyes glance never light of life!
"Hath not the burden been consigned to earth?
And every one must give up what he loves."
The budding thorn is green, the birch is blest,
And sweet the melody and chirp of birds;
But ye are still, my Moryen and Mordav!
Are ye now spirits of the nerveless clouds
That speck the shadowed hills and sweep the moor;
That dwell in air, and come, and passing wail,
Behold the misery of race and kin,
But have no power to stretch a hand in aid
Of their fell lot? Oft I hear a voice
A-crying in the night, see glimpsing forms
In outbreak of the moon through riven sky.
Oh! unavailing wail and stricken arm!
Is this your heaven?

Or are these seemings of the strainëd sense--
The fond heart's quickening of the hopeless dead?
And is it so that all are surely gone,
As is the creed of that far Orient,
Whence my race has sprung--to Nirvana's shade,
The formless state where nought is marked or known,
No sense, no thought, pain, pleasure, or desire;
Where keen emotion hath no quickening,
And resolute will, unstrung, can dare no deed
Of good or ill, and hath no fate to bear:
Where comes not e'en a passing dream to stir
The unconscious brain, or glint of memory
Across the darkened past; but all is one--
An absolute repose, alike for those
Once harassed by the pains of earthly life,
And souls that lived spell-bound in human bliss,
Heroes in battle slain, the weak who passed
From cottage couch, the proud from palace-hall,
The maiden in her bloom, the mother, child;
In the absorbing All are life and death alike,--
Close folded in unconscious unity?

What, then, this life of ours but pain and wreck!--
Mirage that hovers fair o'er youthful sky;
Inwoven dream that parts as mist before
The sun of noon; mid-life a battle 'gainst
Fierce striving powers for issues no one knows
Are in their final outcome good or ill,--
None seeing whither tends the deed we do
In the mysterious process of the world!

Gwendydd ( The Dawn--his twin-sister--sings; she addresses him as Lallogen, twin-brother ).

Lallogen! princely Morvryn's son,
Of olden heroes born,
Spirit divine, incarnate god,
To thee I bow this morn!

Thou, lord of airy powers, that dwell
In speed of the towering cloud,
In far out-flash of the levin fell,
In the croak of the raven brood;

In the hurrying mist of the moor,
Thy vassal spirits troop,
In the striving blast that tears the pine,
In eagle forms that swoop

From their course in the rack of the sky--
Playmates of the stormy gleam--
Winging to earth the stroke of fate,
As well to thee may beseem!

At thy bidding the wrath of the storm
Suddenly smites earth's rest,
And swiftly the burns arise and roar
In awe of thy dread behest.

The gentle milkwort bows its head,
Cowering beneath the hour,
When thy spirit feels not a bound
To its lust of evil power.

All unlovely, O brother, is might,
When slave of the wayward will;
And passion that knows but to smite
Is self-accursed with its ill.

Once blameless wert thou in thy strength,
As on that eve of old,
When Saxons fierce from the Frisian Sea
Crept in the mist's grey fold,

And sudden swooped on the Meldon green,
From old Penjacob glen,--
Thou and I in the lonely Caer,--
No hope or help from men!

At calm upraising of thy hand,
And far gleam of thine eye,
The rainbow rose round that airy Caer
In sacred majesty.

And we two forms within its rim
Shone god-like on the gaze,
And every sieging eye was held
In wild and weird amaze!

So arched in splendour Meldon's top,
Our blinded foes dismayed,
Paled, fled before the Power of Heaven
In its awesome robe arrayed.

Now turn thee from the tempter's thrall,
Dream of one bygone day,--
The flickering shade o'er the woodland glade
When thou and I were at play,--

And thou touched thy harp to a gentle tune
Of happy melody;
The deer stood charmed; the golden leaves
Dropped from the quivering tree.

Oh, brother! take that harp once more,
All-thrilling to the gleams
That pass now o'er the mountain's brow,
'Mid the music of the streams:

As from the heaven's height they come,
Bright messengers to earth:
Ethereal love doth shine in them,
They speak a god-like birth.

And high they bear our human heart
O'er grief, and fear, and pain:
Ah, brother! shall thy harp resound
No more in holy strain!

Merlin.

My heart is dust,
And callous is the soul that once was thrilled
By every pure and gentle thing of earth;
No more for me is blessing or to bless,--
Mine,--the power that smites, but cannot save;
Mine,--dreaded memory that wakes to hate;
Mine,--vision more than man's that can foresee
The future of my race, and what befalls
Of fateful contest and of storied deed.
Ghosts of the mountain mutter in mine ear;
Sea-birds, sky-borne, aye clang it on my brain,--
The Bard dishonoured, worthless Priest extolled,
The kingless Cymri trampled on the plain,
Blood-spilling from the sea to shoreless land,
Their Caers all desolate on the windy hills,
Haunted by wailing spirits of the dead,--
This powerless I behold in my despair.
Once I could bend each sprite to subtle art,
And I could sport with all their fiendish power,
And sway it to mine end, but now,--so ripe
In me the habit of the evil will,--
Each mocks my fainting purpose after good,
And I, proud master once, am now the slave!

Gwendydd ( takes Merlin's harp and sings ).

Fresh as of old the breeze of the morn,
Plaintive the notes that float
O'er the moor with the sunny thyme,
And the blue forget-me-not.

The rock-rose lifts its face to the sun,
It droops when its lord is set;
The tormentil peers, the heather-bell glows;
Sweet-eyed is the violet.

The lowly gale looks forth from the grass,
Silver-starring the brae;
Th' Idaean vine holds its cup for the dew,
High where the burn-heads play,

As they flash in ripples of light,
Ere down they break to the glen
By green bank, red scaur, and grey rock,
Where the rowan shades the linn:

And the sun o'er all is moving in joy,
The strong lord of the sky;
He stoops to bless the earth with his love,
Benign in his majesty.

And nought but raises its face to him,
Both herb and flower of earth;
He, lord of all, that rules in heaven,
Hath care for the lowliest birth.

And thou art far from the face of God--
Whate'er thy craft or power--
Who knowest not first to bless with thy might,
As the sun in the morning hour.

Merlin.

Ah! gentle sister, thou hast touched my heart;
I live, again, in the green fields of memory,
A swift-winged hour of bright enchanting hope.
Would I were clothed again in innocence
Of youth, when every breeze was life and love,
Each ripple of the stream a soothing sound,
Each sparkle leapt to joy before mine eye;
Each mountain flower the darling of my heart;
When, with my shield on shoulder, sword on thigh,
I roamed by day the wood of Caledon,
And in the silence of the summer night
Lay folded in a dreamless sleep,--the hours
Unvisited by ghostly forms of air.
E'en now the vision rises,--that fair form,
The sportive maid, the Gleam amid the trees,
Whereon the spring had spread the apple-bloom,
Low by the river's side,--my Hwimleian,
Earth's paragon of movement and of grace,
The jewel of this heart, a faithless guardian!
Stale heart of mine! now no dew of heaven
Can freshen thee, no dawn bring quickening.
Ah me! the blossoms were untimely frayed,
Ne'er golden autumn theirs; and yet 'twas well,
Hwimleian, thou didst not wed with devil's son!

Hwimleian ( The Gleam--Merlin's early love--appearing as a glint on the hill, sings ).

The daughter of the Sun, I come,
His joy, his free first-born;
As birthright fair the gleam I wear
Of the golden hair of morn.

Above the earth's dark orb I soar,
Nought there eludes my ken;
The wide o'erarching heaven is mine--
The Queen of hill and glen.

I smite the darkness from the cloud,
And pierce its dusky fold;
I lay my hand on the dark-browed storm,
And charm it into gold.

The grey moor mists transfigured pass,
And every evil sprite
And power of air, that threatened earth,
Flees stricken in my sight.

Over the mottled hills I fly,
My brother shade with me;
With light wing drape the peace that broods
O'er the moorland spaces free.

O' night my paler robe is cast
O'er the trembling waters clear;
I peer into depths of the silent glen,
The lonely herdsman's cheer.

The brow of pain I touch with joy;
My face--my power unfurled,
Dark spirits cowering pass away--
Mine homage of the world!

Merlin.

Ah me! this voice once more--this voice to me--
The faithless to the truest love on earth!
She has conquered death, and calls from th' unseen
To me, dim groper after truth and power,
Yet missing bliss! man mocked and satisfied
With outward show and sensual pageantry.
The outer seeming, not the truth itself,
Has been my portion; husk, not fruit, was mine,--
The trick of art which awes, destroys, but builds
Not for the world: when it hath passed, remain
The waste of ashes, cowering dread, despair,
The glare of power that briefly flames in space,
Its whole reward--the dazzling snare whereby
The spirit of the world leads captive souls
Whose trust is in their strength, divorced from love,
And silent working, patient thought and faith,
That move the springs of progress and of hope--
Not waited on by fame or noisy talk
Of buzzing tongues, or clamour of the crowd--
Yet in the course of ages moulding men
To noble likeness, life of higher grade.
The stream of order from th' Eternal Fount
Flows free and full, unmeasured in its might,
Unthwarted, suffering not disharmony,
But thrusting all our rebel strokes aside,
And mocking all our puny might to grasp,
And turn aside from its unerring aim.
One Will there is in heaven and on earth--
'Tis mirrored in the open-visioned soul.
Who waits the revelation only knows,
Who bows before the Power hath true control.

Gwendydd.

The dew is on the grave that holds my son;
The grass upon the mound is green where lies
Our Gwenddoleu. They have no ear to list
The twittering birds at opening of the dawn.
But, O Lallogen, lord of lucid verse,
Thou wise diviner, fearless in the fight,
"The fosterer of song among the streams,"
Thy locks are hoar as when the winter lays
Its snowy fingers on Trahenna's brow;
And thou art nearing mortal's dreaded doom,
And saddest to my sight will be the cairn
Of thine entrenchment,--there my heart will yearn
For thee in separation long and cold.
I pray thee, loved one, pass not from the world
In mood of wrath, vengeful, unreconciled;
The Priest shall bear to thee the sacred rite
That heals and saves.

Merlin.

Sister! no rite shall be for me at hand
Of cloak-draped monk, the ally of our foes.
He gives, forgives, as he were Lord--purblind:
"May my communion be with God alone!"

( After an interval. )

Gwendydd! to my fountain lead me once again,
Then leave me,--I would see once more alone
The well-eye 'mong the hills that has for fringe
The solitary fern of tender mien,
That bends, leaf-charmëd, o'er the gleam it loves,
Where birk and hazel fleck with shifting shades
The waters, as they move in gentle rise
And fall, and pour soft music ceaselessly;
Where mosses, green and brown, cling to the stones,
And eyes of fair forget-me-not are bright
With blessings for the spray that leaps to kiss
It by the way. There may I commune free
With creatures of the wild that come at eve,
Whose language is the depth of loving eyes,
Who err not from the order of the world.

O Spirit of my fountain--pure, benign,
Whose dwelling is in depths of Nether Erd,
Far down, beyond the turmoil of the world,
Serene and sanctified, untouched by storm,
Or aught that can defile,--who wearest aye
Unstainëd face in trouble or in calm
Of earth or air,--I pray this evil heart
In me may pass. Now would I be at peace
With thee, O Spirit, and all gentle things.
I know mine hour is come.

Rustics ( herdsmen find him at the fountain ).

Lo! Wizard Merlin, lo! the devil's son!
Destroyer of our crops, bringer fell of storms,
Nor sparing herdsman in the moorland drift,
Nor tender lamb in bitter wind of March,--
Grip, bind him with the green withes from the tree
Blessed by the priest. Then swiftly to the stream.
[ They carry him to the Tweed .
Son of air and earth! let water hide thee,
Gurgling o'er, when thou, sunk deep, art dead
In wheeling Debbit,--devil's pool, where dwells
The iron-toed, the fiend who waits thee there:
On earth or in the air not thine to die.

Strong Spirit of the flood! we give to thee
The lord of all the elements of air,--
Who from the hills sent torrent through the haugh,
That strove and roared, and bore its tawny mane,
Outsweeping, merciless, in joy of wrath,--
To be for ever thine, ne'er more to touch
Our earth with wizard spell.

Merlin ( raising his head once from the current ere he sinks ).

One gleam upon the stream! My Hwimleian!
My love! fair daughter of the sun,--thou, thou
Alone art faithful unto passing death
Of this poor feeble framework of the soul
That fears the dread unknown and yearns for love,
E'en in that future baffling all our ken.
I am for ever consecrate to thee!
What boots it aye to be, if not to be
With love!--the loved and lost, the soul that waits
In ever-living love! With thee I grasp
Anew the golden thread of life,--to be
No more 'mong living men where life is not.

Hwimleian ( in the air over the stream ).

Now hold I thee, the spirit, free from taint
Of mortal flesh, and from the tempter's thrall.
Now we are one--one in our strength and love--
Ne'er one before in all that checkered world
Which men call earth, where passions rage and rule,
And love but seems, and gilded guilt has sway;
And the brute hand that understandeth not
Can strike the brave, the noble, and the wise--
God-sped, whose kingdom is where earth is not:
There to the best doth e'er befall the worst.
Base earth no longer dominates the soul!
We know it now, one orb among the stars,
A speck upon infinity; and far
Beneath our wingëd flight, through ether borne,
In pure and simple vision we shall see
Free beauty undefaced, the truth undimmed,
And purity unsullied--face to face
In that unbroken light which faintly here
Gleams through the veil, and seeks with pitying heart
To win the unheeding darkness of the world!

And seeing, we shall be what we behold,
Through the unwavering purpose of the soul,
Transfixed by glory of th' Eternal Throne,
Boundless as craving of the heart for bliss.
Here effort wanders not in devious ways,
And strength wails not its wasted energy,
Nor love is pain, but will and heart are one
In high endeavour after nobler good,
As life on life evolves, infinite life,
Th' unwearied process of th' eternal years.

---

---

ON KING ARTHUR'S ROUND-TABLE AT WINCHESTER

by

THOMAS WARTON

Where Venta's Norman castle still uprears
Its rafter'd hall, that o'er the grassy foss,
And scatter'd flinty fragments, clad in moss,
On yonder steep in naked state appears;
High hung remains, the pride of warlike years,
Old Arthur's Board: on the capacious round
Some British pen has sketch'd the names renown'd,
In marks obscure, of his immortal peers.
Though join'd by magic skill, with many a rime,
The Druid frame, unhonour'd, falls a prey
To the slow vengeance of the wisard Time,
And fade the British characters away;
Yet Spenser's page, that chants in verse sublime
Those Chiefs, shall live, unconscious of decay.

---

---

THE GRAVE OF KING ARTHUR [1]

by

THOMAS WARTON

Stately the feast, and high the cheer:
Girt with many an armed peer,
Cilgarran, in thy castle hall,
And canopied with golden pall,
Sublime in formidable state,
And warlike splendour, Henry sate;
Prepar'd to stain the briny flood
Of Shannon's lakes with rebel blood.
Illumining the vaulted roof,
A thousand torches flam'd aloof:
From massy cups, with golden gleam
Sparkled the red metheglin's stream:
To grace the gorgeous festival,
Along the lofty-window'd wall,
The storied tapestry was hung:
With minstrelsy the rafters rung
Of harps, that with reflected light
From the proud gallery glitter'd bright:
While gifted bards, a rival throng,
(From distant Mona, nurse of song,
From Teivi, fring'd with umbrage brown,
From Elvy's vale, and Cader's crown,
From many a shaggy precipice
That shades Ierne's hoarse abyss,
And many a sunless solitude
Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude,)
To crown the banquet's solemn close,
Themes of British glory chose;
And to the strings of various chime
Attemper'd thus the fabling rime.
"O'er Cornwall's cliffs the tempest roar'd,
High the screaming sea-mew soar'd;
On Tintaggel's [2] topmost tower
Darksom fell the sleety shower;
Round the rough castle shrilly sung
The whirling blast, and wildly flung
On each tall rampart's thundering side
The surges of the tumbling tide:
When Arthur rang'd his red-cross ranks
On conscious Camlan's crimson'd banks:
By Mordred's faithless guile decreed
Beneath a Saxon spear to bleed!
Yet in vain a paynim foe
Arm'd with fate the mighty blow;
For when he fell, an elfin queen,
All in secret, and unseen,
O'er the fainting hero threw
Her mantle of ambrosial blue;
And bade her spirits bear him far,
In Merlin's agate-axled car,
To her green isle's enamel'd steep,
In the navel of the deep.
O'er his wounds she sprinkled dew
From flowers that in Arabia grew:
On a rich, inchanted bed,
She pillow'd his majestic head;
O'er his brow, with whispers bland,
Thrice she wav'd an opiate wand;
And, to soft music's airy sound,
Her magic curtains clos'd around.
There, renew'd the vital spring,
Again he reigns a mighty king;
And many a fair and fragrant clime,
Blooming in immortal prime,
By gales of Eden ever fann'd,
Owns the monarch's high command:
Thence to Britain shall return,
(If right prophetic rolls I learn)
Borne on Victory's spreading plume,
His antient scepter to resume;
Once more, in old heroic pride,
His barbed courser to bestride;
His knightly table to restore,
And the brave tournaments of yore."
They ceas'd: when on the tuneful stage
Advanc'd a bard, of aspect sage;
His silver tresses, thin-besprent,
To age a graceful reverence lent;
His beard, all white as spangles frore
That cloath Plinlimmon's forests hoar,
Down to his harp descending flow'd;
With Time's faint rose his features glow'd;
His eyes diffus'd a soften'd fire,
And thus he walk'd the warbling wire.
"Listen, Henry, to my read!
Not from fairy realms I lead
Bright-rob'd Tradition, to relate
In forged colours Arthur's fate;
Tho' much of old romantic lore
On the blest theme I keep in store:
But boastful Fiction should be dumb,
Where Truth the strain might best become.
If thine ear may still be won
With songs of Uther's glorious son;
Henry, I a tale unfold,
Never yet in rime enroll'd,
Nor sung nor harp'd in hall or bower;
Which in my youth's full early flower,
A minstrel, sprung of Cornish line,
Who spoke of kings from old Locrine,
Taught me to chant, one vernal dawn,
Deep in a cliff-encircled lawn,
What time the glistening vapours fled
From cloud-envelop'd Clyder's [3] head;
And on its sides the torrents gray
Shone to the morning's orient ray.
"When Arthur bow'd his haughty crest,
No princess, veil'd in azure vest,
Snatched him, by Merlin's potent spell,
In groves of golden bliss to dwell;
Where, crown'd with wreaths of misletoe,
Slaughter'd kings in glory go:
But when he fell, with winged speed,
His champions, on a milk-white steed,
From the battle's hurricane,
Bore him to Joseph's towered fane,
In the fair vale of Avalon: [4]
There, with chanted orison,
And the long blaze of tapers clear,
The stoled fathers met the bier;
Through the dim iles, in order dread
Of martial woe, the chief they led,
And deep intomb'd in holy ground,
Before the altar's solemn bound.
Around no dusky banners wave,
No mouldering trophies mark the grave:
Away the ruthless Dane has torn
Each trace that Time's slow touch had worn;
And long, o'er the neglected stone,
Oblivion's veil its shade has thrown:
The faded tomb, with honour due,
'Tis thine, O Henry, to renew!
Thither, when Conquest has restor'd
Yon recreant isle, and sheath'd the sword,
When Peace with palm has crown'd thy brows,
Haste thee, to pay thy pilgrim vows.
There, observant of my lore,
The pavement's hallow'd depth explore;
And thrice a fathom underneath
Dive into the vaults of death.
There shall thine eye, with wild amaze,
On his gigantic stature gaze;
There shalt thou find the monarch laid,
All in warriour-weeds array'd;
Wearing in death his helmet-crown,
And weapons huge of old renown.
Martial prince, 'tis thine to save
From dark oblivion Arthur's grave!
So may thy ships securely stem
The western frith: thy diadem
Shine victorious in the van,
Nor heed the slings of Ulster's clan:
Thy Norman pike-men win their way
Up the dun rocks of Harald's bay: [5]
And from the steeps of rough Kildare
Thy prancing hoofs the falcon scare:
So may thy bow's unerring yew
Its shafts in Roderick's heart embrew." [6]
Amid the pealing symphony
The spiced goblets mantled high,
With passions new the song impress'd
The listening king's impatient breast:
Flash the keen lightenings from his eyes;
He scorns awhile his bold emprise;
Ev'n now he seems, with eager pace,
The consecrated floor to trace;
And ope, from its tremendous gloom,
The treasures of the wonderous tomb:
Ev'n now, he burns in thought to rear,
From its dark bed, the ponderous spear,
Rough with the gore of Pictish kings:
Ev'n now fond hope his fancy wings,
To poise the monarch's massy blade,
Of magic-temper'd metal made;
And drag to day the dinted shield
That felt the storm of Camlan's field.
O'er the sepulchre profound
Ev'n now, with arching sculpture crown'd,
He plans the chantry's choral shrine,
The daily dirge, and rites divine.

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[1] King Henry the Second, having undertaken an expedition into Ireland, to suppress a rebellion raised by Roderick king of Connaught, commonly called O Connor Dun, or the brown monarch of Ireland , was entertained, in his passage through Wales, with the songs of the Welsh Bards. The subject of their poetry was king Arthur, whose history had been so long disguised by fabulous inventions, that the place of his burial was in general scarcely known or remembered. But in one of these Welsh poems sung before Henry, it was recited, that king Arthur, after the battle of Camlan in Cornwall, was interred at Glastonbury abbey, before the high altar, yet without any external mark or memorial. Afterwards Henry visited the abbey, and commanded the spot, described by the Bard, to be opened: when digging near twenty feet deep, they found the body, deposited under a large stone, inscribed with Arthur's name. This is the ground-work of the following Ode: but for the better accommodation of the story to our present purpose, it is told with some slight variations from the Cronicle of Glastonbury. The castle of Cilgarran, where this discovery is supposed to have been made, now a most romantic ruin, stands on a rock descending to the river Teivi in Pembrokeshire: and was built by Roger Montgomery, who led the van of the Normans at Hastings.

[2] Tintaggel, or Tintadgel castle, where king Arthur is said to have been born, and to have chiefly resided. Some of its huge fragments still remain, on a rocky peninsular cape, of a prodigious declivity towards the sea, and almost inaccessible from the land side, on the southern coasts of Cornwall.

[3] Or Glyder, a montain in Caernarvonshire.

[4] Glastonbury abbey, said to be founded by Joseph of Arimathea; in a spot, antiently called the island, or valley, of Avalonia.

[5] The bay of Dublin. Harald, or Har-fager, The Fair-haired , king of Norway, is said, in the Life of Gryffudh ap Conan, prince of North Wales, to have conquered Ireland, and to have founded Dublin.

[6] Henry is supposed to have succeeded in this enterprise, chiefly by the use of the long-bow, with which the Irish were entirely unacquainted.

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Legends/Sagas

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KNIGHTS OF KING ARTHUR'S COURT

by

JESSIE WESTON

The scent of the may is in the air,
And its stars on each bough are hung,
With largesse of blossom and perfume rare
To the wandering breezes flung,
And the fairies tread a measure fair
To the chime by the blue-bells rung.

And the wood-birds carol unafraid,
For no man hath done them wrong,
While King Arthur's knights pass adown the glade,
And each, as he rides along,
Wending his way by sun and shade,
Beguileth the hour with song.

SIR GAWAYNE

"A song, a song for the springtide,
A song for the golden days,
For the lovelit eyes of the maidens,
And the knight whom their lips shall praise
And who but I should sing it,
Who was ever the Maidens' Knight?
Such honour hath been my guerdon
For many a fair-fought fight.

"Oh, my heart is fain for the clamour
And cry of the battle-field,
For the crash of the splintered spear-shaft,
And the clang of the smitten shield.
But 'tis sweeter when toil is over
To lay me a while to rest
In the arms that so soft enfold me,
And for pillow a snow-white breast.

"And what if such joys be fleeting?
Ah, little I reck the while
I ride adown thro' the sunlight,
With ever a song and a smile!
For when my last fight is foughten
I know that a white-robed band
Of maidens shall bid me greeting
On the shores of a sunlit land!"

SIR TRISTAN

"Tho' the springtide sun be fair,
Brighter far beyond compare
Shineth Iseult's golden hair!

"Springtide hours pass all too fleet,
Haste, my steed, on flying feet,
Ah, but Iseult's lips are sweet!

"Iseult, lily, Iseult, rose,
At my heart the love-drink glows,
Thro' my veins like fire it flows!

"Iseult, Iseult, when the light
Fadeth, clasp me, hold me tight,
Kiss me, dearest, into night!"

SIR LANCELOT

"Art thou waiting for me, my Lady,
Alone in thy royal bower?
Dost thou send a word thro' the silence
To hasten the passing hour,
'Hath he ever a thought for me, my knight?
Will he come to my arms with the fading light?'

"I am coming, love, I am coming--
Breathe soft, O wind of Spring,
Sail fast, O fleecy cloudlet,
Speed, bird, on glancing wing,
Whisper a word in my Lady's ear,
Tell her the sound of my feet ye hear!

"Ah, never had knight a lady
Fair as my queen is fair;
On a golden throne she sitteth,
In the blaze of her red-gold hair--
And little he dreams, my lord the king,
Of the secret that maketh her heart to sing.

"Are we false? are we true? I know not,
The twain are so wrought in one;
But whether for joy or for sorrow,
The sands of our fate must run--
And what matter if men condemn us quite,
Since all the world shall be ours to-night?"

SIR PERCEVAL

"I ride adown the forest aisles
From morn till evening shade,
Beneath the stars of heaven my head,
At fall of night, is laid.
No comrade wendeth at my side,
No voice bids me God-speed,
Alone by hill and vale I ride,
Alone by wood and mead.

"For somewhere, near, or far away,
One waiteth long mine aid,
I may not rest, by night or day,
Until his grief be stayed.
For many a year, with prayer and tear,
I've sought to find the way,
But rough or smooth, the path I choose
Still leadeth me astray.

"I may not rest from off my quest,
I may not stay my hand,
Tho' Life and Love be waiting me,
Far in a distant land.
I may not see my wife's fair face,
I may not faint nor fail,
Till I have won Anfortas grace,
And found the Holy Grail."

. . . . . . . . .

Sir Gawayne hath sought the isles of light
Beyond the shores of day,
Where morn never waneth to shades of night,
And the silver fountains play;
There he holdeth high court as the Maidens' Knight,
In the Maidens' Isle, for aye.

And Tristan sleeps by his lady's side,
To the dirge of the sounding sea;
And the foaming wave and the flowing tide
Hide the twain, that no man may see
Where they take their rest, and their fate abide,
Till the dawn of Eternity.

But Lancelot wrought a penance hard
To win from his sin release,
And his face was by fast and vigil marred
Or ever his pain might cease.
Now his body lieth in Joyous Gard,
And his soul hath gotten peace.

And Perceval, doth he wake or sleep?
Ah, no man shall tell that tale--
Perchance he lieth in slumber deep
With the Eastern sands for veil;
Or perchance, in a distant land, doth keep
Watch and ward o'er the Holy Grail.

But when the archangel trump shall call,
And the Heavenly Feast be spread,
Say, which of those heroes, among them all,
Shall lift up a fearless head,
And walk the pavement of Heaven's high Hall
With unashamèd tread?

Sir Gawayne, methinks, shall hide his face,
Abashed and overawed,
And the lovers twain, by Jesu's grace,
Sit low at the Heavenly board;
But the King of Heaven shall rise from His place
When He seeth Monsalväsch' lord--

"Welcome, O Brother, who bare thy part
In the travail of My soul,
Who knew no rest of hand or heart
Till thy brother might be made whole;
Come thou, and sit at My side, apart,
While the stars 'neath our footstool roll."

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SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

translated by

JESSIE L. WESTON

Preface to First Edition
The poem of which the following pages offer a prose rendering is contained in a MS., believed to be unique, of the Cottonian Collection, Nero A.X., preserved in the British Museum. The MS. is of the end of the fourteenth century, but it is possible that the composition of the poem is somewhat earlier; the subject-matter is certainly of very old date. There has been a considerable divergence of opinion among scholars on the question of authorship, but the view now generally accepted is that it is the work of the same hand as Pearl , another poem of considerable merit contained in the same MS.
   Our poem, or, to speak more correctly, metrical romance, contains over 2500 lines, and is composed in staves of varying length, ending in five short rhyming lines, technically known as a bob and a wheel,--the lines forming the body of the stave being not rhyming, but alliterative. The dialect in which it is written has been decided to be West Midland, probably Lancashire, and is by no means easy to understand. Indeed, it is the real difficulty and obscurity of the language, which, in spite of careful and scholarly editing, will always place the poem in its original form outside the range of any but professed students of mediæval literature, which has encouraged me to make an attempt to render it more accessible to the general public, by giving it a form that shall be easily intelligible, and at the same time preserve as closely as possible the style of the author.
   For that style, in spite of a certain roughness, unavoidable at a period in which the language was still in a partially developed and amorphous stage, is really charming. The author has a keen eye for effect; a talent for description, detailed without becoming wearisome; a genuine love of Nature and sympathy with her varying moods; and a real refinement and elevation of feeling which enable him to deal with a risqué: situation with an absence of coarseness, not, unfortunately, to be always met with in a mediæval writer. Standards of taste vary with the age, but even judged by that of our own day the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight comes not all too badly out of the ordeal!
   The story with which the poem deals, too, has claims upon our interest. I have shown elsewhere 1 that the beheading challenge is an incident of very early occurrence in heroic legend, and that the particular form given to it in the English poem is especially interesting, corresponding as it does to the variations of the story as preserved in the oldest known version, that of the old Irish Fled Bricrend.
    But in no other version is the incident coupled with that of a temptation and testing of the hero's honour and chastity, such as meets us here. At first sight one is inclined to assign the episode of the lady of the castle to the class of stories of which the oldest version is preserved in Biblical record--the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; a motif not unseldom employed by mediæval writers, and which notably occurs in what we may call the Launfal group of stories. But there are certain points which may make us hesitate as to whether in its first conception the tale was really one of this class.
   It must be noted that here the lady is acting throughout with the knowledge and consent of the husband, an important point of difference. In the second place, it is very doubtful whether her entire attitude was not a ruse . From the Green Knight's words to Gawain when he finally reveals himself, "I wot we shall soon make peace with my wife, who was thy bitter enemy," her conduct hardly seems to have been prompted by real passion.
   In my Studies on the Legend of Sir Gawain , already referred to, I have suggested that the character of the lady here is, perhaps, a reminiscence of that of the Queen of the Magic Castle or Isle, daughter or niece of an enchanter, who at an early stage of Gawain's story was undoubtedly his love. I think it not impossible that she was an integral part of the tale as first told, and her rôle here was determined by that which she originally played. In most versions of the story she has dropped out altogether. It is, of course, possible that, there being but a confused reminiscence of the original tale, her share may have been modified by the influence of the Launfal group; but I should prefer to explain the episode on the whole as a somewhat distorted survival of an original feature.
   But in any case we may be thankful for this, that the author of the most important English metrical romance dealing with Arthurian legend faithfully adheres to the original conception of Gawain's character, as drawn before the monkish lovers of edification laid their ruthless hands on his legend, and turned the model of knightly virtues and courtesy into a mere vulgar libertine.
   Brave, chivalrous, loyally faithful to his plighted word, scrupulously heedful of his own and others' honour, Gawain stands before us in this poem. We take up Malory or Tennyson, and in spite of their charm of style, in spite of the halo of religious mysticism in which they have striven to enwrap their characters, we lay them down with a feeling of dissatisfaction. How did the Gawain of their imagination, this empty-headed, empty-hearted worldling, cruel murderer, and treacherous friend, ever come to be the typical English hero? For such Gawain certainly was, even more than Arthur himself. Then we turn back to these faded pages, and read the quaintly earnest words in which the old writer reveals the hidden meaning of that mystic symbol, the pentangle, and vindicates Gawain's title to claim it as his badge--and we smile, perhaps, but we cease to wonder at the widespread popularity of King Arthur's famous nephew, or at the immense body of romance that claims him as its hero.
   Scholars know all this, of course; they can read the poem for themselves in its original rough and intricate phraseology; perhaps they will be shocked at an attempt to handle it in simpler form. But this little book is not for them, and if to those to whom the tale would otherwise be a sealed treasure these pages bring some new knowledge of the way in which our forefathers looked on the characters of the Arthurian legend, the tales they told of them (unconsciously betraying the while how they themselves lived and thought and spoke)--if by that means they gain a keener appreciation of our national heroes, a wider knowledge of our national literature,--then the spirit of the long-dead poet will doubtless not be the slowest to pardon my handling of what was his masterpiece, as it is, in M. Gaston Paris' words, "The jewel of English mediæval literature."
BOURNEMOUTH, June 1898
Preface to Second Edition
In preparing this Second Edition I have adopted certain suggestions of the late Professor Kölbing, contained in a review published by him in Englische Studien xxvi . In one or two instances, however, I have not felt free to follow his reading-- e.g. , on page 67, in þrynne syþe must certainly mean " for the third time ," not " thrice ." The lady has already kissed Gawain twice during the interview; Professor Kölbing's suggestion would make him receive five kisses, instead of three, the correct number. Nor do I think the story would gain anything by reproducing the details of the dissection of animals on page 46. This little series is not intended for scholars, who can study the original works for themselves, but for the general public, and I have therefore avoided any digression from the main thread of the story. In the main, however, I have gladly availed myself of the late Professor's learned criticisms.
BOURNEMOUTH, May 1900.


Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
   After the siege and the assault of Troy, when that burg was destroyed and burnt to ashes, and the traitor tried for his treason, the noble Æneas and his kin sailed forth to become princes and patrons of well-nigh all the Western Isles. Thus Romulus built Rome (and gave to the city his own name, which it bears even to this day); and Ticius turned him to Tuscany; and Langobard raised him up dwellings in Lombardy; and Felix Brutus sailed far over the French flood, and founded the kingdom of Britain, wherein have been war and waste and wonder, and bliss and bale, ofttimes since.
   And in that kingdom of Britain have been wrought more gallant deeds than in any other; but of all British kings Arthur was the most valiant, as I have heard tell, therefore will I set forth a wondrous adventure that fell out in his time. And if ye will listen to me, but for a little while, I will tell it even as it stands in story stiff and strong, fixed in the letter, as it hath long been known in the land.

*****
   King Arthur lay at Camelot upon a Christmas-tide, with many a gallant lord and lovely lady, and all the noble brotherhood of the Round Table. There they held rich revels with gay talk and jest; one while they would ride forth to joust and tourney, and again back to the court to make carols; 2 for there was the feast holden fifteen days with all the mirth that men could devise, song and glee, glorious to hear, in the daytime, and dancing at night. Halls and chambers were crowded with noble guests, the bravest of knights and the loveliest of ladies, and Arthur himself was the comeliest king that ever held a court. For all this fair folk were in their youth, the fairest and most fortunate under heaven, and the king himself of such fame that it were hard now to name so valiant a hero.
   Now the New Year had but newly come in, and on that day a double portion was served on the high table to all the noble guests, and thither came the king with all his knights, when the service in the chapel had been sung to an end. And they greeted each other for the New Year, and gave rich gifts, the one to the other (and they that received them were not wroth, that may ye well believe!), and the maidens laughed and made mirth till it was time to get them to meat. Then they washed and sat them down to the feast in fitting rank and order, and Guinevere the queen, gaily clad, sat on the high daïs. Silken was her seat, with a fair canopy over her head, of rich tapestries of Tars, embroidered, and studded with costly gems; fair she was to look upon, with her shining grey eyes, a fairer woman might no man boast himself of having seen.
   But Arthur would not eat till all were served, so full of joy and gladness was he, even as a child; he liked not either to lie long, or to sit long at meat, so worked upon him his young blood and his wild brain. And another custom he had also, that came of his nobility, that he would never eat upon an high day till he had been advised of some knightly deed, or some strange and marvellous tale, of his ancestors, or of arms, or of other ventures. Or till some stranger knight should seek of him leave to joust with one of the Round Table, that they might set their lives in jeopardy, one against another, as fortune might favour them. Such was the king's custom when he sat in hall at each high feast with his noble knights, therefore on that New Year tide, he abode, fair of face, on the throne, and made much mirth withal.
   Thus the king sat before the high tables, and spake of many things; and there good Sir Gawain was seated by Guinevere the queen, and on her other side sat Agravain, à la dure main ; 3 both were the king's sister's sons and full gallant knights. And at the end of the table was Bishop Bawdewyn, and Ywain, King Urien's son, sat at the other side alone. These were worthily served on the daïs, and at the lower tables sat many valiant knights. Then they bare the first course with the blast of trumpets and waving of banners, with the sound of drums and pipes, of song and lute, that many a heart was uplifted at the melody. Many were the dainties, and rare the meats, so great was the plenty they might scarce find room on the board to set on the dishes. Each helped himself as he liked best, and to each two were twelve dishes, with great plenty of beer and wine.
   Now I will say no more of the service, but that ye may know there was no lack, for there drew near a venture that the folk might well have left their labour to gaze upon. As the sound of the music ceased, and the first course had been fitly served, there came in at the hall door one terrible to behold, of stature greater than any on earth; from neck to loin so strong and thickly made, and with limbs so long and so great that he seemed even as a giant. And yet he was but a man, only the mightiest that might mount a steed; broad of chest and shoulders and slender of waist, and all his features of like fashion; but men marvelled much at his colour, for he rode even as a knight, yet was green all over.
   For he was clad all in green, with a straight coat, and a mantle above; all decked and lined with fur was the cloth and the hood that was thrown back from his locks and lay on his shoulders. Hose had he of the same green, and spurs of bright gold with silken fastenings richly worked; and all his vesture was verily green. Around his waist and his saddle were bands with fair stones set upon silken work, 'twere too long to tell of all the trifles that were embroidered thereon--birds and insects in gay gauds of green and gold. All the trappings of his steed were of metal of like enamel, even the stirrups that he stood in stained of the same, and stirrups and saddle-bow alike gleamed and shone with green stones. Even the steed on which he rode was of the same hue, a green horse, great and strong, and hard to hold, with broidered bridle, meet for the rider.
   The knight was thus gaily dressed in green, his hair falling around his shoulders; on his breast hung a beard, as thick and green as a bush, and the beard and the hair of his head were clipped all round above his elbows. The lower part of his sleeves were fastened with clasps in the same wise as a king's mantle. The horse's mane was crisp and plaited with many a knot folded in with gold thread about the fair green, here a twist of the hair, here another of gold. The tail was twined in like manner, and both were bound about with a band of bright green set with many a precious stone; then they were tied aloft in a cunning knot, whereon rang many bells of burnished gold. Such a steed might no other ride, nor had such ever been looked upon in that hall ere that time; and all who saw that knight spake and said that a man might scarce abide his stroke.
   The knight bore no helm nor hauberk, neither gorget nor breast-plate, neither shaft nor buckler to smite nor to shield, but in one hand he had a holly-bough, that is greenest when the groves are bare, and in his other an axe, huge and uncomely, a cruel weapon in fashion, if one would picture it. The head was an ell-yard long, the metal all of green steel and gold, the blade burnished bright, with a broad edge, as well shapen to shear as a sharp razor. The steel was set into a strong staff, all bound round with iron, even to the end, and engraved with green in cunning work. A lace was twined about it, that looped at the head, and all adown the handle it was clasped with tassels on buttons of bright green richly broidered.
   The knight rideth through the entrance of the hall, driving straight to the high daïs, and greeted no man, but looked ever upwards; and the first words he spake were, "Where is the ruler of this folk? I would gladly look upon that hero, and have speech with him." He cast his eyes on the knights, and mustered them up and down, striving ever to see who of them was of most renown.
   Then was there great gazing to behold that chief, for each man marvelled what it might mean that a knight and his steed should have even such a hue as the green grass; and that seemed even greener than green enamel on bright gold. All looked on him as he stood, and drew near unto him wondering greatly what he might be; for many marvels had they seen, but none such as this, and phantasm and faërie did the folk deem it. Therefore were the gallant knights slow to answer, and gazed astounded, and sat stone still in a deep silence through that goodly hall, as if a slumber were fallen upon them. I deem it was not all for doubt, but some for courtesy that they might give ear unto his errand.
   Then Arthur beheld this adventurer before his high daïs, and knightly he greeted him, for fearful was he never. "Sir," he said, "thou art welcome to this place--lord of this hall am I, and men call me Arthur. Light thee down, and tarry awhile, and what thy will is, that shall we learn after."
   "Nay," quoth the stranger, "so help me He that sitteth on high, 'twas not mine errand to tarry any while in this dwelling; but the praise of this thy folk and thy city is lifted up on high, and thy warriors are holden for the best and the most valiant of those who ride mail-clad to the fight. The wisest and the worthiest of this world are they, and well proven in all knightly sports. And here, as I have heard tell, is fairest courtesy, therefore have I come hither as at this time. Ye may be sure by the branch that I bear here that I come in peace, seeking no strife. For had I willed to journey in warlike guise I have at home both hauberk and helm, shield and shining spear, and other weapons to mine hand, but since I seek no war my raiment is that of peace. But if thou be as bold as all men tell thou wilt freely grant me the boon I ask."
   And Arthur answered, "Sir Knight, if thou cravest battle here thou shalt not fail for lack of a foe."
   And the knight answered, "Nay, I ask no fight, in faith here on the benches are but beardless children, were I clad in armour on my steed there is no man here might match me. Therefore I ask in this court but a Christmas jest, for that it is Yule-tide, and New Year, and there are here many fain for sport. If any one in this hall holds himself so hardy, 4 so bold both of blood and brain, as to dare strike me one stroke for another, I will give him as a gift this axe, which is heavy enough, in sooth, to handle as he may list, and I will abide the first blow, unarmed as I sit. If any knight be so bold as to prove my words let him come swiftly to me here, and take this weapon, I quit claim to it, he may keep it as his own, and I will abide his stroke, firm on the floor. Then shalt thou give me the right to deal him another, the respite of a year and a day shall he have. Now haste, and let see whether any here dare say aught."
   Now if the knights had been astounded at the first, yet stiller were they all, high and low, when they had heard his words. The knight on his steed straightened himself in the saddle, and rolled his eyes fiercely round the hall, red they gleamed under his green and bushy brows. He frowned and twisted his beard, waiting to see who should rise, and when none answered he cried aloud in mockery, "What, is this Arthur's hall, and these the knights whose renown hath run through many realms? Where are now your pride and your conquests, your wrath, and anger, and mighty words? Now are the praise and the renown of the Round Table overthrown by one man's speech, since all keep silence for dread ere ever they have seen a blow!"
   With that he laughed so loudly that the blood rushed to the king's fair face for very shame; he waxed wroth, as did all his knights, and sprang to his feet, and drew near to the stranger and said, "Now by heaven foolish is thy asking, and thy folly shall find its fitting answer. I know no man aghast at thy great words. Give me here thine axe and I shall grant thee the boon thou hast asked." Lightly he sprang to him and caught at his hand, and the knight, fierce of aspect, lighted down from his charger.
   Then Arthur took the axe and gripped the haft, and swung it round, ready to strike. And the knight stood before him, taller by the head than any in the hall; he stood, and stroked his beard, and drew down his coat, no more dismayed for the king's threats than if one had brought him a drink of wine.
   Then Gawain, who sat by the queen, leaned forward to the king and spake, "I beseech ye, my lord, let this venture be mine. Would ye but bid me rise from this seat, and stand by your side, so that my liege lady thought it not ill, then would I come to your counsel before this goodly court. For I think it not seemly when such challenges be made in your hall that ye yourself should undertake it, while there are many bold knights who sit beside ye, none are there, methinks, of readier will under heaven, or more valiant in open field. I am the weakest, I wot, and the feeblest of wit, and it will be the less loss of my life if ye seek sooth. For save that ye are mine uncle naught is there in me to praise, no virtue is there in my body save your blood, and since this challenge is such folly that it beseems ye not to take it, and I have asked it from ye first, let it fall to me, and if I bear myself ungallantly then let all this court blame me."
   Then they all spake with one voice that the king should leave this venture and grant it to Gawain.
   Then Arthur commanded the knight to rise, and he rose up quickly and knelt down before the king, and caught hold of the weapon; and the king loosed his hold of it, and lifted up his hand, and gave him his blessing, and bade him be strong both of heart and hand. "Keep thee well, nephew," quoth Arthur, "that thou give him but the one blow, and if thou redest him rightly I trow thou shalt well abide the stroke he may give thee after."
   Gawain stepped to the stranger, axe in hand, and he, never fearing, awaited his coming. Then the Green Knight spake to Sir Gawain, "Make we our covenant ere we go further. First, I ask thee, knight, what is thy name? Tell me truly, that I may know thee."
   "In faith," quoth the good knight, "Gawain am I, who give thee this buffet, let what may come of it; and at this time twelvemonth will I take another at thine hand with whatsoever weapon thou wilt, and none other."
   Then the other answered again, "Sir Gawain, so may I thrive as I am fain to take this buffet at thine hand," and he quoth further, "Sir Gawain, it liketh me well that I shall take at thy fist that which I have asked here, and thou hast readily and truly rehearsed all the covenant that I asked of the king, save that thou shalt swear me, by thy troth, to seek me thyself wherever thou hopest that I may be found, and win thee such reward as thou dealest me to-day, before this folk."
   "Where shall I seek thee?" quoth Gawain. "Where is thy place? By Him that made me, I wot never where thou dwellest, nor know I thee, knight, thy court, nor thy name. But teach me truly all that pertaineth thereto, and tell me thy name, and I shall use all my wit to win my way thither, and that I swear thee for sooth, and by my sure troth."
   "That is enough in the New Year, it needs no more," quoth the Green Knight to the gallant Gawain, "if I tell thee truly when I have taken the blow, and thou hast smitten me; then will I teach thee of my house and home, and mine own name, then mayest thou ask thy road and keep covenant. And if I waste no words then farest thou the better, for thou canst dwell in thy land, and seek no further. But take now thy toll, and let see how thy strikest."
   "Gladly will I," quoth Gawain, handling his axe.
   Then the Green Knight swiftly made him ready, he bowed down his head, and laid his long locks on the crown that his bare neck might be seen. Gawain gripped his axe and raised it on high, the left foot he set forward on the floor, and let the blow fall lightly on the bare neck. The sharp edge of the blade sundered the bones, smote through the neck, and clave it in two, so that the edge of the steel bit on the ground, and the fair head fell to the earth that many struck it with their feet as it rolled forth. The blood spurted forth, and glistened on the green raiment, but the knight neither faltered nor fell; he started forward with out-stretched hand, and caught the head, and lifted it up; then he turned to his steed, and took hold of the bride, set his foot in the stirrup, and mounted. His head he held by the hair, in his hand. Then he seated himself in his saddle as if naught ailed him, and he were not headless. He turned his steed about, the grim corpse bleeding freely the while, and they who looked upon him doubted them much for the covenant.
   For he held up the head in his hand, and turned the face towards them that sat on the high daïs, and it lifted up the eyelids and looked upon them and spake as ye shall hear. "Look, Gawain, that thou art ready to go as thou hast promised, and seek leally till thou find me, even as thou hast sworn in this hall in the hearing of these knights. Come thou, I charge thee, to the Green Chapel, such a stroke as thou hast dealt thou hast deserved, and it shall be promptly paid thee on New Year's morn. Many men know me as the knight of the Green Chapel, and if thou askest, thou shalt not fail to find me. Therefore it behoves thee to come, or to yield thee as recreant."
   With that he turned his bridle, and galloped out at the hall door, his head in his hands, so that the sparks flew from beneath his horse's hoofs. Whither he went none knew, no more than they wist whence he had come; and the king and Gawain they gazed and laughed, for in sooth this had proved a greater marvel than any they had known aforetime.
   Though Arthur the king was astonished at his heart, yet he let no sign of it be seen, but spake in courteous wise to the fair queen: "Dear lady, be not dismayed, such craft is well suited to Christmas-tide when we seek jesting, laughter and song, and fair carols of knights and ladies. But now I may well get me to meat, for I have seen a marvel I may not forget." Then he looked on Sir Gawain, and said gaily, "Now, fair nephew, hang up thine axe, since it has hewn enough," and they hung it on the dossal above the daïs, where all men might look on it for a marvel, and by its true token tell of the wonder. Then the twain sat them down together, the king and the good knight, and men served them with a double portion, as was the share of the noblest, with all manner of meat and of minstrelsy. And they spent that day in gladness, but Sir Gawain must well bethink him of the heavy venture to which he had set his hand.
*****
   This beginning of adventures had Arthur at the New Year; for he yearned to hear gallant tales, though his words were few when he sat at the feast. But now had they stern work on hand. Gawain was glad to begin the jest in the hall, but ye need have no marvel if the end be heavy. For though a man be merry in mind when he has well drunk, yet a year runs full swiftly, and the beginning but rarely matches the end.
   For Yule was now over-past5, and the year after, each season in its turn following the other. For after Christmas comes crabbed Lent, that will have fish for flesh and simpler cheer. But then the weather of the world chides with winter; the cold withdraws itself, the clouds uplift, and the rain falls in warm showers on the fair plains. Then the flowers come forth, meadows and grove are clad in green, the birds make ready to build, and sing sweetly for solace of the soft summer that follows thereafter. The blossoms bud and blow in the hedgerows rich and rank, and noble notes enough are heard in the fair woods.
   After the season of summer, with the soft winds, when zephyr breathes lightly on seeds and herbs, joyous indeed is the growth that waxes thereout when the dew drips from the leaves beneath the blissful glance of the bright sun. But then comes harvest and hardens the grain, warning it to wax ripe ere the winter. The drought drives the dust on high, flying over the face of the land; the angry wind of the welkin wrestles with the sun; the leaves fall from the trees and light upon the ground, and all brown are the groves that but now were green, and ripe is the fruit that once was flower. So the year passes into many yesterdays, and winter comes again, as it needs no sage to tell us.
   When the Michaelmas moon was come in with warnings of winter, Sir Gawain bethought him full oft of his perilous journey. Yet till All Hallows Day he lingered with Arthur, and on that day they made a great feast for the hero's sake, with much revel and richness of the Round Table. Courteous knights and comely ladies, all were in sorrow for the love of that knight, and though they spake no word of it, many were joyless for his sake.
   And after meat, sadly Sir Gawain turned to his uncle, and spake of his journey, and said, "Liege lord of my life, leave from you I crave. Ye know well how the matter stands without more words, to-morrow am I bound to set forth in search of the Green Knight."
   Then came together all the noblest knights, Ywain and Erec, and many another. Sir Dodinel le Sauvage, the Duke of Clarence, Launcelot and Lionel, and Lucan the Good, Sir Bors and Sir Bedivere, valiant knights both, and many another hero, with Sir Mador de la Porte, and they all drew near, heavy at heart, to take counsel with Sir Gawain. Much sorrow and weeping was there in the hall to think that so worthy a knight as Gawain should wend his way to seek a deadly blow, and should no more wield his sword in fight. But the knight made ever good cheer, and said, "Nay, wherefore should I shrink? What may a man do but prove his fate?"
   He dwelt there all that day, and on the morn he arose and asked betimes for his armour; and they brought it unto him on this wise: first, a rich carpet was stretched on the floor6 (and brightly did the gold gear glitter upon it), then the knight stepped on to it, and handled the steel; clad he was in a doublet of silk, with a close hood, lined fairly throughout. Then they set the steel shoes upon his feet, and wrapped his legs with greaves, with polished knee-caps, fastened with knots of gold. Then they cased his thighs in cuisses closed with thongs, and brought him the byrny of bright steel rings sewn upon a fair stuff. Well burnished braces they set on each arm with good elbow-pieces, and gloves of mail, and all the goodly gear that should shield him in his need. And they cast over all a rich surcoat, and set the golden spurs on his heels, and girt him with a trusty sword fastened with a silken bawdrick. When he was thus clad his harness was costly, for the least loop or latchet gleamed with gold. So armed as he was he hearkened Mass and made his offering at the high altar. Then he came to the king, and the knights of his court, and courteously took leave of lords and ladies, and they kissed him, and commended him to Christ.
   With that was Gringalet ready, girt with a saddle that gleamed gaily with many golden fringes, enriched and decked anew for the venture. The bridle was all barred about with bright gold buttons, and all the covertures and trappings of the steed, the crupper and the rich skirts, accorded with the saddle; spread fair with the rich red gold that glittered and gleamed in the rays of the sun.
   Then the knight called for his helmet, which was well lined throughout, and set it high on his head, and hasped it behind. He wore a light kerchief over the vintail, that was broidered and studded with fair gems on a broad silken ribbon, with birds of gay colour, and many a turtle and true-lover's knot interlaced thickly, even as many a maiden had wrought diligently for seven winter long. But the circlet which crowned his helmet was yet more precious, being adorned with a device in diamonds. Then they brought him his shield, which was of bright red, with the pentangle painted thereon in gleaming gold.7 And why that noble prince bare the pentangle I am minded to tell you, though my tale tarry thereby. It is a sign that Solomon set ere-while, as betokening truth; for it is a figure with five points and each line overlaps the other, and nowhere hath it beginning or end, so that in English it is called "the endless knot." And therefore was it well suiting to this knight and to his arms, since Gawain was faithful in five and five-fold, for pure was he as gold, void of all villainy and endowed with all virtues. Therefore he bare the pentangle on shield and surcoat as truest of heroes and gentlest of knights.
   For first he was faultless in his five senses; and his five fingers never failed him; and all his trust upon earth was in the five wounds that Christ bare on the cross, as the Creed tells. And wherever this knight found himself in stress of battle he deemed well that he drew his strength from the five joys which the Queen of Heaven had of her Child. And for this cause did he bear an image of Our Lady on the one half of his shield, that whenever he looked upon it he might not lack for aid. And the fifth five that the hero used were frankness and fellowship above all, purity and courtesy that never failed him, and compassion that surpasses all; and in these five virtues was that hero wrapped and clothed. And all these, five-fold, were linked one in the other, so that they had no end, and were fixed on five points that never failed, neither at any side were they joined or sundered, nor could ye find beginning or end. And therefore on his shield was the knot shapen, red-gold upon red, which is the pure pentangle. Now was Sir Gawain ready, and he took his lance in hand, and bade them all Farewell , he deemed it had been for ever.
   Then he smote the steed with his spurs, and sprang on his way, so that sparks flew from the stones after him. All that saw him were grieved at heart, and said one to the other, "By Christ, 'tis great pity that one of such noble life should be lost! I'faith, 'twere not easy to find his equal upon earth. The king had done better to have wrought more warily. Yonder knight should have been made a duke; a gallant leader of men is he, and such a fate had beseemed him better than to be hewn in pieces at the will of an elfish man, for mere pride. Who ever knew a king to take such counsel as to risk his knights on a Christmas jest?" Many were the tears that flowed from their eyes when that goodly knight rode from the hall. He made no delaying, but went his way swiftly, and rode many a wild road, as I heard say in the book.
   So rode Sir Gawain through the realm of Logres, on an errand that he held for no jest. Often he lay companionless at night, and must lack the fare that he liked. No comrade had he save his steed, and none save God with whom to take counsel. At length he drew nigh to North Wales, and left the isles of Anglesey on his left hand, crossing over the fords by the foreland over at Holyhead, till he came into the wilderness of Wirral8, where but few dwell who love God and man of true heart. And ever he asked, as he fared, of all whom he met, if they had heard any tidings of a Green Knight in the country thereabout, or of a Green Chapel? And all answered him, Nay, never in their lives had they seen any man of such a hue. And the knight wended his way by many a strange road and many a rugged path, and the fashion of his countenance changed full often ere he saw the Green Chapel.
   Many a cliff did he climb in that unknown land, where afar from his friends he rode as a stranger. Never did he come to a stream or a ford but he found a foe before him, and that one so marvellous, so foul and fell, that it behoved him to fight. So many wonders did that knight behold, that it were too long to tell the tenth part of them. Sometimes he fought with dragons and wolves; sometimes with wild men that dwelt in the rocks; another while with bulls, and bears, and wild boars, or with giants of the high moorland that drew near to him. Had he not been a doughty knight, enduring, and of well-proved valour, and a servant of God, doubtless he had been slain, for he was oft in danger of death. Yet he cared not so much for the strife, what he deemed worse was when the cold clear water was shed from the clouds, and froze ere it fell on the fallow ground. More nights than enough he slept in his harness on the bare rocks, near slain with the sleet, while the stream leapt bubbling from the crest of the hills, and hung in hard icicles over his head.
   Thus in peril and pain, and many a hardship, the knight rode alone till Christmas Eve, and in that tide he made his prayer to the Blessed Virgin that she would guide his steps and lead him to some dwelling. On that morning he rode by a hill, and came into a thick forest, wild and drear; on each side were high hills, and thick woods below them of great hoar oaks, a hundred together, of hazel and hawthorn with their trailing boughs intertwined, and rough ragged moss spreading everywhere. On the bare twigs the birds chirped piteously, for pain of the cold. The knight upon Gringalet rode lonely beneath them, through marsh and mire, much troubled at heart lest he should fail to see the service of the Lord, who on that self-same night was born of a maiden for the cure of our grief; and therefore he said, sighing, "I beseech Thee, Lord, and Mary Thy gentle Mother, for some shelter where I may hear Mass, and Thy mattins at morn. This I ask meekly, and thereto I pray my Paternoster, Ave, and Credo." Thus he rode praying, and lamenting his misdeeds, and he crossed himself, and said, "May the Cross of Christ speed me."
   Now that knight had crossed himself but thrice ere he was aware in the wood of a dwelling within a moat, above a lawn, on a mound surrounded by many mighty trees that stood round the moat. 'Twas the fairest castle that ever a knight owned9; built in a meadow with a park all about it, and a spiked palisade, closely driven, that enclosed the trees for more than two miles. The knight was ware of the hold from the side, as it shone through the oaks. Then he lifted off his helmet, and thanked Christ and S. Julian that they had courteously granted his prayer, and hearkened to his cry. "Now," quoth the knight, "I beseech ye, grant me fair hostel." Then he pricked Gringalet with his golden spurs, and rode gaily towards the great gate, and came swiftly to the bridge end.
   The bridge was drawn up and the gates close shut; the walls were strong and thick, so that they might fear no tempest. The knight on his charger abode on the bank of the deep double ditch that surrounded the castle. The walls were set deep in the water, and rose aloft to a wondrous height; they were of hard hewn stone up to the corbels, which were adorned beneath the battlements with fair carvings, and turrets set in between with many a loophole; a better barbican Sir Gawain had never looked upon. And within he beheld the high hall, with its tower and many windows with carven cornices, and chalk-white chimneys on the turreted roofs that shone fair in the sun. And everywhere, thickly scattered on the castle battlements, were pinnacles, so many that it seemed as if it were all wrought out of paper, so white was it.
   The knight on his steed deemed it fair enough, if he might come to be sheltered within it to lodge there while that the Holy-day lasted. He called aloud, and soon there came a porter of kindly countenance, who stood on the wall and greeted this knight and asked his errand.
   "Good sir," quoth Gawain, "wilt thou go mine errand to the high lord of the castle, and crave for me lodging?"
   "Yea, by S. Peter," quoth the porter. "In sooth I trow that ye be welcome to dwell here so long as it may like ye."
   Then he went, and came again swiftly, and many folk with him to receive the knight. They let down the great drawbridge, and came forth and knelt on their knees on the cold earth to give him worthy welcome. They held wide open the great gates, and courteously he bid them rise, and rode over the bridge. Then men came to him and held his stirrup while he dismounted, and took and stabled his steed. There came down knights and squires to bring the guest with joy to the hall. When he raised his helmet there were many to take it from his hand, fain to serve him, and they took from him sword and shield.
   Sir Gawain gave good greeting to the noble and the mighty men who came to do him honour. Clad in his shining armour they led him to the hall, where a great fire burnt brightly on the floor; and the lord of the household came forth from his chamber to meet the hero fitly. He spake to the knight, and said: "Ye are welcome to do here as it likes ye. All that is here is your own to have at your will and disposal."
   "Gramercy!" quote Gawain, "may Christ requite ye."
   As friends that were fain each embraced the other; and Gawain looked on the knight who greeted him so kindly, and thought 'twas a bold warrior that owned that burg.
   Of mighty stature he was, and of high age; broad and flowing was his beard, and of a bright hue. He was stalwart of limb, and strong in his stride, his face fiery red, and his speech free: in sooth he seemed one well fitted to be a leader of valiant men.
   Then the lord led Sir Gawain to a chamber, and commanded folk to wait upon him, and at his bidding there came men enough who brought the guest to a fair bower. The bedding was noble, with curtains of pure silk wrought with gold, and wondrous coverings of fair cloth all embroidered. The curtains ran on ropes with rings of red gold, and the walls were hung with carpets of Orient, and the same spread on the floor. There with mirthful speeches they took from the guest his byrny and all his shining armour, and brought him rich robes of the choicest in its stead. They were long and flowing, and became him well, and when he was clad in them all who looked on the hero thought that surely God had never made a fairer knight: he seemed as if he might be a prince without peer in the field where men strive in battle.
   Then before the hearth-place, whereon the fire burned, they made ready a chair for Gawain, hung about with cloth and fair cushions; and there they cast around him a mantle of brown samite, richly embroidered and furred within with costly skins of ermine, with a hood of the same, and he seated himself in that rich seat, and warmed himself at the fire, and was cheered at heart. And while he sat thus the serving men set up a table on trestles, and covered it with a fair white cloth, and set thereon salt-cellar, and napkin, and silver spoons; and the knight washed at his will, and set him down to meat.
   The folk served him courteously with many dishes seasoned of the best, a double portion. All kinds of fish were there, some baked in bread, some broiled on the embers, some sodden, some stewed and savoured with spices, with all sorts of cunning devices to his taste. And often he called it a feast, when they spake gaily to him all together, and said, "Now take ye this penance, and it shall be for your amendment." Much mirth thereof did Sir Gawain make.
   Then they questioned that prince courteously of whence he came; and he told them that he was of the court of Arthur, who is the rich royal King of the Round Table, and that it was Gawain himself who was within their walls, and would keep Christmas with them, as the chance had fallen out. And when the lord of the castle heard those tidings he laughed aloud for gladness, and all men in that keep were joyful that they should be in the company of him to whom belonged all fame, and valour, and courtesy, and whose honour was praised above that of all men on earth. Each said softly to his fellow, "Now shall we see courteous bearing, and the manner of speech befitting courts. What charm lieth in gentle speech shall we learn without asking, since here we have welcomed the fine father of courtesy. God has surely shewn us His grace since He sends us such a guest as Gawain! When men shall sit and sing, blithe for Christ's birth, this knight shall bring us to the knowledge of fair manners, and it may be that hearing him we may learn the cunning speech of love."
   By the time the knight had risen from dinner it was near nightfall. Then chaplains took their way to the chapel, and rang loudly, even as they should, for the solemn evensong of the high feast. Thither went the lord, and the lady also, and entered with her maidens into a comely closet, and thither also went Gawain. Then the lord took him by the sleeve and led him to a seat, and called him by his name, and told him he was of all men in the world the most welcome. And Sir Gawain thanked him truly, and each kissed the other, and they sat gravely together throughout the service.
   Then was the lady fain to look upon that knight; and she came forth from her closet with many fair maidens. The fairest of ladies was she in face, and figure, and colouring, fairer even than Guinevere, so the knight thought. She came through the chancel to greet the hero, another lady held her by the left hand, older than she, and seemingly of high estate, with many nobles about her. But unlike to look upon were those ladies, for if the younger were fair, the elder was yellow. Rich red were the cheeks of the one, rough and wrinkled those of the other; the kerchiefs of the one were broidered with many glistening pearls, her throat and neck bare, and whiter than the snow that lies on the hills; the neck of the other was swathed in a gorget, with a white wimple over her black chin. Her forehead was wrapped in silk with many folds, worked with knots, so that naught of her was seen save her black brows, her eyes, her nose and her lips, and those were bleared, and ill to look upon. A worshipful lady in sooth one might call her! In figure was she short and broad, and thickly made--far fairer to behold was she whom she led by the hand.
   When Gawain beheld that fair lady, who looked at him graciously, with leave of the lord he went towards them, and, bowing low, he greeted the elder, but the younger and fairer he took lightly in his arms, and kissed her courteously, and greeted her in knightly wise. Then she hailed him as friend, and he quickly prayed to be counted as her servant, if she so willed. Then they took him between them, and talking, led him to the chamber, to the hearth, and bade them bring spices, and they brought them in plenty with the good wine that was wont to be drunk at such seasons. Then the lord sprang to his feet and bade them make merry, and took off his hood, and hung it on a spear, and bade him win the worship thereof who should make most mirth that Christmas-tide. "And I shall try, by my faith, to fool it with the best, by the help of my friends, ere I lose my raiment." Thus with gay words the lord made trial to gladden Gawain with jests that night, till it was time to bid them light the tapers, and Sir Gawain took leave of them and gat him to rest.
   In the morn when all men call to mind how Christ our Lord was born on earth to die for us, there is joy, for His sake, in all dwellings of the world; and so was there here on that day. For high feast was held, with many dainties and cunningly cooked messes. On the daïs sat gallant men, clad in their best. The ancient dame sat on the high seat, with the lord of the castle beside her. Gawain and the fair lady sat together, even in the midst of the board, when the feast was served; and so throughout all the hall each sat in his degree, and was served in order. There was meat, there was mirth, there was much joy, so that to tell thereof would take me too long, though peradventure I might strive to declare it. But Gawain and that fair lady had much joy of each other's company through her sweet words and courteous converse. And there was music made before each prince, trumpets and drums, and merry piping; each man hearkened his minstrel, and they too hearkened theirs.
   So they held high feast that day and the next, and the third day thereafter, and the joy on S. John's Day was fair to hearken, for 'twas the last of the feast and the guests would depart in the grey of the morning. Therefore they awoke early, and drank wine, and danced fair carols, and at last, when it was late, each man took his leave to wend early on his way. Gawain would bid his host farewell, but the lord took him by the hand, and led him to his own chamber beside the hearth, and there he thanked him for the favour he had shown him in honouring his dwelling at that high season, and gladdening his castle with his fair countenance. "I wis, sir, that while I live I shall be held the worthier that Gawain has been my guest at God's own feast."
   "Gramercy, sir," quoth Gawain, "in good faith, all the honour is yours, may the High King give it you, and I am but at your will to work your behest, inasmuch as I am beholden to you in great and small by rights."
   Then the lord did his best to persuade the knight to tarry with him, but Gawain answered that he might in no wise do so. Then the host asked him courteously what stern behest had driven him at the holy season from the king's court, to fare all alone, ere yet the feast was ended?
   "Forsooth," quoth the knight, "ye say but the truth: 'tis a high quest and a pressing that hath brought me afield, for I am summoned myself to a certain place, and I know not whither in the world I may wend to find it; so help me Christ, I would give all the kingdom of Logres an I might find it by New Year's morn. Therefore, sir, I make request of you that ye tell me truly if ye ever heard word of the Green Chapel, where it may be found, and the Green Knight that keeps it. For I am pledged by solemn compact sworn between us to meet that knight at the New Year if so I were on life; and of that same New Year it wants but little--I'faith, I would look on that hero more joyfully than on any other fair sight! Therefore, by your will, it behoves me to leave you, for I have but barely three days, and I would as fain fall dead as fail of mine errand."
   Then the lord quoth, laughing, "Now must ye needs stay, for I will show you your goal, the Green Chapel, ere your term be at an end, have ye no fear! But ye can take your ease, friend, in your bed, till the fourth day, and go forth on the first of the year and come to that place at mid-morn to do as ye will. Dwell here till New Year's Day, and then rise and set forth, and ye shall be set in the way; 'tis not two miles hence."
   Then was Gawain glad, and he laughed gaily. "Now I thank you for this above all else. Now my quest is achieved I will dwell here at your will, and otherwise do as ye shall ask."
   Then the lord took him, and set him beside him, and bade the ladies be fetched for their greater pleasure, tho' between themselves they had solace. The lord, for gladness, made merry jest, even as one who wist not what to do for joy; and he cried aloud to the knight, "Ye have promised to do the thing I bid ye: will ye hold to this behest, here, at once?"
   "Yea, forsooth," said that true knight, "while I abide in your burg I am bound by your behest."
   "Ye have travelled from far," said the host, "and since then ye have waked with me, ye are not well refreshed by rest and sleep, as I know. Ye shall therefore abide in your chamber, and lie at your ease tomorrow at Mass-tide, and go to meat when ye will with my wife, who shall sit with you, and comfort you with her company till I return; and I shall rise early and go forth to the chase." And Gawain agreed to all this courteously.
   "Sir knight," quoth the host, "we shall make a covenant. Whatsoever I win in the wood shall be yours, and whatever may fall to your share, that shall ye exchange for it. Let us swear, friend, to make this exchange, however our hap may be, for worse or for better."
   "I grant ye your will," quoth Gawain the good; "if ye list so to do, it liketh me well."
   "Bring hither the wine-cup, the bargain is made," so said the lord of that castle. They laughed each one, and drank of the wine, and made merry, these lords and ladies, as it pleased them. Then with gay talk and merry jest they arose, and stood, and spoke softly, and kissed courteously, and took leave of each other. With burning torches, and many a serving-man, was each led to his couch; yet ere they gat them to bed the old lord oft repeated their covenant, for he knew well how to make sport.
*****
   Full early, ere daylight, the folk rose up; the guests who would depart called their grooms, and they made them ready, and saddled the steeds, tightened up the girths, and trussed up their mails. The knights, all arrayed for riding, leapt up lightly, and took their bridles, and each rode his way as pleased him best.
   The lord of the land was not the last. Ready for the chase, with many of his men, he ate a sop hastily when he had heard Mass, and then with blast of the bugle fared forth to the field.10 He and his nobles were to horse ere daylight glimmered upon the earth.
   Then the huntsmen coupled their hounds, unclosed the kennel door, and called them out. They blew three blasts gaily on the bugles, the hounds bayed fiercely, and they that would go a-hunting checked and chastised them. A hundred hunters there were of the best, so I have heard tell. Then the trackers gat them to the trysting-place and uncoupled the hounds, and forest rang again with their gay blasts.
   At the first sound of the hunt the game quaked for fear, and fled, trembling, along the vale. They betook them to the heights, but the liers in wait turned them back with loud cries; the harts they let pass them, and the stags with their spreading antlers, for the lord had forbidden that they should be slain, but the hinds and the does they turned back, and drave down into the valleys. Then might ye see much shooting of arrows. As the deer fled under the boughs a broad whistling shaft smote and wounded each sorely, so that, wounded and bleeding, they fell dying on the banks. The hounds followed swiftly on their tracks, and hunters, blowing the horn, sped after them with ringing shouts as if the cliffs burst asunder. What game escaped those that shot was run down at the outer ring. Thus were they driven on the hills, and harassed at the waters, so well did the men know their work, and the greyhounds were so great and swift that they ran them down as fast as the hunters could slay them. Thus the lord passed the day in mirth and joyfulness, even to nightfall.
   So the lord roamed the woods, and Gawain, that good night, lay ever a-bed, curtained about, under the costly coverlet, while the daylight gleamed on the walls. And as he lay half slumbering, he heard a little sound at the door, and he raised his head, and caught back a corner of the curtain, and waited to see what it might be. It was the lovely lady, the lord's wife; she shut the door softly behind her, and turned towards the bed; and Gawain was shamed, laid him down softly and made as if he slept. And she came lightly to the bedside, within the curtain, and sat herself down beside him, to wait till he wakened. The knight lay there awhile, and marvelled within himself what her coming might betoken; and he said to himself, "'Twere more seemly if I asked her what hath brought her hither." Then he made feint to waken, and turned towards her, and opened his eyes as one astonished, and crossed himself; and she looked on him laughing, with her cheeks red and white, lovely to behold, and small smiling lips.
   "Good morrow, Sir Gawain," said that fair lady; "ye are but a careless sleeper, since one can enter thus. Now are ye taken unawares, and lest ye escape me I shall bind you in your bed; of that be ye assured!" Laughing, she spake these words.
   "Good morrow, fair lady," quoth Gawain blithely. "I will do your will, as it likes me well. For I yield me readily, and pray your grace, and that is best, by my faith, since I needs must do so." Thus he jested again, laughing. "But an ye would, fair lady, grant me this grace that ye pray your prisoner to rise. I would get me from bed, and array me better, then could I talk with ye in more comfort."
   "Nay, forsooth, fair sir," quoth the lady, "ye shall not rise, I will rede ye better. I shall keep ye here, since ye can do no other, and talk with my knight whom I have captured. For I know well that ye are Sir Gawain, whom all the world worships, wheresoever ye may ride. Your honour and your courtesy are praised by lords and ladies, by all who live. Now ye are here and we are alone, my lord and his men are afield; the serving men in their beds, and my maidens also, and the door shut upon us. And since in this hour I have him that all men love, I shall use my time well with speech, while it lasts. Ye are welcome to my company, for it behoves me in sooth to be your servant."
   "In good faith," quoth Gawain, "I think me that I am not him of whom ye speak, for unworthy am I of such service as ye here proffer. In sooth, I were glad if I might set myself by word or service to your pleasure; a pure joy would it be to me!"
   "In good faith, Sir Gawain," quoth the gay lady, "the praise and the prowess that pleases all ladies I lack them not, nor hold them light; yet are there ladies enough who would liever now have the knight in their hold, as I have ye here, to dally with your courteous words, to bring them comfort and to ease their cares, than much of the treasure and the gold that are theirs. And now, through the grace of Him who upholds the heavens, I have wholly in my power that which they all desire!"
   Thus the lady, fair to look upon, made him great cheer, and Sir Gawain, with modest words, answered her again: "Madam," he quoth, "may Mary requite ye, for in good faith I have found in ye a noble frankness. Much courtesy have other folk shown me, but the honour they have done me is naught to the worship of yourself, who knoweth but good."
   "By Mary," quoth the lady, "I think otherwise; for were I worth all the women alive, and had I the wealth of the world in my hand, and might choose me a lord to my liking, then, for all that I have seen in ye, Sir Knight, of beauty and courtesy and blithe semblance, and for all that I have hearkened and hold for true, there should be no knight on earth to be chosen before ye!"
   "Well I wot," quoth Sir Gawain, "that ye have chosen a better; but I am proud that ye should so prize me, and as your servant do I hold ye my sovereign, and your knight am I, and may Christ reward ye."
   So they talked of many matters till mid-morn was past, and ever the lady made as though she loved him, and the knight turned her speech aside. For though she were the brightest of maidens, yet had he forborne to shew her love for the danger that awaited him, and the blow that must be given without delay.
   Then the lady prayed her leave from him, and he granted it readily. And she gave [the text reads "have"] him good-day, with laughing glance, but he must needs marvel at her words:
   "Now He that speeds fair speech reward ye this disport; but that ye be Gawain my mind misdoubts me greatly."
   "Wherefore?" quoth the knight quickly, fearing lest he had lacked in some courtesy.
   And the lady spake: "So true a knight as Gawain is holden, and one so perfect in courtesy, would never have tarried so long with a lady but he would of his courtesy have craved a kiss at parting."
   Then quoth Gawain, "I wot I will do even as it may please ye, and kiss at your commandment, as a true knight should who forbears to ask for fear of displeasure."
   At that she came near and bent down and kissed the knight, and each commended the other to Christ, and she went forth from the chamber softly.
   Then Sir Gawain arose and called his chamberlain and chose his garments, and when he was ready he gat him forth to Mass, and then went to meat, and made merry all day till the rising of the moon, and never had a knight fairer lodging than had he with those two noble ladies, the elder and the younger.
   And even the lord of the land chased the hinds through holt and heath till eventide, and then with much blowing of bugles and baying of hounds they bore the game homeward; and by the time daylight was done all the folk had returned to that fair castle. And when the lord and Sir Gawain met together, then were they both well pleased. The lord commanded them all to assemble in the great hall, and the ladies to descend with their maidens, and there, before them all, he bade the men fetch in the spoil of the day's hunting, and he called unto Gawain, and counted the tale of the beasts, and showed them unto him, and said, "What think ye of this game, Sir Knight? Have I deserved of ye thanks for my woodcraft?"
   "Yea, I wis," quoth the other, "here is the fairest spoil I have seen this seven year in the winter season."
   "And all this do I give ye, Gawain," quoth the host, "for by accord of covenant ye may claim it as your own."
   "That is sooth," quoth the other, "I grant you that same; and I have fairly won this within walls, and with as good will do I yield it to ye." With that he clasped his hands round the lord's neck and kissed him as courteously as he might. "Take ye here my spoils, no more have I won; ye should have it freely, though it were greater than this."
   "'Tis good," said the host, "gramercy thereof. Yet were I fain to know where ye won this same favour, and if it were by your own wit?"
   "Nay," answered Gawain, "that was not in the bond. Ask me no more: ye have taken what was yours by right, be content with that."
   They laughed and jested together, and sat them down to supper, where they were served with many dainties; and after supper they sat by the hearth, and wine was served out to them; and oft in their jesting they promised to observe on the morrow the same covenant that they had made before, and whatever chance might betide to exchange their spoil, be it much or little, when they met at night. Thus they renewed their bargain before the whole court, and then the night-drink was served, and each courteously took leave of the other and gat him to bed.
   By the time the cock had crowed thrice the lord of the castle had left his bed; Mass was sung and meat fitly served. The folk were forth to the wood ere the day broke, with hound and horn they rode over the plain, and uncoupled their dogs among the thorns. Soon they struck on the scent, and the hunt cheered on the hounds who were first to seize it, urging them with shouts. The others hastened to the cry, forty at once, and there rose such a clamour from the pack that the rocks rang again. The huntsmen spurred them on with shouting and blasts of the horn; and the hounds drew together to a thicket betwixt the water and a high crag in the cliff beneath the hillside. There where the rough rock fell ruggedly they, the huntsmen, fared to the finding, and cast about round the hill and the thicket behind them. The knights wist well what beast was within, and would drive him forth with the bloodhounds. And as they beat the bushes, suddenly over the beaters there rushed forth a wondrous great and fierce boar, long since had he left the herd to roam by himself. Grunting, he cast many to the ground, and fled forth at his best speed, without more mischief. The men hallooed loudly and cried, "Hay! Hay!" and blew the horns to urge on the hounds, and rode swiftly after the boar. Many a time did he turn to bay and tare the hounds, and they yelped, and howled shrilly. Then the men made ready their arrows and shot at him, but the points were turned on his thick hide, and the barbs would not bite upon him, for the shafts shivered in pieces, and the head but leapt again wherever it hit.
   But when the boar felt the stroke of the arrows he waxed mad with rage, and turned on the hunters and tare many, so that, affrightened, they fled before him. But the lord on a swift steed pursued him, blowing his bugle; as a gallant knight he rode through the woodland chasing the boar till the sun grew low.
   So did the hunters this day, while Sir Gawain lay in his bed lapped in rich gear; and the lady forgat not to salute him, for early was she at his side, to cheer his mood.
   She came to the bedside and looked on the knight, and Gawain gave her fit greeting, and she greeted him again with ready words, and sat her by his side and laughed, and with a sweet look she spoke to him:
   "Sir, if ye be Gawain, I think it a wonder that ye be so stern and cold, and care not for the courtesies of friendship, but if one teach ye to know them ye cast the lesson out of your mind. Ye have soon forgotten what I taught ye yesterday, by all the truest tokens that I knew!"
   "What is that?" quoth the knight. "I trow I know not. If it be sooth that ye say, then is the blame mine own."
   "But I taught ye of kissing, " quoth the fair lady. "Wherever a fair countenance is shown him, it behoves a courteous knight quickly to claim a kiss."
   "Nay, my dear," said Sir Gawain, "cease that speech; that durst I not do lest I were denied, for if I were forbidden I wot I were wrong did I further entreat."
   "I' faith," quoth the lady merrily, "ye may not be forbid, ye are strong enough to constrain by strength an ye will, were any so discourteous as to give ye denial."
   "Yea, by Heaven," said Gawain, "ye speak well; but threats profit little in the land where I dwell, and so with a gift that is given not of good will! I am at your commandment to kiss when ye like, to take or to leave as ye list."
   Then the lady bent her down and kissed him courteously.
   And as they spake together she said, "I would learn somewhat from ye, an ye would not be wroth, for young ye bare and fair, and so courteous and knightly as ye are known to be, the head of all chivalry, and versed in all wisdom of love and war--'tis ever told of true knights how they adventured their lives for their true love, and endured hardships for her favours, and avenged her with valour, and eased her sorrows, and brought joy to her bower; and ye are the fairest knight of your time, and your fame and your honour are everywhere, yet I have sat by ye here twice, and never a word have I heard of love! Ye who are so courteous and skilled in such love ought surely to teach one so young and unskilled some little craft of true love! Why are ye so unlearned who art otherwise so famous? Or is it that ye deemed me unworthy to hearken to your teaching? For shame, Sir Knight! I come hither alone and sit at your side to learn of ye some skill; teach me of your wit, while my lord is from home."
   "In good faith," quoth Gawain, "great is my joy and my profit that so fair a lady as ye are should deign to come hither, and trouble ye with so poor a man, and make sport with your knight with kindly countenance, it pleaseth me much. But that I, in my turn, should take it upon me to tell of love and such like matters to ye who know more by half, or a hundred fold, of such craft than I do, or ever shall in all my lifetime, by my troth 'twere folly indeed! I will work your will to the best of my might as I am bounden, and evermore will I be your servant, so help me Christ!"
   Then often with guile she questioned that knight that she might win him to woo her, but he defended himself so fairly that none might in any wise blame him, and naught but bliss and harmless jesting was there between them. They laughed and talked together till at last she kissed him, and craved her leave of him, and went her way.
   Then the knight arose and went forth to Mass, and afterward dinner was served and he sat and spake with the ladies all day. But the lord of the castle rode ever over the land chasing the wild boar, that fled through the thickets, slaying the best of his hounds and breaking their backs in sunder; till at last he was so weary he might run no longer, but made for a hole in a mound by a rock. He got the mound at his back and faced the hounds, whetting his white tusks and foaming at the mouth. The huntsmen stood aloof, fearing to draw nigh him; so many of them had been already wounded that they were loth to be torn with his tusks, so fierce he was and mad with rage. At length the lord himself came up, and saw the beast at bay, and the men standing aloof. Then quickly he sprang to the ground and drew out a bright blade, and waded through the stream to the boar.
   When the beast was aware of the knight with weapon in hand, he set up his bristles and snorted loudly, and many feared for their lord lest he should be slain. Then the boar leapt upon the knight so that beast and man were one atop of the other in the water; but the boar had the worst of it, for the man had marked, even as he sprang, and set the point of his brand to the beast's chest, and drove it up to the hilt, so that the heart was split in twain, and the boar fell snarling, and was swept down by the water to where a hundred hounds seized on him, and the men drew him to shore for the dogs to slay.
   Then was there loud blowing of horns and baying of hounds, the huntsmen smote off the boar's head, and hung the carcase by the four feet to a stout pole, and so went on their way homewards. The head they bore before the lord himself, who had slain the beast at the ford by force of his strong hand.
   It seemed him o'er long ere he saw Sir Gawain in the hall, and he called, and the guest came to take that which fell to his share. And when he saw Gawain the lord laughed aloud, and bade them call the ladies and the household together, and he showed them the game, and told them the tale, how they hunted the wild boar through the woods, and of his length and breadth and height; and Sir Gawain commended his deeds and praised him for his valour, well proven, for so mighty a beast had he never seen before.
   Then they handled the huge head, and the lord said aloud, "Now, Gawain, this game is your own by sure covenant, as ye right well know."
   "'Tis sooth," quoth the knight, "and as truly will I give ye all I have gained." He took the host round the neck, and kissed him courteously twice. "Now are we quits," he said, "this eventide, of all the covenants that we made since I came hither."
   And the lord answered, "By S. Giles, ye are the best I know; ye will be rich in a short space if ye drive such bargains!"
   Then they set up the tables on trestles, and covered them with fair cloths, and lit waxen tapers on the walls. The knights sat and were served in the hall, and much game and glee was there round the hearth, with many songs, both at supper and after; song of Christmas, and new carols, with all the mirth one may think of. And ever that lovely lady sat by the knight, and with still stolen looks made such feint of pleasing him, that Gawain marvelled much, and was wroth with himself, but he could not for his courtesy return her fair glances, but dealt with her cunningly, however she might strive to wrest the thing.
   When they had tarried in the hall so long as it seemed them good, they turned to the inner chamber and the wide hearthplace, and there they drank wine, and the host proffered to renew the covenant for New Year's Eve; but the knight craved leave to depart on the morrow, for it was nigh to the term when he must fulfil his pledge. But the lord would withhold him from so doing, and prayed him to tarry, and said,
   "As I am a true knight I swear my troth that ye shall come to the Green Chapel to achieve your task on New Year's morn, long before prime. Therefore abide ye in your bed, and I will hunt in this wood, and hold ye to the covenant to exchange with me against all the spoil I may bring hither. For twice have I tried ye, and found ye true, and the morrow shall be the third time and the best. Make we merry now while we may, and think on joy, for misfortune may take a man whensoever it wills."
   Then Gawain granted his request, and they brought them drink, and they gat them with lights to bed.
   Sir Gawain lay and slept softly, but the lord, who was keen on woodcraft, was afoot early. After Mass he and his men ate a morsel, and he asked for his steed; all the knights who should ride with him were already mounted before the hall gates.
   'Twas a fair frosty morning, for the sun rose red in ruddy vapour, and the welkin was clear of clouds. The hunters scattered them by a forest side, and the rocks rang again with the blast of their horns. Some came on the scent of a fox, and a hound gave tongue; the huntsmen shouted, and the pack followed in a crowd on the trail. The fox ran before them, and when they saw him they pursued him with noise and much shouting, and he wound and turned through many a thick grove, often cowering and hearkening in a hedge. At last by a little ditch he leapt out of a spinney, stole away slily by a copse path, and so out of the wood and away from the hounds. But he went, ere he wist, to a chosen tryst, and three started forth on him at once, so he must needs double back, and betake him to the wood again.
   Then was it joyful to hearken to the hounds; when all the pack had met together and had sight of their game they made as loud a din as if all the lofty cliffs had fallen clattering together. The huntsmen shouted and threatened, and followed close upon him so that he might scarce escape, but Reynard was wily, and he turned and doubled upon them, and led the lord and his men over the hills, now on the slopes, now in the vales, while the knight at home slept through the cold morning beneath his costly curtains.
   But the fair lady of the castle rose betimes, and clad herself in a rich mantle that reached even to the ground, left her throat and her fair neck bare, and was bordered and lined with costly furs. On her head she wore no golden circlet, but a network of precious stones, that gleamed and shone through her tresses in clusters of twenty together. Thus she came into the chamber, closed the door after her, and set open a window, and called to him gaily, "Sir Knight, how may ye sleep? The morning is so fair."
   Sir Gawain was deep in slumber, and in his dream he vexed him much for the destiny that should befall him on the morrow, when he should meet the knight at the Green Chapel, and abide his blow; but when the lady spake he heard her, and came to himself, and roused from his dream and answered swiftly. The lady came laughing, and kissed him courteously, and he welcomed her fittingly with a cheerful countenance. He saw her so glorious and gaily dressed, so faultless of features and complexion, that it warmed his heart to look upon her.
   They spake to each other smiling, and all was bliss and good cheer between them. They exchanged fair words, and much happiness was therein, yet was there a gulf between them, and she might win no more of her knight, for that gallant prince watched well his words--he would neither take her love, nor frankly refuse it. He cared for his courtesy, lest he be deemed churlish, and yet more for his honour lest he be traitor to his host. "God forbid," quoth he to himself, "that it should so befall." Thus with courteous words did he set aside all the special speeches that came from her lips.
   Then spake the lady to the knight, "Ye deserve blame if ye hold not that lady who sits beside ye above all else in the world, if ye have not already a love whom ye hold dearer, and like better, and have sworn such firm faith to that lady that ye care not to loose it--and that am I now fain to believe. And now I pray ye straitly that ye tell me that in truth, and hide it not."
   And the knight answered, "By S. John" (and he smiled as he spake) "no such love have I, nor do I think to have yet awhile."
   "That is the worst word I may hear," quoth the lady, "but in sooth I have mine answer; kiss me now courteously, and I will go hence; I can but mourn as a maiden that loves much."
   Sighing, she stooped down and kissed him, and then she rose up and spake as she stood, "Now, dear, at our parting do me this grace: give me some gift, if it were but thy glove, that I may bethink me of my knight, and lessen my mourning."
   "Now, I wis," quoth the knight, "I would that I had here the most precious thing that I possess on earth that I might leave ye as love-token, great or small, for ye have deserved forsooth more reward than I might give ye. But it is not to your honour to have at this time a glove for reward as gift from Gawain, and I am here on a strange errand, and have no man with me, nor mails with goodly things--that mislikes me much, lady, at this time; but each man must fare as he is taken, if for sorrow and ill."
   "Nay, knight highly honoured," quoth that lovesome lady, "though I have naught of yours, yet shall ye have somewhat of mine." With that she reached him a ring of red gold with a sparkling stone therein, that shone even as the sun (wit ye well, it was worth many marks); but the knight refused it, and spake readily,
   "I will take no gift, lady, at this time. I have none to give, and none will I take."
   She prayed him to take it, but he refused her prayer, and sware in sooth that he would not have it.
   The lady was sorely vexed, and said, "If ye refuse my ring as too costly, that ye will not be so highly beholden to me, I will give you my girdle 11 as a lesser gift." With that she loosened a lace that was fastened at her side, knit upon her kirtle under her mantle. It was wrought of green silk, and gold, only braided by the fingers, and that she offered to the knight, and besought him though it were of little worth that he would take it, and he said nay, he would touch neither gold nor gear ere God give him grace to achieve the adventure for which he had come hither. "And therefore, I pray ye, displease ye not, and ask me no longer, for I may not grant it. I am dearly beholden to ye for the favour ye have shown me, and ever, in heat and cold, will I be your true servant."
   "Now," said the lady, "ye refuse this silk, for it is simple in itself, and so it seems, indeed; lo, it is small to look upon and less in cost, but whoso knew the virtue that is knit therein he would, peradventure, value it more highly. For whatever knight is girded with this green lace, while he bears it knotted about him there is no man under heaven can overcome him, for he may not be slain for any magic on earth."
   Then Gawain bethought him, and it came into his heart that this were a jewel for the jeopardy that awaited him when he came to the Green Chapel to seek the return blow--could he so order it that he should escape unslain, 'twere a craft worth trying. Then he bare with her chiding, and let her say her say, and she pressed the girdle on him and prayed him to take it, and he granted her prayer, and she gave it him with good will, and besought him for her sake never to reveal it but to hide it loyally from her lord; and the knight agreed that never should any man know it, save they two alone. He thanked her often and heartily, and she kissed him for the third time.
   Then she took her leave of him, and when she was gone Sir Gawain arose, and clad him in rich attire, and took the girdle, and knotted it round him, and hid it beneath his robes. Then he took his way to the chapel, and sought out a priest privily and prayed him to teach him better how his soul might be saved when he should go hence; and there he shrived him, and showed his misdeeds, both great and small, and besought mercy and craved absolution; and the priest assoiled him, and set him as clean as if Doomsday had been on the morrow. And afterwards Sir Gawain made him merry with the ladies, with carols, and all kinds of joy, as never he did but that one day, even to nightfall; and all the men marvelled at him, and said that never since he came thither had he been so merry.
   Meanwhile the lord of the castle was abroad chasing the fox; awhile he lost him, and as he rode through a spinny he heard the hounds near at hand, and Reynard came creeping through a thick grove, with all the pack at his heels. Then the lord drew out his shining brand, and cast it at the beast, and the fox swerved aside for the sharp edge, and would have doubled back, but a hound was on him ere he might turn, and right before the horse's feet they all fell on him, and worried him fiercely, snarling the while.
   Then the lord leapt from his saddle, and caught the fox from the jaws, and held it aloft over his head, and hallooed loudly, and many brave hounds bayed as they beheld it; and the hunters hied them thither, blowing their horns; all that bare bugles blew them at once, and all the others shouted. 'Twas the merriest meeting that ever men heard, the clamour that was raised at the death of the fox. They rewarded the hounds, stroking them and rubbing their heads, and took Reynard and stripped him of his coat; then blowing their horns, they turned them homewards, for it was nigh nightfall.
   The lord was gladsome at his return, and found a bright fire on the hearth, and the knight beside it, the good Sir Gawain, who was in joyous mood for the pleasure he had had with the ladies. He wore a robe of blue, that reached even to the ground, and a surcoat richly furred, that became him well. A hood like to the surcoat fell on his shoulders, and all alike were done about with fur. He met the host in the midst of the floor, and jesting, he greeted him, and said, "Now shall I be first to fulfil our covenant which we made together when there was no lack of wine." Then he embraced the knight, and kissed him thrice, as solemnly as he might.
   "Of a sooth," quoth the other, "ye have good luck in the matter of this covenant, if ye made a good exchange!"
   "Yea, it matters naught of the exchange," quoth Gawain, "since what I owe is swiftly paid."
   "Marry," said the other, "mine is behind, for I have hunted all this day, and naught have I got but this foul fox-skin, and that is but poor payment for three such kisses as ye have here given me."
   "Enough," quoth Sir Gawain, "I thank ye, by the Rood."
   Then the lord told them of his hunting, and how the fox had been slain.
   With mirth and minstrelsy, and dainties at their will, they made them as merry as a folk well might till 'twas time for them to sever, for at last they must needs betake them to their beds. Then the knight took his leave of the lord, and thanked him fairly.
   "For the fair sojourn that I have had here at this high feast may the High King give ye honour. I give ye myself, as one of your servants, if ye so like; for I must needs, as you know, go hence with the morn, and ye will give me, as ye promised, a guide to show me the way to the Green Chapel, an God will suffer me on New Year's Day to deal the doom of my weird."
   "By my faith," quoth the host, "all that ever I promised, that shall I keep with good will." Then he gave him a servant to set him in the way, and lead him by the downs, that he should have no need to ford the stream, and should fare by the shortest road through the groves; and Gawain thanked the lord for the honour done him. Then he would take leave of the ladies, and courteously he kissed them, and spake, praying them to receive his thanks, and they made like reply; then with many sighs they commended him to Christ, and he departed courteously from that folk. Each man that he met he thanked him for his service and his solace, and the pains he had been at to do his will; and each found it as hard to part from the knight as if he had ever dwelt with him.
   Then they led him with torches to his chamber, and brought him to his bed to rest. That he slept soundly I may not say, for the morrow gave him much to think on. Let him rest awhile, for he was near that which he sought, and if ye will but listen to me I will tell ye how it fared with him thereafter.
*****
   Now the New Year drew nigh, and the night passed, and the day chased the darkness, as is God's will; but wild weather wakened therewith. The clouds cast the cold to the earth, with enough of the north to slay them that lacked clothing. The snow drave smartly, and the whistling wind blew from the heights, and made great drifts in the valleys. The knight, lying in his bed, listened, for though his eyes were shut, he might sleep but little, and hearkened every cock that crew.
   He arose ere the day broke, by the light of a lamp that burned in his chamber, and called to his chamberlain, bidding him bring his armour and saddle his steed. The other gat him up, and fetched his garments, and robed Sir Gawain.
   First he clad him in his clothes to keep off the cold, and then in his harness, which was well and fairly kept. Both hauberk and plates were well burnished, the rings of the rich byrny freed from rust, and all as fresh as at first, so that the knight was fain to thank them. Then he did on each piece, and bade them bring his steed, while he put the fairest raiment on himself; his coat with its fair cognizance, adorned with precious stones upon velvet, with broidered seams, and all furred within with costly skins. And he left not the lace, the lady's gift, that Gawain forgot not, for his own good. When he had girded on his sword he wrapped the gift twice about him, swathed around his waist. The girdle of green silk set gaily and well upon the royal red cloth, rich to behold, but the knight ware it not for pride of the pendants, polished though they were with fair gold that gleamed brightly on the ends, but to save himself from sword and knife, when it behoved him to abide his hurt without question. With that the hero went forth, and thanked that kindly folk full often.
   Then was Gringalet ready, that was great and strong, and had been well cared for and tended in every wise; in fair condition was that proud steed, and fit for a journey. Then Gawain went to him, and looked on his coat, and said by his sooth, "There is a folk in this place that thinketh on honour; much joy may they have, and the lord who maintains them, and may all good betide that lovely lady all her life long. Since they for charity cherish a guest, and hold honour in their hands, may He who holds the heaven on high requite them, and also ye all. And if I might live anywhere on earth, I would give ye full reward, readily, if so I might." Then he set foot in the stirrup and bestrode his steed, and his squire gave him his shield, which he laid on his shoulder. Then he smote Gringalet with his golden spurs, and the steed pranced on the stones and would stand no longer.
   By that his man was mounted, who bare his spear and lance, and Gawain quoth, "I commend this castle to Christ, may He give it ever good fortune." Then the drawbridge was let down, and the broad gates unbarred and opened on both sides; the knight crossed himself, and passed through the gateway, and praised the porter, who knelt before the prince, and gave him good-day, and commended him to God. Thus the knight went on his way with the one man who should guide him to that dread place where he should receive rueful payment.
   The two went by hedges where the boughs were bare, and climbed the cliffs where the cold clings. Naught fell from the heavens, but 'twas ill beneath them; mist brooded over the moor and hung on the mountains; each hill had a cap, a great cloak, of mist. The streams foamed and bubbled between their banks, dashing sparkling on the shores where they shelved downwards. Rugged and dangerous was the way through the woods, till it was time for the sun-rising. Then were they on a high hill; the snow lay white beside them, and the man who rode with Gawain drew rein by his master.
   "Sir," he said, "I have brought ye hither, and now ye are not far from the place that ye have sought so specially. But I will tell ye for sooth, since I know ye well, and ye are such a knight as I well love, would ye follow my counsel ye would fare the better. The place whither ye go is accounted full perilous, for he who liveth in that waste is the worst on earth, for he is strong and fierce, and loveth to deal mighty blows; taller is he than any man on earth, and greater of frame than any four in Arthur's court, or in any other. And this is his custom at the Green Chapel; there may no man pass by that place, however proud his arms, but he does him to death by force of his hand, for he is a discourteous knight, and shews no mercy. Be he churl or chaplain who rides by that chapel, monk or mass priest, or any man else, he thinks it as pleasant to slay them as to pass alive himself. Therefore, I tell ye, as sooth as ye sit in saddle, if ye come there and that knight know it, ye shall be slain, though ye had twenty lives; trow me that truly! He has dwelt here full long and seen many a combat; ye may not defend ye against his blows. Therefore, good Sir Gawain, let the man be, and get ye away some other road; for God's sake seek ye another land, and there may Christ speed ye! And I will hie me home again, and I promise ye further that I will swear by God and the saints, or any other oath ye please, that I will keep counsel faithfully, and never let any wit the tale that ye fled for fear of any man."
   "Gramercy," quoth Gawain, but ill-pleased. "Good fortune be his who wishes me good, and that thou wouldst keep faith with me I will believe; but didst thou keep it never so truly, an I passed here and fled for fear as thou sayest, then were I a coward knight, and might not be held guiltless. So I will to the chapel let chance what may, and talk with that man, even as I may list, whether for weal or for woe as fate may have it. Fierce though he may be in fight, yet God knoweth well how to save His servants."
   "Well," quoth the other, "now that ye have said so much that ye will take your own harm on yourself, and ye be pleased to lose your life, I will neither let nor keep ye. Have here your helm and the spear in your hand, and ride down this same road beside the rock till ye come to the bottom of the valley, and there look a little to the left hand, and ye shall see in that vale the chapel, and the grim man who keeps it. Now fare ye well, noble Gawain; for all the gold on earth I would not go with ye nor bear ye fellowship one step further." With that the man turned his bridle into the wood, smote the horse with his spurs as hard as he could, and galloped off, leaving the knight alone.
   Quoth Gawain, "I will neither greet nor groan, but commend myself to God, and yield me to His will."
   Then the knight spurred Gringalet, and rode adown the path close in by a bank beside a grove. So he rode through the rough thicket, right into the dale, and there he halted, for it seemed him wild enough. No sign of a chapel could he see, but high and burnt banks on either side and rough rugged crags with great stones above. An ill-looking place he thought it.
   Then he drew in his horse and looked around to seek the chapel, but he saw none and thought it strange. Then he saw as it were a mound on a level space of land by a bank beside the stream where it ran swiftly, the water bubbled within as if boiling. The knight turned his steed to the mound, and lighted down and tied the rein to the branch of a linden; and he turned to the mound and walked round it, questioning with himself what it might be. It had a hole at the end and at either side, and was overgrown with clumps of grass, and it was hollow within as an old cave or the crevice of a crag; he knew not what it might be.
   "Ah," quoth Gawain, "can this be the Green Chapel? Here might the devil say his mattins at midnight! Now I wis there is wizardry here. 'Tis an ugly oratory, all overgrown with grass, and 'twould well beseem that fellow in green to say his devotions on devil's wise. Now feel I in five wits, 'tis the foul fiend himself who hath set me this tryst, to destroy me here! This is a chapel of mischance: ill-luck betide it, 'tis the cursedest kirk that ever I came in!"
   Helmet on head and lance in hand, he came up to the rough dwelling, when he heard over the high hill beyond the brook, as it were in a bank, a wondrous fierce noise, that rang in the cliff as if it would cleave asunder. 'Twas as if one ground a scythe on a grindstone, it whirred and whetted like water on a mill-wheel and rushed and rang, terrible to hear.
   "By God," quoth Gawain, "I trow that gear is preparing for the knight who will meet me here. Alas! naught may help me, yet should my life be forfeit, I fear not a jot!" With that he called aloud. "Who waiteth in this place to give me tryst? Now is Gawain come hither: if any man will aught of him let him hasten hither now or never."
   "Stay," quoth one on the bank above his head, "and ye shall speedily have that which I promised ye." Yet for a while the noise of whetting went on ere he appeared, and then he came forth from a cave in the crag with a fell weapon, a Danish axe newly dight, wherewith to deal the blow. An evil head it had, four feet large, no less, sharply ground, and bound to the handle by the lace that gleamed brightly. And the knight himself was all green as before, face and foot, locks and beard, but now he was afoot. When he came to the water he would not wade it, but sprang over with the pole of his axe, and strode boldly over the brent that was white with snow.
   Sir Gawain went to meet him, but he made no low bow. The other said, "Now, fair sir, one may trust thee to keep tryst. Thou art welcome, Gawain, to my place. Thou hast timed thy coming as befits a true man. Thou knowest the covenant set between us: at this time twelve months agone thou didst take that which fell to thee, and I at this New Year will readily requite thee. We are in this valley, verily alone, here are no knights to sever us, do what we will. Have off thy helm from thine head, and have here thy pay; make me no more talking than I did then when thou didst strike off my head with one blow."
   "Nay," quoth Gawain, "by God that gave me life, I shall make no moan whatever befall me, but make thou ready for the blow and I shall stand still and say never a word to thee, do as thou wilt."
   With that he bent his head and shewed his neck all bare, and made as if he had no fear, for he would not be thought a-dread.
   Then the Green Knight made him ready, and grasped his grim weapon to smite Gawain. With all his force he bore it aloft with a mighty feint of slaying him: had it fallen as straight as he aimed he who was ever doughty of deed had been slain by the blow. But Gawain swerved aside as the axe came gliding down to slay him as he stood, and shrank a little with the shoulders, for the sharp iron. The other heaved up the blade and rebuked the prince with many proud words:
   "Thou art not Gawain," he said, "who is held so valiant, that never feared he man by hill or vale, but thou shrinkest for fear ere thou feelest hurt. Such cowardice did I never hear of Gawain! Neither did I flinch from thy blow, or make strife in King Arthur's hall. My head fell to my feet, and yet I fled not; but thou didst wax faint of heart ere any harm befell. Wherefore must I be deemed the braver knight."
   Quoth Gawain, "I shrank once, but so will I no more, though an my head fall on the stones I cannot replace it. But haste, Sir Knight, by thy faith, and bring me to the point, deal me my destiny, and do it out of hand, for I will stand thee a stroke and move no more till thine axe have hit me--my troth on it."
   "Have at thee, then," quoth the other, and heaved aloft the axe with fierce mien, as if he were mad. He struck at him fiercely but wounded him not, withholding his hand ere it might strike him.
   Gawain abode the stroke, and flinched in no limb, but stood still as a stone or the stump of a tree that is fast rooted in the rocky ground with a hundred roots.
   Then spake gaily the man in green, "So now thou hast thine heart whole it behoves me to smite. Hold aside thy hood that Arthur gave thee, and keep thy neck thus bent lest it cover it again."
   Then Gawain said angrily, "Why talk on thus? Thou dost threaten too long. I hope thy heart misgives thee."
   "For sooth," quoth the other, "so fiercely thou speakest I will no longer let thine errand wait its reward." Then he braced himself to strike, frowning with lips and brow, 'twas no marvel that it pleased but ill him who hoped for no rescue. He lifted the axe lightly and let it fall with the edge of the blade on the bare neck. Though he struck swiftly it hurt him no more than on the one side where it severed the skin. The sharp blade cut into the flesh so that the blood ran over his shoulder to the ground. And when the knight saw the blood staining the snow, he sprang forth, swift-foot, more than a spear's length, seized his helmet and set it on his head, cast his shield over his shoulder, drew out his bright sword, and spake boldly (never since he was born was he half so blithe), "Stop, Sir Knight, bid me no more blows. I have stood a stroke here without flinching, and if thou give me another, I shall requite thee, and give thee as good again. By the covenant made betwixt us in Arthur's hall but one blow falls to me here. Halt, therefore."
   Then the Green Knight drew off from him and leaned on his axe, setting the shaft on the ground, and looked on Gawain as he stood all armed and faced him fearlessly--at heart it pleased him well. Then he spake merrily in a loud voice, and said to the knight, "Bold sir, be not so fierce, no man here hath done thee wrong, nor will do, save by covenant, as we made at Arthur's court. I promised thee a blow and thou hast it--hold thyself well paid! I release thee of all other claims. If I had been so minded I might perchance have given thee a rougher buffet. First I menaced thee with a feigned one, and hurt thee not for the covenant that we made in the first night, and which thou didst hold truly. All the gain didst thou give me as a true man should. The other feint I proffered thee for the morrow: my fair wife kissed thee, and thou didst give me her kisses--for both those days I gave thee two blows without scathe--true man, true return. But the third time thou didst fail, and therefore hadst thou that blow. For 'tis my weed thou wearest, that same woven girdle, my own wife wrought it, that do I wot for sooth. Now know I well thy kisses, and thy conversation, and the wooing of my wife, for 'twas mine own doing. I sent her to try thee, and in sooth I think thou art the most faultless knight that ever trode earth. As a pearl among white peas is of more worth than they, so is Gawain, i' faith, by other knights. But thou didst lack a little, Sir Knight, and wast wanting in loyalty, yet that was for no evil work, nor for wooing neither, but because thou lovedst thy life--therefore I blame thee the less."
   Then the other stood a great while, still sorely angered and vexed within himself; all the blood flew to his face, and he shrank for shame as the Green Knight spake; and the first words he said were, "Cursed be ye, cowardice and covetousness, for in ye is the destruction of virtue." Then he loosed the girdle, and gave it to the knight. "Lo, take there the falsity, may foul befall it! For fear of thy blow cowardice bade me make friends with covetousness and forsake the customs of largess and loyalty, which befit all knights. Now am I faulty and false and have been afeared: from treachery and untruth come sorrow and care. I avow to thee, Sir Knight, that I have ill done; do then thy will. I shall be more wary hereafter."
   Then the other laughed and said gaily, "I wot I am whole of the hurt I had, and thou hast made such free confession of thy misdeeds, and hast so borne the penance of mine axe edge, that I hold thee absolved from that sin, and purged as clean as if thou hadst never sinned since thou wast born. And this girdle that is wrought with gold and green, like my raiment, do I give thee, Sir Gawain, that thou mayest think upon this chance when thou goest forth among princes of renown, and keep this for a token of the adventure of the Green Chapel, as it chanced between chivalrous knights. And thou shalt come again with me to my dwelling and pass the rest of this feast in gladness." Then the lord laid hold of him, and said, "I wot we shall soon make peace with my wife, who was thy bitter enemy."
   "Nay, forsooth," said Sir Gawain, and seized his helmet and took it off swiftly, and thanked the knight: "I have fared ill, may bliss betide thee, and may He who rules all things reward thee swiftly. Commend me to that courteous lady, thy fair wife, and to the other my honoured ladies, who have beguiled their knight with skilful craft. But 'tis no marvel if one be made a fool and brought to sorrow by women's wiles, for so was Adam beguiled by one, and Solomon by many, and Samson all too soon, for Delilah dealt him his doom; and David thereafter was wedded with Bathsheba, which brought him much sorrow--if one might love a woman and believe her not, 'twere great gain! And since all they were beguiled by women, methinks 'tis the less blame to me that I was misled! But as for thy girdle, that will I take with good will, not for gain of the gold, nor for samite, nor silk, nor the costly pendants, neither for weal nor for worship, but in sign of my frailty. I shall look upon it when I ride in renown and remind myself of the fault and faintness of the flesh; and so when pride uplifts me for prowess of arms, the sight of this lace shall humble my heart. But one thing would I pray, if it displease thee not: since thou art lord of yonder land wherein I have dwelt, tell me what thy rightful name may be, and I will ask no more."
   "That will I truly," quoth the other. "Bernlak de Hautdesert am I called in this land. Morgain le Fay dwelleth in mine house 12, and through knowledge of clerkly craft hath she taken many. For long time was she the mistress of Merlin, who knew well all you knights of the court. Morgain the goddess is she called therefore, and there is none so haughty but she can bring him low. She sent me in this guise to yon fair hall to test the truth of the renown that is spread abroad of the valour of the Round Table. She taught me this marvel to betray your wits, to vex Guinevere and fright her to death by the man who spake with his head in his hand at the high table. That is she who is at home, that ancient lady, she is even thine aunt, Arthur's half-sister, the daughter of the Duchess of Tintagel, who afterward married King Uther. Therefore I bid thee, knight, come to thine aunt, and make merry in thine house; my folk love thee, and I wish thee as well as any man on earth, by my faith, for thy true dealing."
   But Sir Gawain said nay, he would in no wise do so; so they embraced and kissed, and commended each other to the Prince of Paradise, and parted right there, on the cold ground. Gawain on his steed rode swiftly to the king's hall, and the Green Knight got him whithersoever he would.
   Sir Gawain who had thus won grace of his life, rode through wild ways on Gringalet; oft he lodged in a house, and oft without, and many adventures did he have and came off victor full often, as at this time I cannot relate in tale. The hurt that he had in his neck was healed, he bare the shining girdle as a baldric bound by his side, and made fast with a knot 'neath his left arm, in token that he was taken in a fault--and thus he came in safety again to the court.
   Then joy awakened in that dwelling when the king knew that the good Sir Gawain was come, for he deemed it gain. King Arthur kissed the knight, and the queen also, and many valiant knights sought to embrace him. They asked him how he had fared, and he told them all that had chanced to him--the adventure of the chapel, the fashion of the knight, the love of the lady--at last of the lace. He showed them the wound in the neck which he won for his disloyalty at the hand of the knight, the blood flew to his face for shame as he told the tale.
   "Lo, lady," he quoth, and handled the lace, "this is the bond of the blame that I bear in my neck, this is the harm and the loss I have suffered, the cowardice and covetousness in which I was caught, the token of my covenant in which I was taken. And I must needs wear it so long as I live, for none may hide his harm, but undone it may not be, for if it hath clung to thee once, it may never be severed."
   Then the king comforted the knight, and the court laughed loudly at the tale, and all made accord that the lords and the ladies who belonged to the Round Table, each hero among them, should wear bound about him a baldric of bright green for the sake of Sir Gawain.13 And to this was agreed all the honour of the Round Table, and he who ware it was honoured the more thereafter, as it is testified in the best book of romance. That in Arthur's days this adventure befell, the book of Brutus bears witness. For since that bold knight came hither first, and the siege and the assault were ceased at Troy, I wis

   Many a venture herebefore
    Hath fallen such as this:
   May He that bare the crown of thorn
    Bring us unto His bliss.

          Amen.

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NOTES
1. "The Legend of Sir Gawain," Grimm Library, Vol. VII. (Chapter IX. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).
2. Dance accompanied by song. Often mentioned in old romances.
3. Agravain, "à la dure main ." This characterisation of Gawain's brother seems to indicate that there was a French source at the root of this story. The author distinctly tells us more than once that the tale, as he tells it, was written in a book , M. Gaston Paris thinks that the direct source was an Anglo-Norman poem, now lost.
4. If any in this hall holds himself so hardy. This, the main incident of the tale, is apparently of very early date. The oldest version we possess is that found in the Irish tale of the Fled Bricrend (Bricriu's feast) [edited and translated by the Rev. G. Henderson, M.A., Irish Texts Society, vol. ii.], where the hero of the tale is the Irish champion, Cuchulinn. Two mediæval romances, the Mule sans Frein (French) and Diu Krône (German), again attribute it to Gawain; while the continuator of Chrétien de Troye's Conte del Graal gives as hero a certain Carados, whom he represents as Arthur's nephew; and the prose Perceval has Lancelot. So far as the mediæval versions are concerned, the original hero is undoubtedly Gawain; and our poem gives the fullest and most complete form of the story we possess. In the Irish version the magician is a giant , and the abnormal size and stature of the Green Knight is, in all probability, the survival of a primitive feature. His curious colour is a trait found nowhere else. In Diu Krône we are told that the challenger changes shapes in a terrifying manner, but no details are given.
5. For Yule was over-past. This passage, descriptive of the flight of the year, should be especially noticed. Combined with the other passages--the description of Gawain's journey, the early morning hunts, the dawning of New Year's Day, and the ride to the Green Chapel--they indicate a knowledge of Nature, and an observant eye for her moods, uncommon among mediæval poets. It is usual enough to find graceful and charming descriptions of spring and early summer--an appreciation of May in especial, when the summer courts were held, is part of the stock-in-trade of mediæval romancers--but a sympathy with the year in all its changes is far rarer, and certainly deserves to be specially reckoned to the credit of this nameless writer.
6. First a rich carpet was stretched on the floor. The description of the arming of Gawain is rather more detailed in the original, but some of the minor points are not easy to understand, the identification of sundry of the pieces of armour being doubtful.
7. The pentangle painted thereupon in gleaming gold. I do not remember that the pentangle is elsewhere attributed to Gawain. He often bears a red shield; but the blazon varies. Indeed, the heraldic devices borne by Arthur's knights are distractingly chaotic--their legends are older than the science of heraldry, and no one has done for them the good office that the compiler of the Thidrek Saga has rendered to his Teutonic heroes.
8. The Wilderness of Wirral. This is in Cheshire. Sir F. Madden suggests that the forest which forms the final stage of Gawain's journey is that of Inglewood, in Cumberland. The geography here is far clearer than is often the case in such descriptions.
9. 'Twas the fairest castle that ever a knight owned. Here, again, I have omitted some of the details of the original, the architectural terms lacking identification.
10. With blast of the bugle fared forth to the field. The account of each day's hunting contains a number of obsolete terms and details of woodcraft, not given in full. The meaning of some has been lost, and the minute descriptions of skinning and dismembering the game would be distinctly repulsive to the general reader. They are valuable for a student of the history of the English sport, but interfere with the progress of the story. The fact that the author devotes so much space to them seems to indicate that he lived in the country and was keenly interested in field sports. (Gottfried von Strassbourg's Tristan contains a similar and almost more detailed description.)
11. I will give [you] my girdle. This magic girdle, which confers invulnerability on its owner, is a noticeable feature of our story. It is found nowhere else in this connection, yet in other romances we find that Gawain possesses a girdle with similar powers (cf., my Legend of Sir Gawain , Chap. IX.). Such a talisman was also owned by Cuchulinn, the Irish hero, who has many points of contact with Gawain. It seems not improbable that this was also an old feature of the story. I have commented, in the Introduction, on the lady's persistent wooing of Gawain, and need not repeat the remarks here. The Celtic Lay of the Great Fool ( Amadan Mor ) presents some curious points of contact with our story, which may, however, well be noted here. In the Lay the hero is mysteriously deprived of his legs, through the draught from a cup proffered by a Gruagach or magician. He comes to a castle, the lord of which goes out hunting, leaving his wife in the care of the Great Fool, who is to allow no man to enter. He falls asleep, and a young knight arrives and kisses the host's wife. The Great Fool, awaking, refuses to allow the intruder to depart; and, in spite of threats and blandishments, insists on detaining him till the husband returns. Finally, the stranger reveals himself as the host in another shape; he is also the Gruagach , who deprived the hero of his limbs, and the Great Fool's brother. He has only intended to test the Amadon Mor's fidelity. A curious point in connection with this story is that it possesses a prose opening which shows a marked affinity with the "Perceval" enfances . That the Perceval and Gawain stories early became connected is certain, but what is the precise connection between them and the Celtic Lay is not clear. In its present form the latter is certainly posterior to the Grail romances, but it is quite possible that the matter with which it deals represents a tradition older than the Arthurian story.
12. Morgain le Fay, who dwelleth in my house. The enmity between Morgain le Fay and Guinevere, which is here stated to have been the motif of the enchantment, is no invention of the author, but is found in the Merlin, probably the earliest of the Arthurian prose romances. In a later version of our story, a poem, written in ballad form, and contained in the "Percy" MS., Morgain does not appear; her place is taken by an old witch, mother to the lady, but the enchantment is still due to her spells. In this later form the knight bears the curious name of Sir Bredbeddle . That given in our romance, Bernlak de Hautdesert, , seems to point to the original French source of the story. (It is curious that Morgain should here be represented as extremely old, while Arthur is still in his first youth. There is evidently a discrepancy or misunderstanding of the source here.)
13. A baldric of bright green, for sake of Sir Gawain. The later version connects this lace with that worn by the knights of the Bath; but this latter was white, not green . The knights wore it on the left shoulder till they had done some gallant deed, or till some noble lady took it off for them.

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THE SWORD OF KINGSHIP

by

THOMAS WESTWOOD

At Christmas-tide, while wassail mirth ran high,
To royal Uther, by his queen Igrayne,
Was born a son; whom, wrapp'd in swaddling clothes
Of cloth of gold, the monarch took, and charged
Two knights and two fair maids to bear away,
Adown the castle stair and through the night,
To one that waited by the postern door.
No question to be ask'd, no word be said.

Blank faces wore the knights, and puzzled looks
And dazed the damsels, but the king's command
Was peremptory; so adown the stair,
Close-clasp'd and warm, their precious freight they bore,
Across the courtyard, underneath the stars.
Beside the door stood Merlin, who the babe
Took in his arms, and, without word or sign,
Departed. Like a wraith beyond the moat
He stole, and vanish'd on the windy wold;
And as he vanish'd, lo! a luminous star
Rose in the heaven, and brighten'd as it rose,
And broaden'd till the land was full of light.
And one fair maid,--of sixteen summers she,--
Lifting her lily face in white amaze,
Thought, "Sure our blessed Lord is born again!"

Athwart the wold, and o'er th' untrodden snow,
Pass'd Merlin, a wierd shadow, without pause.
Around him, as he went, the wind, with sound
Of viols sweet and low, sang lullaby.
Above him, in its orbit, moved the star,
To marshal him the way that he should go.

It led him to a donjon, perch'd aloft,
Like falcon's eyrie, on a spire of crag--
Black chasms in front, and at its base the sea--
Sir Ector's donjon, in the western wilds.
Beside his yule-fire sate that peerless knight,
And read, from monkish page, the legend old
Of the Nativity--the Orient Star,
The mystic Magi, with their gift of myrrh,
The God-child in the manger. Dame Iseult,
His spouse, with awe-dilated eyes, drank in
The wondrous story. At their feet lay stretch'd
A shaggy wolf-hound, huge of jaw and limb;
And nestling in the savage creature's fur,
Round-cheek'd and ruddy, slept their latest born.

No footfall--but, instinctive, both were 'ware
Of an unwonted presence in the hall--
Merlin's, whose ghostly shadow blurr'd the light.
To good Sir Ector salutation brief
The wizard gave--then with obeisance laid
His burden on the noble lady's knees,
Who call'd upon her saints. The bands unswathed,
Behold, the babe lay, like a folded rose,
In slumber; but anon, roused by the glare,
First crow'd, then whimper'd, till the pitying dame
Broke out in yearnings as of mother-love,
And caught him to her breast, and gave him suck,
And cherish'd him thenceforth as her own son.
And soon a priestly man, by Merlin sent,
Baptized the boy, and ARTHUR was his name.

Ere long the King fell sick, and while he lay,
Sore-stricken, a marauding host o'er-ran
His borders, and waged battle with his knights
At vantage, and his subjects vex'd and slew.
Then up spake Merlin: "King, no longer bide
Prone on thy couch, but to the strife of spears
Wend forth, in litter borne, if such must be,
High on the backs of men; for if thy foes
But see thee in the van, the day is thine!"

So was it done as Merlin had devised.
They bore the King in litter to the field--
A royal presence, with a deathly face--
And by St. Alban's, on a wild March morn,
'Mid road and river, met a mighty horde
Of Norsemen, and that day Sir Ulfius hight,
And stout Sir Brastias, did grand feats of arms;
And in the Northern battle Uther's men
Fought and o'ercame, and all his foemen fled.

And straight the King to London hied, and made
Much joy of his success; but, smitten anew
With mortal fever, three whole nights and days
Speechless he lay, and sore his barons grieved,
And help besought of Merlin in their need.

Quoth Merlin, "Help is none--Heaven's will be done!
But take this counsel,--at to-morrow's dawn
Seek the King's presence, and, with God's good grace,
His tongue shall be unloosed, and he shall speak."
And on the morrow, when the rising sun
Redden'd the east, and from the sloping hills
Roll'd the mists upward, knights and barons went
With Merlin to the King, and Merlin spake:--

"By Christ, and the thrice-blessed Trinity,
King, I adjure thee, make thy purpose clear!
Shall Arthur, thy true son, when thou art gone,
Rule o'er thy realm and sit upon thy throne?
Before thy lieges all, and before God,
Speak, my Lord Uther, let thy will be known!"

And Utherpendragon turn'd him on his bed,
And moan'd, and raised a ghastly face at length,
In the blear light, and cross'd himself, and said:--
"Before my lieges all, and before God,
I bless my son! God's blessing and the saints'
Befall him! He is king. My work is done.
But if he claim not this my crown and realm,
Or make not good his claim, with knightly feats,
And kingly wisdom, as befits my son,
Perish my blessing--it is none of his!"

Then suddenly Utherpendragon dropp'd
Dead on his couch, as drops a canker'd pine
When the bolt cleaves it, and all heads were bow'd,
And all hearts sorrow'd; and with regal pomp,
And long procession down cathedral aisles,
'Neath pall, and floating plume, and level shield,
They bore him to his rest. And Igrayne wept.

Then year on year in grievous jeopardy
The realm remain'd. For prince and paladin
Made trial of their might, in deadly feuds,
With plot and counterplot, through covert hope
Of kingship; and the sea grew black with barks
Of Vikings, that like kestrels round the coast
Hover'd, and froze the people's hearts with fear.
At dead of night the hills broke out ablaze
With beacon-fires--wild Norsemen scour'd the plains,
And drove the herds--and wives, that sat at home,
Wept wearily for those that came no more.

But, when the gloom was deepest, Merlin pray'd,
Th' Archbishop Engelbert, who held his court
At Canterbury, in his diocese,
To issue edicts, bidding all true knights
Repair to London, at the time of Yule,
On pain of penance and anathema.
"For peradventure, on that day," quoth he,
"On which our Saviour Lord from heaven came down,
God may vouchsafe a miracle, and show
Whose head shall wear the crown." The Primate did
As Merlin counsell'd, and the barons came,
Obedient, to the tryst. The frosty roads
Rang with the dint of hoofs. Long trains of knights,
Pages, and dames in litters, silken-draped,
And pursuivants, in brilliant tabards, wound,
Like party-colour'd serpents o'er the meads,
And through the snowy passes of the hills.

On Christmas-eve, at nightfall, a great host
Encamp'd about the minster, and a troop
Of holy men from tent to tent pass'd round,
And shrived the knights, and left them pure of sin,
And ready for the chrism, and for the crown.

In clouds the Christmas morning dimly dawn'd;--
Grey gloom'd the minster aisles; but ere the mass
Was ended, an effulgent sunshine broke
Through the east oriel, and all men were 'ware
That by the altar stood a snow-white stone,
Four-square, and on its summit, in the midst,
An anvil, holding in its iron bulk
A naked sword, along whose edges ran
This legend: "Whoso plucks me from my place
Is England's rightful king. Amen. Amen."
Then shook the multitude with sudden stir
Of passion, as the woodland summits shake,
When, swooping from a cloud, Euroclydon
The storm-wind strikes them; but the Primate knelt,
And quell'd the growing tumult with his prayer,
And, after, preach'd of peace and pure intents.

The benediction utter'd, one by one,
Princes and paladins he bade approach,
And try their prowess on the magic sword.
Then were gaunt arms of Titan strength outstretch'd,
To which the sinews clung, like knotted cords;--
Then was the sword clutch'd by as gnarlèd fists,
As his that slew the Hydra. Faces flush'd
Purple, and foreheads became ridged, like backs
Of Berkshire wolds; broad shoulders stoop'd and rose;
Oaths, fierce as thunder-claps, were smother'd back
'Twixt gnashing teeth--in vain, in vain, in vain!
Immoveable within its sheath the sword
Stood, its gold legend glittering in the sun.

Then spake the Primate: "God's Elect is not
Amongst you here this day. Now note my will.
Let ten true knights be chosen, of noble strain,
And constant, day and night, keep watch and ward,
Beside the stone and the miraculous sword,
Till he shall come, who is ordain'd of Heaven."

So said, so done. Ten knights of noble strain
Were chosen, five by five, to keep the watch.
And the suns rose, and set, and rose again,
And down the frozen aisles the winter's wind
Blew shrilly, and the winter moon shone cold.
And not a knight in Christendom but tried
To win the sword . . . except the Elect of God.

It chanced, on New Year's Day, a joust was given
With open lists; and to the tournay came
Sir Ector, with his handsome son, Sir Key,
Just dubb'd a knight, and Sir Key's brother-in-arms,
Arthur, a stalwart youth, straight as a pine;
With eyes as blue and bland as the June heaven,
Broad brow set round with curls, and royal mouth,
Firm-shut, and strong. These twain rode side by side,
Scanning the silken litters as they pass'd,
And chuckling, when the rose on maiden's cheek
Deepen'd to damask at their saucy smiles;
But near the lists, the scatter-brain'd Sir Key
Bethought him he had left his sword at home,
And pray'd young Arthur to ride back at speed,
In quest of it. This did he; but arrived
Before the mansion, every door was shut,
And window barr'd; Sir Ector's dame had gone
To see the jousts with her bower-maidens all.
Then Arthur stamp'd a hasty foot, and vow'd
That not for want of glaive Sir Key should miss
His jousting. "To the church I'll hie, and snatch
The sword they prate of from the wizard stone!"
Wide open stood the minster doors, and deep
The sacred silence; of the watching knights
No vestige; tournay sports had lured them thence.
Straight up the aisle young Arthur strode, and bent
A reverent knee beside the altar step,
And breathed a prayer; then pluck'd the magic sword
Out of the anvil, brandish'd it aloft,
And, without further tarrying, hurried back,
Alert, to find Sir Key. But he with awe
Gazed at the golden legend on the blade,
And call'd his sire, and cried aloud: "This brand
Is mine, and mine, too, England's realm and crown!"
Much marvell'd good Sir Ector; but in doubt
Of what was best, to the Lord Primate went,
And told his tale; who, when the jousts were o'er,
Bade all the knights and nobles meet anew,
Within the minster walls. There question'd he
By what strange sleight Sir Key had won the sword?
Sir Key, with pucker'd lips and stammering speech,
The truth avow'd. "Youth," said the Primate then,
Turning to Arthur, "since the skill was thine
To take the sword, say, canst thou thrust it back
Into its iron sheath?" "Small feat were that!"
Quoth Arthur, with a smile; and, stepping up,
Into the anvil thrust the naked blade.
"Now pluck it forth, Sir Key!" the Primate urged,
"And prove thy right." And bold Sir Key began
To tug, to haul--and tugging, hauling still,
The sweat-drops roll'd in rivers down his cheeks,
And angry flashes glinted from his eyes.
Then Arthur jeer'd him: "Nay, hast lost thy wits,
Good gossip mine? See, 'tis no more than this!"
And, with the slightest twitch of fingers twain,
Out came the sword, and a wild sunbeam ran
Along the steel and lit the legend up,
In diamond sparkles. Then Sir Ector knelt
At Arthur's feet, and hail'd him Lord and King,
While bold Sir Key stood blushing, half in wrath,
And half compunction. But the asembled peers
Look'd on, with lowering brows and sullen lips,
Or mutter'd: "It were shame this nameless boy
Should sit on Uther's throne and wear his crown!"
And soon a conflict rose, and swords were bared
In menace, till the Primate spake, and bade
Young Arthur thrust the sword into its place,
And tarry further ordeal, at the feast
Of Candlemas ensuing--the ten knights,
Meanwhile, to keep impregnable watch and ward.

This did they, five by five, as at the first.
And the suns rose, and set, and rose again;
And down the frozen aisles the winter's wind
Sang shrilly, and the winter moon shone cold.
But as at Christmas, so at Candlemas;
Save Arthur's only, not an arm was found
To wield the sword, though from the Cornish hills
Came Caradoc, a caitiff knight, of frame
Like to Goliath's; heavy was his spear,
As any weaver's beam--his stature huge,
His rigid chest, a rock--on either fist
Six fingers--on each monstrous foot six toes.
This giant, with a thunderous laugh, that woke
The echoes of the hills ten leagues away,
Thrust back to right and left the puny crowd,
As sheers a ship its course through summer seas,
And, to the altar stalking, clutch'd the sword
Contemptuous, as it were a baby's toy,
And pull'd. Loud laugh'd the multitude, to see
The tawny Cyclops foaming at the mouth,
Furious, because no whit the blade would budge.
He pull'd with strength that would have torn an oak
From its seven centuries' hold beneath the rocks--
He pull'd till, spent and breathless, his eyes stood
Out of his head, with wonder and despite.
But Arthur, on a merry mischief bent,
Pluck'd forth the glaive, and springing down the steps,
Fenced at Goliath for a minute's space,
With rapid cut and thrust, achieving thus
The giant's downfall and discomfiture;
For gibes and jeers, like whistling arrow-flights,
Hail'd on him; till, with buffetings of all
That cross'd his path, out of the doors he dash'd,
Half mad, and like an evil hurricane,
Rush'd howling homeward to his Cornish hills.

But vain these portents of the Elect of God.
The peers, obdurate, claim'd a new delay
Till Easter, and the Primate, moved with hope
By sage concessions to enforce Heaven's will,
Ordain'd fresh trial on that holy day.

And still the knights kept watch beside the stone,
With pacings to and fro, till through the pane
A blander moon shed silver on the sword,
And the wind, wandering 'mid the pillars, brought
Odours and omens of the coming Spring.

But as at Candlemas, at Easter too,
One issue, one resolve,--defeat, delay,--
With strife amongst the noblest--gauntlets flung
And lifted, ay, and knightly battle waged
"A outrance," in the lists. The Archbishop then
Convoked the estates of Britain for the eve
Of Pentecost, in ultimate ordeal;--
Too long, he said, had England's realm remain'd
Kingless, with peril gathering round the throne.

So the suns rose, and set, and rose again,
In slow succession, till the season turn'd,
And to the knights in vigil came the scent
Of beanflowers, and the smell of growing corn.

            * * * * *

Over the pleasant meads, at Pentecost,
The minster bells rang out a merry chime,--
Over the bean-tufts, with their brindled bloom,
Over the corn-fields, with their waving corn;
No cloud in Heaven, and the long-harass'd earth
Calm, with the foretaste of a rest to come.

At gloaming, back the minster portals roll'd,
And knights and nobles, in a stormy throng,
Choked nave and chancel. Vespers o'er, at once
The Primate summon'd whoso dared resist
God's judgment, thrice made manifest, to brave
The final ordeal. Then upsprang a band
Of paladins, such as the world ne'er saw,
Fit framers of the famous Table Round,
Heroic shapes, that with untoward fate
Strove, as the demi-gods of heathen tale,
Strove in their war with Heaven--like them to fall.
For vain their chivalry and pure intents--
Vain strength of soul and strength of arm--all vain!
Immoveable within its sheath the sword
Stood, its strange legend burning like a flame.

Then Arthur, at the Primate's bidding, came,--
A youth as fair as he, who in the vale
Of Elah, with a sling and with a stone,
The champion of the Philistines o'erthrew,
Before the hosts of Israel. Meek, he knelt
Beside the altar, while the priestly palms
Were laid, in blessing, on his comely head,
All cluster'd over with thick golden curls.
" King Arthur, God's Elect, draw forth the sword! "
And lightly stepp'd he, lightly drew the sword,
And having drawn it, lo! a luminous star
Rose in the heaven, and brighten'd as it rose,
And broaden'd, till the fane was full of light.
And in that sudden glory men were 'ware
That, from their station by the altar side,
Anvil and stone had vanish'd like a dream.
Then swift emotion shook the hearts of all,
Half awe and half remorse; and with a sound
Of seas that surge, and sweep o'er shingly shores,
A tumult grew and spread, and broke at length
Into a vehement shout, "Long live the King!
Long live King Arthur!" from ten thousand throats,
Not one dissentient. Through the minster doors
The uproar burst, and fill'd the streets, and ran
Like wild-fire through the town--beyond the town--
For as the lightning speeds from cloud to cloud,
So sped the gladness through the length and breadth
Of England, till its every corner rang
With universal shouts of jubilee.
And the wind swept the shoutings out to sea,
And paled the Vikings' ruddy cheeks with fear,
And drove their black barks from the British main.

So Arthur won King Uther's crown and throne!
And when his seat was sure, and not a knight--
Save caitiff Caradoc, the Cornish bear--
But had sworn fealty, wizard Merlin told
To him and to Igrayne his wondrous tale.
Great joy had Queen Igrayne; her widow'd heart
Wax'd warm with household cheer; but evermore
To good Sir Ector and his dame the King,
From old respect and dear familiar use,
Clung, with the love and duty of a son.
Sir Ector, his high chancellor he made,
Sir Key, his seneschal; and when the dame
To Camelot in early summer came,
He saw, and ran to meet her from afar,
And kiss'd her mouth, and kiss'd her wrinkled cheeks,
And knelt before her, as had been his wont,
For daily blessing in the years that were.

Here ends the story of the magic sword
Of Arthur, Builder of the Table Round.

---

---

When Tristan Sailed

by

Helen Hay Whitney

When Tristan sailed from Ireland
Across the summer sea,
How young he was, how debonnaire,
How glad he was and free.
Why should he know the gales would blow,
The skies be black above,
How should he dream his port was Death,
And Doom, whose name is Love?

The Lady Iseult, sweet as prayer,
We hardly dare to pray,
Pearl-pale beneath her shadow hair,
Grows fairer day by day,
The ichor gains her spring-kissed veins,
Her skies the eyes of youth.
How should she dream the ichor Love,
Was hellebore in truth?

So Tristan sailed from Ireland
As youth must always sail;
He quaffed the cup, nor asked the wine;
He dared, nor feared to fail.
And be it poison, be it life,
Or wrecks that strew the shore,
Tristan set forth! nor ask the end,
Else youth shall sail no more.

---

---

MERLIN
A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS

by

LAMBERT A. WILMER

Dramatis Personae --

MERLIN, an Enchanter .
ALPHONSO, lover of Elmira .
MARCUS, his friend .
ELMIRA. Spirits, Furies, &c.

--------

ACT I.--SCENE i.-- An uninhabited country at the mouth of a Cave--Enter Merlin.

From the caverns of the earth
I, Merlin, have derived my birth;
All the elves that flit in air,
Or skim the wave, my livery wear--
The spirits of the misty deep,
Come at my call, my mandates keep;
I can the nimble lightning bind,
And chain the sharp and whistling wind:
Or call from out the stormy north,
The fell Borean tempests forth.
To me futurity unveils,
And destiny submits her scales:
The gloomy caves of hell I tread,
And hold dire converse with the dead!
Along the dread Erebian coasts,
I've wandered with the gleeting ghosts;
Or mounted on the winged blast,
Thro' heaven's etherial arch I've past.
Hither, spirits, hither fly,
From the portals of the sky:
From the surface of the deep,
Where the frothy waves ye sweep;
From the intermediate air,
Hither at my call repair.
Ye who on mankind attend,
Hither your swift pinions bend,
For human weal, I call you here,
On the confines of this sphere.

Enter Spirits.

Spir. --We are here.
1st Spir. --What to do?
Mer. --I call you from the regions of the air,
By the soft influence of a virgin's prayer--
For on the flowery margent of that stream
That glows and sparkles in the solar beam,
A hapless maiden kneels with grief opprest,
And tears her golden hair and beats her breast.
As mounted on an airy courser, I
Roam'd in the precincts of the lower sky,
I saw the damsel, like a lovely flower,
Drooping and drown'd beneath an April shower.
All pitying I, lent a propitious ear,
And so attending heard the damsel's pray'r,
And hence I learn'd a lover she deplores,
Condemn'd to visit India's burning shores;
What dangers wait him on the watery way,
Her love and fears alternately pourtray,
And fill her breast with many soft alarms,
Lest fate should not restore him to her arms.
The young Alphonso wooed the charming fair,
Whose father turned aversely from his prayer,
And bids him seek for wealth in foreign lands,
Where India spreads her coasts of burning sands;
But when the smiles of fortune he shall gain,
The sire's consent Alphonso shall obtain.
Twelve times the moon her crescent hath display'd
And Titan's annual cycle hath been made,
Since the fond lovers parted on that spot,
Where still she lingers to deplore her lot.
But now returning to his native shore,
Alphonso cuts the foaming brine once more.
And, if no envious power forbids, twelve hours
Shall land him safe on Hudson's bank of flowers.
Haste then o'er ocean, on the winged gale,
Or, in a sea-shell on the surface sail,--
Or let the nimblest and most airy spright,
Encourser'd on a beam of golden light,
Seek out the object of the maiden's prayer,
And him in safety o'er the salt sea bear.
1st Spir. --'Tis done. [Exit.]
Merlin --You take the figure of a female friend,
And on the love-lorn damsel's steps attend:
Whisper soft consolation in her ear,
And bid her bosom banish every fear.
2d Spir. --I'll take the form of Clementine her friend,
And on the love-lorn damsel's steps attend [Exit.]
Mer .--Hence to your several tasks etherial band,
Brought hither by the waving of this wand!
Lo, I dismiss you to the air again,
Or to the bosom of the beating main;
Spread your light pinions, and with viewless flight,
Swift as the arrows of the god of light.
Haste to those regions subject to your sway,
The purple ether,--and the watery way,
Till on the surface of this mundane ball,
Again I summons;--then obey my call.
Ex. Spir. & Mer. severally.

SCENE II.-- the Sea-shore--Thunder--Enter three furies, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone--They perform a mystic dance. Song, by the three.

Now the sea-mew spreads her wing,
And from her sandy bed doth spring,
Mounting in the murky air,
While the vivid lightning's glare.
Now the sea-mew screaming flies,
While the thunders shake the skies;
Sisters, hither have ye come,
From the black Tartarean gloom,
To work our spite in human woe,
And bid the tears of sorrow flow--
By the livid lightning's flash,
By the thunder's solemn crash,
By the terrors of the wave,
(Full many a human wnad'rer's grave)--
By all the trembling ghosts that glide
On Lethe's dark and weedy side,--
Let the foaming billows rise,
Till yonder ship in ruins lies.
Alec. --See,--she tosses on the billow,
Soon to be the sailor's pillow!
Blow ye tempests, roll thou thunder,--
Lightnings rend the gloom asunder,--
Bursting in the dusky air,
See the lurid meteor's glare:--
Blacker still the clouds appear,
Tremble mortals,--men must fear.
Meg. --Ah, now she founders on a fatal rock,
Hark!--all the shores resound with th' dire shock.
I hear the hapless wretches groans arise,
With stifled screams, thick sobs, and bitter sighs.
Sisters, well done, Alphonso sees no more,
The fair Elmira, and his native shore,--
For in the bottom of that ship he lies,
And if no power forbid, Alphonso dies.
Tis. --Wretched mortals, doomed to death,
Ah, how fleeting is your breath,
Ah, how frail is human kind,
Senseless, thoughtless, weak and blind.
Sisters, let us haste from hence,
O'er the watery space immense,
And seek againour silent caves,
Beneath old ocean's dark blue waves--
Quickly, quickly let's descend,
Pluto's summons to attend. [ Exeunt .]

SCENE III.-- The Banks of the Hudson

Elm. --Even here beneath this lofty spreading oak,
Blasted and withering with the lightning's stroke,
fit emblem of my fortunes, I will wait
The final doom that shall pronounce my fate.
Ye pitying heav'ns, if such a wretch as I,
May call upon the mercy of the sky,
O let me be by hopes no more misled,
but your red lightnings give me to the dead.
This is Elmira's last and latest prayer,
Robb'd of all joy, and sentenced to despair.

[ Enter 2d Spir. in form of Clementine. ]

Spir. --Be comforted my friend, good omens bring
A store of consolation on their wing.
I saw two ring-doves from the green-wood fly,
And Jove's bright bow suspended in the sky.
These signs to you glad tidings do portend,
Then cease your tears, and bid your sorrows end;
And here I promise that another wane,
Shall give Alphonso to your arms again.
Elm. --What pity such sweet friendship want the pow'r
To cure those griefs it hath the will to heal.
Spir. --Let not my good intentions fail, Elmira,
And trust my prophecy shall be fulfill'd.
Before another moon fades by degrees,
From midst yonconcourse of attending stars,
Alphonso shall return.
Elm. -- Hope I have banished--
Alphonso never can to me return:
A cruel father's harsh command forbids it. [ Sings. ]
Ah, wretched is the maiden's lot,
Who loves a wand'rer of the sea,
In foreign climes by him forgot,
What shall her consolation be.
Or if his love indeed be true,
Alas, a thousand griefs arise,
Eternal perils him pursue,
And she in sadness pines and dies.
Spir. --Elmira, I have tidings of Alphonso!--
Elm. --O, Clementine, you are my friend indeed.
Is he alive and well?
Spir. -- He is, Elmira,
And homeward bopund, and if I judge aright,
He will be with you e're another night.
Elm. --Farewell to grief, now joy supreme be mine,
Come let us away, my faithful Clementine. [ Exeunt .]

SCENE IV.-- The Sea-shore -- Enter Alphonso.

Alp. --I only 'scap'd the perils of the wave,
And cast upon a barren savage shore,
Thrice happy they who find a watery grave,
For they are safe, and tempest-tost no more.
My brave companions rest you there in peace:
Death bids your cank'ring sorrows all to cease.
Me fate severe condemns to live in woe!
But hold my tongue, let silent sorrows flow.

[ Enter Marcus at a distance. ]

Mar. --The storm hath ceased, lo! in the silv'ry clouds,
The bow of Iris spreads its welcome round,
Embracing the glad earth.--What see I here!
Another person scap'd the wreck!--thank heaven
It is Alphonso--Poor unhappy youth,
Thou wilt not thank thy stars for preservation.
thou oft hast wish'd to die, but death flies from thee,
(Like some coquette that will not, when she's wooed)
And now, when he no doubt would be most welcome,
When thou hast lost the all thy toil has gain'd,
Like other friends he leaves thee in thy need.
Alphonso, ho!--
Alp. --Who calls Alphonso!
Why make these rocks to echo to a name
That fate but sports with; leave me all alone.
Mar. --How now my friend,--is this a place to show
Such humours to a friend so lately found!
Alp. --I know no friend but death--
Mar. -- And he deserts you.
Alp. --I will fly to him.
Mar. --Forbear,--he is a monster,--
A savage tyrant, whose unfathomed maw
Feeds indiscriminately on friends and foes.
Come, let us seek some place to find repose.
Alp. --Ay, in the grave,--no other place is given.
For man to rest beneath the arch of heaven.--[ aside .]
My friend, I am but faint--leave me awhile--
Seek you some cave where we may rest outselves,
Then bring me word, and I will hence with you. [ Exit Mar.
Now since my ticket in this lottery
Of man's existence hath come up a blank,
I will expunge my number from life's book.
I will not be a minion on this earth,
To curse my fate, and quarrel with my stars,
But from the summit of yon promontary,
That juts its brown head o'er the swelling surge,
I'll cast myself into the deep below!--
Forgive me heaven if I act wrong in this!
I toil'd beneath the burning influence,
Of suns that shot their perpendicular ray
Upon my fated head,--to gain that wealth
Which now the envious se hath swallowed up!
And now Elmira never can be mine.
Then welcome friendly death;--to thee I fly,
And beg forgiveness from the power on high. [ Exit. ]

ACT II.--SCENE I-- The Coast near Merlin's Cave.

Enter Merlin.

What adverse power hath call'd this tempest up?
While in the dark, dank caverns that extend
From yonder rocky hill, to this sea-shore,
I sat upon a block of polished steel,
And muttered charms to sprights and bat-like elves,
That flitted by me in the sullen gloom,--
I heard the tempest shake the cavern'd rock,
And ocean dash'd his salt-spray to my feet--
Yea, penetrated to that deep recess,
And, but for my forbidding wand, had whelmed
Me in its foaming surge.--I'll see anon,
Who dares to check me in my forceful spells.
None but the Omnipotent alone hath power,
Who rules the highest hierarchs of heaven.
If all the powers of hell and earth combine,
Their force united cannot equal mine.
I'll call my spirits, and the cause explore,
That made the winds arise, and billows roar.
Hither, spirits, hither haste,
O'er the wild and watery waste,
Through the fields of purple air,
Hither at my call repair.--[ Waves his wand .]

Enter Spirits.

Have you perform'd all that I have enjoin'd?
1st Spir. --I have performed it well.
2d Spir. --And I.
Mer. --Mark'd you who was the mover of this storm?
1st Spir. --I saw the triple sisters who delight
On human kind to vent their bitter spite:
who bring war, tempest, pestilence and flame,
And all woes else, hence furies is their name:
Like winged harpies, I beheld them fly,
While horrid darkness followed thro' the sky,
And lighting on the margent of the deep,
They bade the winds arise and tempests sweep.
While I the charge you gave me did attend,
On all the ship sulphurious fires dewscend;--
Around the masts the thick'ning vapours clung,
And all the shrouds in dripping tatters hung.
And now the vessel mounts a dizzy height,
Now in the sea-trough seems to sink outright;
At length she dashes with a shivering shock,
Upon the pointed shelving of a rock--
Alphonso scap'd, and one companion more,
Unseen, I brought them safely to the shore;--
The rest to death the furies have consigned,
And in the deep one common cerement find.
And now, obedient to your call I come.--
Mer. --Well done, my spirit.--What success had'st thou?
2d Spir. --I found the fair Elmira in tears,
And left her smiling in renovate joy.
Mer. --Likewise well done--But I must hence away,
To Lapland's freezing clime, to bring a root,
None but myself doth know:--Till I return,
Which shall be e're the evedning sun descends,
Each to his task.--Invisible remain,
And guard the youth and maiden from all harm.
[ Ex. Spirits. ]
I must annul the fatal sisters' charm.

SCENE II.-- Discovers Alphonso preparing to cast himself from a rock.

Alp .--That man alone is free who fears not death.
This world is but a prison hours, from which
Millions of doors stand open;--who will then
Groan in captivity, and in willing bondage
Spin out a life of weariness and woe,
Cross'd and defeated in his warmest hopes,
The sport of fortune and the mark of fate,
Whose arrows fall with far more virulence
Than the Indian's venom'd shaft.
Who would dwell
Among a race that prey upon each other?
I'd rather house me with a host of fiends--
Demons have mercy , human kind have none
But malice, envy, interest--blacker fiends
Hell never in its utmost hate brought forth!--
These take possession of our earthly hell,
and banish pity from the human breast.
O tyrant gold,--the rankest curse that Jove
E'er in his vengeance sent upon mankind:
Parent of human ills, war, rapine, murder,
Are still attendant on thee. One more sin
I add to they account,--it is self-slaughter.--
I have determined--
O Elmira!
The strongest tie that links me to this earth,
Might I but send this parting breath to thee,
Which, like a useless thing, I cast away,
It should inform thee of a mine of love
(Richer than all that wealth the sea hath swallowed,)
Which now has residence within my breast,
But soon must be dislodged from thence by death.
Farewell--I go--forgive me gracious Heaven!--

[ Enter Marcus and seizes him. ]

Mar. --What means this fury--wretched man forbear!
Art thou so quit with Heav'n, to draw so much
Upon its mercy,--See the gulf before thee,
Nor trifle on the brink of an abyss,
That swallows, but ne'er renders back again.
Eternity!--say hath that word no terrors?
Rash man, wilt thou the almighty vengeance dare,
And hurl defiance to the throne of God.

[ Enter Spir. invis. ]

Nay, Struggle not,--you shall not do a deed
In this wild fit of mementary passion,
A deed that ages never can undo.
Thou'lt thank me for preventing thee hereafter.
Come to the cave,--be calm, your crime is great,
May heaven's forgiveness on repentance wait.
1st Spir. --I'll take a human form, and follow them. [ ex.

SCENE III.-- A Wood -- Enter Furies.

Alec .We the human breast control,
Pour dark passions in the soul,
We mankind to sin incite:--
Envy, jealousy, and spite,--
All the fiends that vex the race
Of mortals us their rulers place.
Sisters, whither shall we fly,
Through the earth, or thro' the sky,
All our aim and object still,
To do mankind the greatest ill.
Meg. --Alphonso hath escaped our rage,
Merlin war with us doth wage--
Merlin's all-controlling wand,
Sisters, how shall we withstand.
Tis. --Merlin's wand cannot disarm,
This our last most potent charm,
But the lovers both shall fall,
Victims to our ireful gall;
Nought can save them from our wrath
But a root that Lapland hath;
Buried in the earth it lie,
Hidden from all human eyes,
Sisters, fear not Merlin's wand,
We his fury can withstand.

SCENE IV.-- Merlin's Cave on the sea-shore.

Mar. --Think what a precipice you have escap'd!
Alp. --Ay, as a wretch 'scapes drowning to be hung.
Mar. --Heav'n yet hath happiness in store for you.
Alp. --Heav'n husbands well. No doubt I'll die its debtor.
Mar. --Think on its mercies, O Alphonso.
Alp. --Ay, so I did--I thought upon my death.
Mar. --How could you bear the idea of self-murder!
Alp. --Better than I could bear life's burden.--
Mar. --Than black ingratitude, a deadlier sin
Ne'er stained the catalogues of human crime,
And yours is worst,--ingratitude to Heaven.
Alp. --Not so,--I wish'd to pay the debt I owe it,
The debt of nature--even before 'tis due.
Mar. --This is but mochery; heav'n yokes thee with existence,
And darest thou cast it off, and say to heaven
I will not bear thy burden? This is madness!
No more--here comes a person to the cave--
He seems a laboring peasant by his dress.

[ Enter 1st Spirit. ]

Hail, friend, whence came you, and for what intent.
Spir. --I chanced to see you enter in this cave,
And curiosity hath brought me hither,
To know what men you be; can I do aught
To give you pleasure,--I am at your service.
Mar. --We are two mariners escaped from shipwreck,
And seek a shelter in this silent cave--
Can you procure us food.
Spir. -- I can and will.--
But why art thou, young man, so much cast down.
Hast thou lost some dear friend in this sas wreck.--[ To A.
Mar. --Ay, he has lost his wealth.
Spir. -- Of what description?
Alp. --A wooden casket, interlaid with gold,
In which I had deposited some stones,
Gems of high value, and som precious pearls.
Spir. --I can procure it.
Alp. Go, you mock us,
'Tis buried in the bosom of the deep,
Beyond all chance and hope of a recovery.
Spir. --Stay you but here awhile, and I will bring it;
Nay, do not follow me, I must alone.--
Mar. --Come back, Alphonso, better here remain,--
This man perhaps can bring the casket to us.
Alp. --Tell me--have you seen it--have some pity,
And do not keep me in suspense, I pray you.
Spir. --If you will stay I'll bring the casket to you--
But if you follow me, I must not get it.--[ Exit.
Alp. --Hope shines not here, or if it deigns to shine,
'Tis like the gleamings of a winter's sun,
Through leafless trees, upon the frozen ground.
Mar. --I feel a goodly boding; sure this man
Will restore your casket to you--I perceived
From the expression of his countenance
He meant not to amuse him with your sorrow.
Alp. --I have been tutored to adversity:
Misfortune still attends me from my cradle,
And aught of good seems supernatural;
I can't give credence to it.--Mark you this,
We shall be disappointed,--I know well.
Tut, think you I should meet with such good luck
To find the casket, with my buried hopes!
Why all the miracles upon record,--
The loaves and fishes, healing blind and lame,
Could never equal that.
Mar. -- You are too desponding;
There still should be a medium, twixt despair
And hopes too sanguine:--both alike mislead,
Tho' in a different way. Some men would seem
Never to keep the true and mediate path,
But wander on this side to seek for flowers
Or on that side to stumble in the ditch.
If hope seduces, with a harlot's wile--
Despair enslaves us, with an iron grasp.
Then rouse and shake this bold intruder off,
Nor let your manhood be ta'en prisoner
By sour-eyed despondency; let sighs and tears
Be still the love-sick virgin's last resource,
But men should be above such female weakness.

[ Re-enter Spir. with casket. ]

Alp. --[ Running to him. ]--It is,--it is my casket,--
Oh God!--my friend,--I never can repay you;
Thanks are too poor to speak my gratitude.
Spir. --Come with me hence, I'll lead you to a cottage
That's seated on the green declivity
Of yonder hill.
Mar. --We will follow you.--
Learn hence, Alphonso, never to complain
Of Fortune's gifts,--and ne'er despond again.
Heav'n holds the scale, and justice guides the beam.
We rise and fall by turns at each extreme.

ACT III.--SCENE I.-- Elmira's dwelling, near the banks of the Hudson --
Enter Elmira, weeping

Elm. --Now be the sun for-evermore obscured;
And blotted from the pages of the sky;
Be all those adverse stars the characters
Of my unhappy fate:--Thick and unwholesome mists
Wrap the green earth, that nature's self may sicken,
And with one deep and mighty groan expire.
Alphonso, buried in the whelming wave!
Are these the joyful tidings that portend:
O Clementine thou has deceived thy friend,
With false, deceitful hopes--what have I now
To live for,--since Alphonso is no more.
But I will not survive him,--love forbid it--
I will not live,--my plighted faith forbid it.
Alphonso,-- Death shall not dissolve our vows,
Elmira follows thee--this very night!--
Yea, ere the sun, with his descending beams
Plays on the turrets of the city spires,
This vial shall unite us yet once more:
I'll keep thy counsel;--her comes Clementine.

Enter 2d Spir. in form of Clemnentine.

Spir. --How fares my gentle friend?--
Elm. --Why--so--I have received some tidings.
Spir. --What are they, sweet Elmira?
Elm. --Have you heard nothing lately of importance
That much concerns me?
Spir. -- Why nothing,
But that Alphonso shortly will return.
Elm. --Clementine, thou knowest
How long I mourn'd his absence;--daily I
To yonder tree, where often we have met
And interchanged our vows of mutual love:
thither I would repair, and think on him,
And thinking so, the summer's day seem'd short.
O Clementine, I ne'er shall see him more!
Spir. --This is self-tormenting:
Ideal fears that haunt the sick man's breast,
And rob the tender virgin of her rest.
Art thou not well my friend?--
Elm. --I shall be better shortly.
Spir. --Sweet I hope so.
Elm. --Leave me Clementine.--[ Ex. Clem.
I will not burden thee with my afflication.
This certainty is easier to be borne
Than, that suspense with which my breast was torn.
Now I'm resolved. [ Exit.

SCENE II.-- A Wood -- Ent. Furies.

Alec. --Soon shall titan's car descend
To where the sky and ocean blend,
And with blushing beauty greet,
Each the other when they meet:
I the fatal letter bore,
To the fair on Hudson's shore--
With the tidings of her grief,
From which in death she seeks relief.
Meg. --And now the charm is almost done,
'Tis finished with the setting sun:
On yon glimmering star I sate,
The star that rules these lovers' fate.
And their mischief there I plann'd
Safe from force of merlin's wand.
Tis. --Who can 'scape the furies' ire,
Arm'd with pestilence and fire,
Sword, and tempest,--who shall dare
With the furies to wage war.

[ Enter Merlin. ]

Mer. --Hence, ye black fiends, to your infernal home
In hell's deep arches, fill'd with damps and gloom!
Hence, know 'tis Merlin gives you this command,
And dread the waving of this potent wand.
Fur. --Merlin, the sisters heed not your command,
Nor dread the waving of your forceful wand.
Mer. --By the pale spectres, and the shades below,
By the thrice-triple streams that round them flow,
By earth's green bosom, and the heaving main,
I charge you hence.
Fur. --That charge is also vain.
Mer. --By the blest mansions, and the courts above,
By the almighty name of deathless Jove,
Go hence!--
Fur. --Great Magus, we cannot be driven
From hence, by earth, by ocean, hell or heaven.
Mer. --Yet mark this root of a peculiar worth,
Born in the bosom of the frozen north,
By this I charge you to your depths again,
Your charms annul'd--your machinations vain.
[ Furies vanish.
Now will I haste these lovers to unite,
Thus free'd forever from the sisters' spite.-- Exit.

SCENE III.-- Elmira's dwelling. -- Elmira, sola.

Elm. --O ever thus may joy succeed to grief,
A change so sudden taxes my belief.
Even in the hour I had resolved to die,
Alphonso's letter met my joyful eye.
By this I learn'd he had escaped with life,
Love saved him in the elemental strife.
This night we meet on the accustomed spot
Beneath the oak--Propitious heav'n befriend,
Nor let thy boundless goodness be restrain'd.
O Time be quick--anoint thy chariot wheels,
That they may sleekly roll away the space
That separates Alphonso and Elmira.
O may kind Heaven smile on our interview,
And may we never, never part again.--[ Sings.

In the desert of life tho' thorny the way,
In pity kind Heaven hath lent
One charm to beguile it and make it look gay,
And give the poor trav'ler content.

O what is that charm--such a path to beguile,
With thorns and with thistles o'erspread,
O say what can make such a sesert to smile,
As thro' its dark shadows we tread!

'Tis klove hath the power to soften each woe,
That a man in the wilderness meet,
What a ray of beatitude love can bestow,
The poor forlorn wand'rer to greet.

Love is the sweet solace of each earthly care,
By Jove in his pity 'twas given,
To be our balm in adversity here,
And prepare us for joys of heaven.

SCENE IV.-- Banks of the Hudson -- Enter Alphonso.

Alp. --If there's a joy that human kind can feel
And angels envy,--'tis when the banish'd wretch
Returns to his own home--to life and love.
Methinks Dame Nature never look'd so gay,--
The trees, the fields, the stream all seem to smile
In sympathy with my unspeakable joy.
Soon, soon Elmira, we shall meet again,
And heaven to compensate for all the woes
I have endured, shall give me thee, Elmira--
O rich reward,--a maiden all unmatch'd,
In mind and person; whose beauty raises wishes
Her virtue awes, with sense of sacrilege.
A mind as far superior to the crowd's
Love, grovelling thoughts, as her celestial mould
Is to the grossness of their sordid clay.--[ Enter Elm.
She comes, O Heaven!--this moment pays for all.
[ They embrace.
Elm. --Alphonso!--in that name there is a charm
That could not be forgotten for a moment.
Daily have I resorted to this spot,
And wrote Alphonso in the yellow sand,
Which, when the rising tide would wash away,
I turn'd to read it printed in my breast,
From whence nought could it banish or expunge,
But it stood firm as sculptured adamant.
Alp. --Dear maiden, let us bury sad remembrances
Of troubles past in dark oblivion's grave,
And now to bliss our future life consign,
And heaven smiling on our vows shall give
Long years of gladness--Come away with me.--[ Exe't.

Enter Spirits -- Song.

Spir. --While the shadows of evening
Are gathering around,
Still loving to linger
On this holy ground,

The spirits that wander
O'er ocean, through air,
By the soft rays of moonshine
Do hither repair.

United by marriage,
The bridegroom and bride,
Have all the enjoyment
To virtue allied.

And O thus forever
Shall true love be blest,
Then lovers be constant,
And fear not the rest.

Tho' clouds of misfortune
May threaten awhile,
Be patient and trust that
Kind Heaven will smile.

Like the pale lamp of Phoebe,
Your pleasures may wane,
But short is the season
Ere relumined again.

Then spirits with gladness
Your voices all raise,
Singing peace to the lovers
And Merlin's great praise.

Enter Merlin.

Mer. --To Maridunum's caverns, dark, profound,
Which walls of polished ebony surround
With mystic characters engrav'd--and signs
Of constellations,--every star that shines,--
I go,--and midst those spectral glooms I'll call
To that enchanted, subterranean hall,
A multitude of fiends from Orcus' shore
Or those compel to labour till the sun
Nine times thro' heav'e his annual orb shall run.
with charms of force, a brazen wall I'll rear
Around Cairmardin,--that in future there
Unharm'd lby foes, I may prusue that lore
Which erst hath been the source of all my power.
Those dark, mysterious volumes that contain
The scrolls of fate, I will peruse again;--
And still to human kind a friend I'll prove,
Man the chief object of my care and love!--
So hushed and still all nature seems to lie,
We almost hear the choristers on high,
The bands angelic, whose nocturnal flight,
And songs seraphic sanctify the night.
When morn shall call you to your tasks again,
Spirits that wander o'er the earth and main,
Guard well your sacred trust!--If hostile powers
Oppose their charms malevolent to ours,
Swiftly the tidings to my cell convey
and their designs in ruil will I lay.--[ Exeunt.

THE END.

---

---

BALLAD OF SIR LAUNCELOT

by

JOHN GROSVENOR WILSON

"Riding the quest of the Grail alone,
    Guinevere, Guinevere, pity me!
All thro' the day and the night I moan,
    Yearning to catch but a glimpse of thee.
Tho' I make halt by the wan west sea,
    Seeking a sign in the high God's name,
Lo, as I tremble and bow the knee,
    Gleameth thy face with the eyes aflame!

"Me have I scourged till the blood hath flown,
    Weeping hot tears of misery;
Still thro' the day and the night I moan,
    Yearning to catch but a glimpse of thee. --
Yea, have I striven and sought to flee,
    Ever and ever the same -- the same --
Blinding my soul with sweet rarity,
    Gleameth thy face with the eyes aflame!

"Sleeping, I dreamed that the Grail was shown,
    Marvellous bright with clemency;
Waking, I lay on the chancel-stone --
    Ah, but I yearned for the touch of thee! --
Tho' I may bow and make piteous plea
    Unto the Christ and our Holy Dame,
Sweeter by far than all visions be,
    Gleameth thy face with the eyes aflame."

ENVOY.

Guinevere maketh a day of glee, --
    "Who is it cometh to join our game?" --
"Launcelot rideth with bridle free,
    Gleameth thy face with the eyes aflame."

---

---

EXCALIBUR

by

JOHN GROSVENOR WILSON

"Thou art here, the Lord's Anointed,
        King of men and knight of heaven,
To the trust thou art appointed,
        Unto thee the sword is given;
As a sign for thee, a token
        That the light again is breaking
Thro' the gloom of time unspoken
        To the dawn and to the waking.
        
"When the fields of heaven sounded
        With the roar and shout of battle,
And the whirling spears rebounded
        From the shields with ring and rattle,
This the sword that Michael wielded
        With a fire and strength supernal,
Till the rebel hosts, unshielded,
        Fled from light to night eternal.
        
"Strong as Michael shalt thou fight them,
        They that bow before the idols,
And the blazing sword shall smite them
        From the horses and the bridles;
Yea, the heathen, stunned with terror,
        Shall behold the blade advancing,
With the flame that burneth error
        From the hilt and jewels glancing.
        
"Lo, the weary world is weeping
        In the toil of her transgression
For the justice that is sleeping,
        For the wrong and the oppression,
For the nights that quake and quiver,
        For the days that dawn in thunder,
For the years that shrink and shiver
        At the shame and at the wonder.
        
"But the guilty shalt thou scatter,
        And the sword will bravely brighten
As the standards sink and shatter,
        And the foeman's face shall whiten
At the sound and at the glitter
        Of the brand above him flashing,
Till the death-shriek, shrill and bitter,
        Drown the din of armor clashing.
        
"So thy kingdom shall be founded,
        And by justice thou shalt hold it,
And its fame shall be unbounded
        As the wide seas that enfold it;
And the harvest hailing hither
        Shall encamp on all the acres,
And the noxious weeds shall wither
        As the sea-foam on the breakers.
        
"Till the right grown wrong with surfeit
        Shall uprise and challenge proudly,
Then the peace shall all be forfeit,
        And the trumpet-call sound loudly;
Then the sword shall rouse the thunder,
        And the echoes will awaken
All along the sea, and under,
        Where the mermaid rides the kraken.
        
"For the cycle will be ended,
        And shall come the desolation,
And the close shall be attended
        With a noise of devastation;
And the ruin will be utter,
        For the foe shall overmaster,
And the royal flag shall flutter
        To defeat and to disaster.
        
"When from out the nether regions,
        With a mighty thunder-rattle,
Ride the clanging, shouting legions
        Of the storm and of the battle,
Then the solemn doom shall follow,
        And the King shall bow before it;
When the great sword striketh hollow,
        To the great giver then restore it."

---

---

ISOLT AT THE TOMB OF TRISTRAM

by

JOHN GROSVENOR WILSON

        
"Here, with my arms curled round the sacred cross
         That in white warning stands above his bones,
         I crouch, with hot limbs pressed against the stones,
And moan his name, and wail and weep his loss.
        
"Stand back, good sirs -- ye shall not drag me hence;
         But, pray ye, keep between me and King Mark;
        My husband? yes -- God pity me -- but hark,
Surely ye know not his most foul offence.
        
"Yet know ye how he came, that rainy day,
        When Tristram played the harp to me, to keep
        The hours in joyance. -- Ah, sirs, could ye sleep,
And in a dream but hear Sir Tristram play --
        
"How like the tinkle of a silver bell
        The sweet notes from his cunning fingers tripped,
        In airy melody that softly slipped
Into the heart, with sunny stir and swell. --
        
"In very heaven of joy I heard him play,
        And saw his eyes with love grow master-ful;
        When, at a sudden, stealthy, noiseless pull,
The curtains parted and for Mark made way.
        
"I felt my lips were frozen in a smile,
        And with that fixèd smile I watched King Mark
        Drive his sharp glaive thro' Tristram's throat, still stark
My Tristram lay -- and I said naught the while,
        
"Until that man came to me -- half in fear,
        I wot -- whereat I shrieked, and in a swoon
        Fell down, and knew no more until the moon
Rose yesternight, and then I hurried here.
        
"Now shall Mark come to judge me? -- he? -- who knew
        All of my Tristram's love from first to last,
        And knowing how that love would bind him fast
Made use of him to keep his kingdom true.
        
"Has any man who profits by a sin,
        In ways direct or indirect, a right
        To sit as judge of what is black or white,
Or join his voice to the accusing din?
        
"O, I can say no more! -- do what ye will!
        My heart grows sick above my Tristram's tomb --
        O loyal love, how fares it in the gloom?
Dost hear my voice? hath it the old-time thrill?
        
"Rest, rest, my love -- I grow so weak and faint,
        Thou shalt not wait me long. O blessed hour!
        When from the gate of heaven's portal-tower
Thou wilt rush forth to still my cold complaint."

---

---

SIR PALAMIDES

by

JOHN GROSVENOR WILSON

Sir Palamides, Saracen,
Right worshipful among the men
Of Arthur's days, rode thro' the fen.

Till, past the skirts of fen and wood,
On lonely Humber's bank he stood,
Grateful for that sad solitude.

And looking, aimless, east and west,
Bemoaned his love and beat his breast,
And yearned to end his ceaseless quest.

When up the stream in silence sped
A royal barge, and huge and red
Grinned at the prow a wyvern's head.

Red silk swept o'er the deck, and made
A stately couch, whereon was laid
The body of a King, arrayed

In robes of state, and in the hand
It held a scroll, and to the land
The barge drave fast and keeled the sand.

Sir Palamides leaped on deck, --
"Alack!" quoth he, "a royal wreck!"
And touched the crescent at his neck,

Unrolled the scroll, and this it said --
"Hermancè, of the City Red,
Father and King, here lieth dead.

"Murdered by him he loved the best.
Good knight, to set his soul at rest,
Pray sail the river on his quest."

Then swore the knight, upon his knees,
To sail the quest, and with the breeze
He set the prow toward the seas.

Adown long Humber swift he sailed,
Anon some castle-warder hailed,
Or knight that rode full-armed and mailed.

He sailed into the open sea,
And still the wind blew fair and free.
"I marvel at this quest," quoth he.

But seaward yet the vessel bore,
Until an island rose before,
And straight the barge drave to the shore.

People that watched there to him spake, --
"Thou seekest Helius, for whose sake
Our King's good heart did bleed and break.

"For lo, our King was kind and mild,
But very old, nor blessed with child,
Wherefore he sought this monster wild,

"Made him as if he were his own;
But he so longed to sit the throne
He killed the King, and we made moan;

"He and his knights then mocked and said, --
'Bring forth the royal barge of red
And set it sailing with the dead.'

"The which we did, but slipt within
His hand the scroll that told the sin,
And now, please God, the right shall win."

"Yea," said the knight, "an' if God please:"
Addresses himself, and cried, -- "Let these
Base knights come now; I take no ease

"Until I lay them low in dust
And hang their armor up to rust.
God and the Prophet shield the just!"

Then Helius and his knights were wroth,
And seizing arms they hurtled forth
As when the wind blows from the north.

Many they were, and woful strong;
They fought the Saracen so long,
It seemed that right would yield to wrong.

The people watching made great dole,
And wept with pity for his soul,
And shades of night began to roll.

Till, with a thrust clear thro' the head,
The Saracen smote Helius dead;
And who were left in terror fled.

Uprose great shouts of joy, and all,
With banners, marching from the wall
Of the Red City, loud did call.

And hail him King: whereat the knight
Spake thus, -- "That I have won the fight
I praise God's grace, not mine own might.

"But as for me -- alas, I needs
Must wander on among the weeds,
That haply I may yet do deeds

"Of honor fair, and ease my heart,
Wear out the pain, and dull the smart,
Wherefore, good friends, I must depart."

Then, stepping in a barget gray,
Sir Palamides went his way,
And sighed for Isolt, night and day.

---

---

THE DEATH OF GUINEVERE

by

JOHN GROSVENOR WILSON

At Almesbury the lights are low --
With muffled step the Sisters go,
And come, and go, in tears, for lo.

With crucifix held o'er her head,
The Abbess-Queen lies on her bed,
Soon to be gathered with the dead.

They deem her holy; she hath taught
How hope may come and faith be bought,
But now she thinks -- and this the thought:

"To die. O God! what breadth of doom
Awaits me in the ghostly gloom
That stretcheth out beyond the tomb?

"To die -- to die -- to go where I
May meet with Arthur passing by?
I cannot die -- I cannot die!

"I whisper to myself his name,
I count the years, I count the shame,
And feel the torture of the flame.

"I loved him not, yet well I know
I took his life -- and deep and slow
I wrought the wound, I dealt the blow.

"I know not where his body lies --
I dare not meet his clear, large eyes,
Bright with the light of Paradise.

"Why, they would cut me thro' and thro'
Like yonder star, that from the blue
Dissevers this clear drop of dew.

"O Christ! a little time, I pray,
Yet let me live -- perchance some day
I may not fear to tread the way.

"Cease, cease, vain prayer -- I am grown old.
The thin white hair that once was gold,
The sunken cheeks, half-gray, half-cold,

"The shrivelled breast, the sightless eye,
All wan and worn -- they mutely cry, --
''Tis time to die! 'tis time to die!'

"O, I am old and changed! and what
If I should meet with Launcelot
And he should pass and know me not?

"Methinks my heart would throb and swell
Until it broke again -- ah well,
'Twould make of heaven a twofold hell.

"To think that we two souls had met
And he passed, with quiet face set
Away from me, so old -- and yet

"It was not love for him I felt;
No love in me hath ever dwelt
Save love of self. Why, I have knelt

"And prayed to God for grace for me ,
Have moaned and prayed for strength to see
Some hope in gray eternity.

"And in my prayer no name has mixt
With mine, lest it should come betwixt
My thoughts and God's, and leave unfixt

"The grace for which I prayed; and now
The death-damp gathers on my brow,
But to God's will I cannot bow.

"O, I would live! I dread this death,
This sudden sinking of the breath,
With all the mystery beneath;

"With all the fear beyond the pain,
With all the mist beyond the rain --
O God! O Christ! I would remain!"

She lieth dead -- the church-bells toll --
Fair Father Christ, receive her soul
And make the broken image whole.

---

---

THE EGYPTIAN MAID
OR
THE ROMANCE OF THE WATER-LILY

by

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[For the names and persons in the following poem, see the "History of the renowned Prince Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table;" for the rest the Author is answerable; only it may be proper to add, that the Lotus, with the bust of the goddess apppearing to rise out of the full-blown flower, was suggested by the beautiful work of ancient art, once included among the Townley Marbles, and now in the British Museum.]

While Merlin paced the Cornish sands,
Forth-looking toward the Rocks of Scilly,
The pleased Enchanter was aware
Of a bright Ship that seemed to hang in air,
Yet was she work of mortal hands,
And took from men her name--THE WATER LILY.

Soft was the wind, that landward blew;
And, as the Moon, o'er some dark hill ascendant,
Grows from a little edge of light
To a full orb, this Pinnace bright,
As nearer to the Coast she drew,
Appeared more glorious, with spread sail and pendant.

Upon this winged Shape so fair
Sage Merlin gazed with admiration:
Her lineaments, thought he, surpass
Aught that was ever shown in magic glass;
In patience built with subtle care;
Or, at a touch, set forth with wondrous transformation.

Now, though a Mechanist, whose skill
Shames the degenerate grasp of modern science,
Grave Merlin (and belike the more
For practising occult and perilous lore)
Was subject to a freakish will
That sapped good thoughts, or scared them with defiance.

Provoked to envious spleen, he cast
An altered look upon the advancing Stranger
Whom he had hailed with joy, and cried,
"My Art shall help to tame her pride--"
Anon the breeze became a blast,
And the waves rose, and sky portended danger.

With thrilling word, and potent sign
Traced on the beach, his work the Sorcerer urges;
The clouds in blacker clouds are lost,
Like spiteful Fiends that vanish, crossed
By Fiends of aspect more malign;
And the winds roused the Deep with fiercer scourges.

But worthy of the name she bore
Was this Sea-flower, this buoyant Galley;
Supreme in loveliness and grace
Of motion, whether in the embrace
Of trusty anchorage, or scudding o'er
The main flood roughened into hill and valley.

Behold, how wantonly she laves
Her sides, the Wizard's craft confounding;
Like something out of Ocean sprung
To be for ever fresh and young,
Breasts the sea-flashes, and huge waves
Top-gallant high, rebounding and rebounding!

But Ocean under magic heaves,
And cannot spare the Thing he cherished:
Ah! what avails that She was fair,
Luminous, blithe, and debonair?
The storm has stripped her of her leaves;
The Lily floats no longer!--She hath perished.

Grieve for her,--She deserves no less;
So like, yet so unlike, a living Creature!
No heart had she, no busy brain;
Though loved, she could not love again;
Though pitied, feel her own distress;
Nor aught that troubles us, the fools of Nature.

Yet is there cause for gushing tears;
So richly was this Galley laden;
A fairer than Herself she bore,
And, in her struggles, cast ashore;
A lovely One, who nothing hears
Of wind or wave--a meek and guileless Maiden.

Into a cave had Merlin fled
From mischief, caused by spells himself had muttered;
And, while repentant all too late,
In moody posture there he sate,
He heard a voice, and saw, with half-raised head,
A Visitant by whom these words were uttered:

"On Christian service this frail Bark
Sailed" (hear me, Merlin!) "under high protection,
Though on her prow a sign of heathen power
Was carved--a Goddess with a Lily flower,
The old Egyptian's emblematic mark
Of joy immortal and of pure affection.

"Her course was for the British strand,
Her freight it was a Damsel peerless;
God reigns above, and Spirits strong
May gather to avenge this wrong
Done to the Princess, and her Land
Which she in duty left, though sad not cheerless.

"And to Caerleon's loftiest tower
Soon will the Knights of Arthur's Table
A cry of lamentation send;
And all will weep who there attend,
To grace that Stranger's bridal hour,
For whom the sea was made unnavigable.

"Shame! should a Child of Royal Line
Die through the blindness of thy malice:"
Thus to the Necromancer spake
Nina, the Lady of the Lake,
A gentle Sorceress, and benign,
Who ne'er embittered any good man's chalice.

"What boots," continued she, "to mourn?
To expiate thy sin endeavour!
From the bleak isle where she is laid,
Fetched by our art, the Egyptian Maid
May yet to Arthur's court be borne
Cold as she is, ere life be fled for ever.

"My pearly Boat, a shining Light,
That brought me down that sunless river,
Will bear me on from wave to wave,
And back with her to this sea-cave;
Then Merlin! for a rapid flight
Through air to thee my charge will I deliver.

"The very swiftest of thy Cars
Must, when my part is done, be ready;
Meanwhile, for further guidance, look
Into thy own prophetic book;
And, if that fail, consult the Stars
To learn thy course; farewell! be prompt and steady."

This scarcely spoken, she again
Was seated in her gleaming Shallop,
That, o'er the yet-distempered Deep,
Pursued its way with bird-like sweep,
Or like a steed, without a rein,
Urged o'er the wilderness in sportive gallop.

Soon did the gentle Nina reach
That Isle without a house or haven;
Landing, she found not what she sought,
Nor saw of wreck or ruin aught
But a carved Lotus cast upon the shore
By the fierce waves, a flower in marble graven.

Sad relique, but how fair the while!
For gently each from each retreating
With backward curve, the leaves revealed
The bosom half, and half concealed,
Of a Divinity, that seemed to smile
On Nina as she passed, with hopeful greeting.

No quest was hers of vague desire,
Of tortured hope and purpose shaken;
Following the margin of a bay,
She spied the lonely Cast-away,
Unmarred, unstripped of her attire,
But with closed eyes,--of breath and bloom forsaken.

Then Nina, stooping down, embraced,
With tenderness and mild emotion,
The Damsel, in that trance embound;
And, while she raised her from the ground,
And in the pearly shallop placed,
Sleep fell upon the air, and stilled the ocean.

The turmoil hushed, celestial springs
Of music opened, and there came a blending
Of fragrance, underived from earth,
With gleams that owed not to the Sun their birth,
And that soft rustling of invisible wings
Which Angels make, on works of love descending.

And Nina heard a sweeter voice
Than if the Goddess of the Flower had spoken:
"Thou hast achieved, fair Dame! what none
Less pure in spirit could have done;
Go, in thy enterprise rejoice!
Air, earth, sea, sky, and heaven, success betoken."

So cheered she left that Island bleak,
A bare rock of the Scilly cluster;
And, as they traversed the smooth brine,
The self-illumined Brigantine
Shed, on the Slumberer's cold wan cheek
And pallid brow, a melancholy lustre.

Fleet was their course, and when they came
To the dim cavern, whence the river
Issued into the salt-sea flood,
Merlin, as fixed in thought he stood,
Was thus accosted by the Dame:
"Behold to thee my Charge I now deliver!

"But where attends thy chariot--where?"
Quoth Merlin, "Even as I was bidden,
So have I done; as trusty as thy barge
My vehicle shall prove--O precious Charge!
If this be sleep, how soft! if death, how fair!
Much have my books disclosed, but the end is hidden."

He spake, and gliding into view
Forth from the grotto's dimmest chamber
Came two mute Swans, whose plumes of dusky white
Changed, as the pair approached the light,
Drawing an ebon car, their hue
(Like clouds of sunset) into lucid amber.

Once more did gentle Nina lift
The Princess, passive to all changes:
The car received her; then up-went
Into the ethereal element
The Birds with progress smooth and swift
As thought, when through bright regions memory ranges.

Sage Merlin, at the Slumberer's side,
Instructs the Swans their way to measure;
And soon Caerleon's towers appeared,
And notes of minstrelsy were heard
From rich pavilions spreading wide,
For some high day of long-expected pleasure.

Awe-stricken stood both Knights and Dames
Ere on firm ground the car alighted;
Eftsoons astonishment was past,
For in that face they saw the last
Last lingering look of clay, that tames
All pride, by which all happiness is blighted.

Said Merlin, "Mighty King, fair Lords,
Away with feast and tilt and tourney!
Ye saw, throughout this Royal House,
Ye heard, a rocking marvellous
Of turrets, and a clash of swords
Self-shaken, as I closed my airy journey.

"Lo! by a destiny well known
To mortals, joy is turned to sorrow;
This is the wished-for Bride, the Maid
Of Egypt, from a rock conveyed
Where she by shipwreck had been thrown;
Ill sight! but grief may vanish ere the morrow."

"Though vast thy power, thy words are weak,"
Exclaimed the King, "a mockery hateful;
Dutiful Child! her lot how hard!
Is this her piety's reward?
Those watery locks, that bloodless cheek!
O winds without remorse! O shore ungrateful!

"Rich robes are fretted by the moth;
Towers, temples, fall by stroke of thunder;
Will that, or deeper thoughts, abate
A Father's sorrow for her fate?
He will repent him of his troth;
His brain will burn, his stout heart split asunder.

"Alas! and I have caused this woe;
For, when my prowess from invading Neighbours
Had freed his Realm, he plighted word
That he would turn to Christ our Lord,
And his dear Daughter on a Knight bestow
Whom I should choose for love and matchless labours.

"Her birth was heathen, but a fence
Of holy Angels round her hovered;
A Lady added to my court
So fair, of such divine report
And worship, seemed a recompence
For fifty kingdoms by my sword recovered.

"Ask not for whom, O champions true!
She was reserved by me her life's betrayer;
She who was meant to be a bride
Is now a corse; then put aside
Vain thoughts, and speed ye, with observance due
Of Christian rites, in Christian ground to lay her."

"The tomb," said Merlin, "may not close
Upon her yet, earth hide her beauty;
Not froward to thy sovereign will
Esteem me, Liege! if I, whose skill
Wafted her hither, interpose
To check this pious haste of erring duty.

"My books command me to lay bare
The secret thou art bent on keeping;
Here must a high attest be given,
What Bridegroom was for her ordained by Heaven;
And in my glass significants there are
Of things that may to gladness turn this weeping.

"For this, approaching, One by One,
Thy Knights must touch the cold hand of the Virgin;
So, for the favoured One, the Flower may bloom
Once more; but, if unchangeagble her doom,
If life departed be for ever gone,
Some blest assurance, from this cloud emerging,

May teach him to bewail his loss;
Not with a grief that, like a vapour, rises
And melts; but grief devout that shall endure
And a perpetual growth secure
Of purposes which no false thought shall cross
A harvest of high hopes and noble enterprises."

"So be it," said the King;--"anon,
Here, where the Princess lies, begin the trial;
Knights each in order as ye stand
Step forth."--To touch the pallid hand
Sir Agravaine advanced; no sign he won
From Heaven or Earth;--Sir Kaye had like denial.

Abashed, Sir Dinas turned away;
Even for Sir Percival was no disclosure;
Though he, devoutest of all Champions, ere
He reached that ebon car, the bier
Whereon diffused like snow the Damsel lay,
Full thrice had crossed himself in meek composure.

Imagine (but ye Saints! who can?)
How in still air the balance trembled;
The wishes, peradventure the despites
That overcame some not ungenerous Knights;
And all the thoughts that lengthened out a span
Of time to Lords and Ladies thus assembled.

What patient confidence was here!
And there how many bosoms panted!
While drawing toward the Car Sir Gawaine, mailed
For tournament, his Beaver vailed,
And softly touched; but, to his princely cheer
And high expectancy, no sign was granted.

Next, disencumbered of his harp,
Sir Tristram, dear to thousands as a brother,
Came to the proof, nor grieved that there ensued
No change;--the fair Izonda he had wooed
With love too true, a love with pangs too sharp,
From hope too distant, not to dread another.

Not so Sir Launcelot;--from Heaven's grace
A sign he craved, tired slave of vain contrition;
The royal Guinever looked passing glad
When his touch failed.--Next came Sir Galahad;
He paused, and stood entranced by that still face
Whose features he had seen in noontide vision.

For late, as near a murmuring stream
He rested 'mid an arbour green and shady,
Nina, the good Enchantress, shed
A light around his mossy bed;
And, at her call, a waking dream
Prefigured to his sense the Egyptian Lady.

Now, while the bright-haired front he bowed,
And stood, far-kenned by mantle furred with ermine,
As o'er the insensate Body hung
The enrapt, the beautiful, the young,
Belief sank deep into the crowd
That he the solemn issue would determine.

Nor deem it strange; the Youth had worn
That very mantle on a day of glory,
The day when he achieved that matchless feat,
The marvel of the PERILOUS SEAT,
Which whosoe'er approached of strength was shorn,
Though King or Knight the most renowned in story.

He touched with hesitating hand,
And lo! those Birds, far-famed through Love's dominions,
The Swans, in triumph clap their wings;
And their necks play, involved in rings,
Like sinless snakes in Eden's happy land;--
"Mine is she," cried the Knight;--again they clapped their pinions.

"Mine was she--mine she is, though dead,
And to her name my soul shall cleave in sorrow;"
Whereat, a tender twilight streak
Of colour dawned upon the Damsel's cheek;
And her lips, quickening with uncertain red,
Seemed from each other a faint warmth to borrow

Deep was the awe, the rapture high,
Of love emboldened, hope with dread entwining,
When, to the mouth, relenting Death
Allowed a soft and flower-like breath,
Precursor to a timid sigh,
To lifted eyelids, and a doubtful shining.

In silence did King Arthur gaze
Upon the signs that pass away or tarry;
In silence watched the gentle strife
Of Nature leading back to life;
Then eased his Soul at length by praise
Of God, and Heaven's pure Queen--the blissful Mary.

Then said he, "Take her to thy heart
Sir Galahad! a treasure that God giveth
Bound by indissoluble ties to thee
Through mortal change and immortality;
Be happy and unenvied, thou who art
A goodly Knight that hath no Peer that liveth!"

Not long the Nuptials were delayed;
And sage tradition still rehearses
The pomp the glory of that hour
When toward the Altar from her bower
King Arthur led the Egyptian Maid,
And Angels carolled these far-echoed verses;--

Who shrinks not from alliance
Of evil with good Powers,
To God proclaims defiance,
And mocks whom he adores.

A Ship to Christ devoted
From the Land of Nile did go;
Alas! the bright Ship floated,
An Idol at her Prow.

By magic domination
The Heaven-permitted vent
Of purblind mortal passion,
Was wrought her punishment.

The Flower, the Form within it,
What served they in her need?
Her port she could not win it,
Nor from mishap be freed.

The tempest overcame her,
And she was seen no more;
But gently gently blame her,
She cast a Pearl ashore.

The Maid to Jesu hearkened,
And kept to him her faith,
Till sense in death was darkened,
Or sleep akin to death.

But Angels round her pillow
Kept watch, a viewless band;
And, billow favouring billow,
She reached the destined strand.

Blest Pair! whate'er befall you,
Your faith in Him approve
Who from frail earth can call you,
To bowers of endless love!

---

---

THE YOUNG KNIGHT

OR

HOW GARETH WON HIS SPURS

A Play founded upon Tennyson's "Gareth and Lynette," in the "Idylls of the King."

by

REV. JAMES YEAMES

Cast of Characters
KING ARTHUR.
GARETH, youngest son of King Lot and Queen Bellicent.
LANCELOT.
SIR KAY, the Seneschal.
THE ANCIENT, a Seer.
GAWAIN, brother of Gareth.
BELLICENT, mother of Gareth.
PRINCE LLWELLYN, a child.
LYONORS, maiden held in Castle Perilous.
LYNETTE, her sister.
A WIDOW AND HER KINSMAN.
MORS, the boy disguised as Death.
THE KING'S JESTER.
THE KING'S PAGE.
KNIGHTS, MESSENGERS, ETC.

SCENE I

HOME OF GARETH.
(Bellicent arranging coverlet over her husband, who is lying before the hearth. Child seated on the floor, playing with helmet and sword.)

BELLICENT.
Ah me! The very babes are smitten with the love of strife, and sword and helmet are the children's toys!
   And he lies there, my husband and a king; lies like a log, and all but smouldered out! For, ever since - when traitor to the king - he found against him in the barons' war, and Arthur gave him back his territory - his age has slowly drooped, and now he lies, listless and lifeless, though not ready for the tomb.
   And my two sons, Modred and Gawain, are the king's knights; while now the last, - the youngest and the dearest, - would away to Arthur's Hall.
   Long have I held him, as a hound in leash; but the hour comes, I know, when from my home, my heart, Gareth, my best beloved will break away.

(Child tries to put on helmet, and lets it fall clattering on the sword. Looks up and sees Queen.)

CHILD.
My Lady Queen, I fain would be thy knight, for thou art sad. Who does thee wrong? (Grasps sword.)

BELL.
Hush little one, and be in leed my knight, - a carpet-knight and stay at home with me. For soon there wil be none but thou and I. I know thy cousin yearneth to be gone, and soon Gareth -

CHILD.
Gareth? And goeth he to the court? and will he see the King? And have you seen great Arthur?

BELL.
Aye, child. For I was near him when he sat crowned on the dais; and his warriors cried, "Be thou the king, and we will work thy will, who love thee!"

CHILD.
And thou hast been to Camelot?

BELL.
Yes, child. And there saw Mage Merlin, whose vast wit and hundred winters are but as slaves to serve the king. And there the white-robed Lady of the Lake, who gave the King his huge cross-hilted sword, who lives down in the lake's calm deeps, and sometimes walks the water, - like our LORD.
   There, likewise, I beheld Excalibur, the sword that rose from out the bosom of the lake; and Arthur rowed across and took it; rich with jewels on the hilt, bewildering heart and eye; the blade so bright that men are blinded by it.
   But child, the hour is late. (Voice without calls, "Llewellyn, Llewellyn!") Hark, thy nurse is calling thee! Hasten, sweet one, - to bed and pleasant dreams! (Embraces him.)

(Exit Bellicent and child. Stage darkened, Bellicent returns, bearing a lighted candle, looks at Lot and sighs. Moves towards chair. Enter Gareth. Bellicent sits, Gareth at her feet.)

GARETH.
Mother, tho' ye count me still the child, sweet mother, do ye love the child?

BELL.
(Laughing.) Thou art but a wild-goose to question it.

GAR.
Then, mother, as ye love the child, being a goose and rather tame than wild, hear the child's story.

BELL.
Yea, my well-beloved, an t'were but of the goose and golden eggs!

GAR.
Nay, nay, good mother, but this egg of mine was finer than any goose can lay. For this an eagle, - a royal eagle laid
Almost 'yond reach of eye, on such a palm
As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours.
And there was ever haunting round the palm
A lusty youth but poor, who often saw
The splendor sparkling from aloft, and thought,
An I could climb and lay my hand upon it,
Then were I wealthier than a leash of kings.
But ever when he reached a hand to climb
One that had loved him from his childhood caught
And stayed him, "Climb not lest thou break thy neck,
I charge thee by my love." And so they boy,
Sweet mother, neither climbed nor brake his neck,
But brake his very heart in pining for it.

BELL.
Hast thou no pity on my loneliness?
See, where thy father, Lot, beside the hearth
Lies prone, nor hears, nor speaks, nor knows;
And both thy brethren are in Arthur's Hall -
Albeit neither loved with that full love.
I feel for thee.
Stay therefore thou. Follow the deer,
By these tall firs and our fast falling burns,
So make thy manhood mightier day by day!
Stay, my best son, ye are yet more boy than man.

GAR. O mother, how can ye keep me tethered to you?
Man am I grown, a man's work must I do.
Follow the deer? Follow Christ, the King,
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King -
Else wherefore born?

BELL.
Sweet son there be those who deem him not,
Or will not deem him wholly proven king.
Say, wilt thou leave
Thine easeful biding here and risk thine all,
Life, limbs, for one that is not proven king?

GAR.
Not proven? Who swept the dust of ruined Rome
From off the threshold of the realm, and crushed
The idolaters, and made the people free!
Who should be king save him who makes us free?
Yield me, my mother! your full leave to go.
Mother, to gain it, I would walk through fire!

BELL.
Will ye walk thro' fire?
Who walks thro' fire will hardly heed the smoke.
Ay, go then, an ye must. Only, one proof,
Before thou ask the king to make thee knight,
Of thine obedience and thy love to me,
Thy mother, - I demand.

GAR.
A hard one or a hundred, so I go!
Nay - quick! The proof to prove me to the quick!

BELL.
Prince, thou shalt go disguised to Arthur's hall,
And hire thyself to serve for meats and drinks
Among the scullions and the kitchen knaves,
Nor shalt thou tell thy name to any one.
And thou shalt serve a twelvemonth and a day.

GAR.
The thrall in person may be free in soul;
And I shall see the jousts. Thy son am I,
And, since thou art my mother, must obey.
I therefore yield me freely to thy will;
For hence will I, disguised, and hire myself
To serve with scullions and with kitchen knaves;
Nor tell my name to any-no, not e'en the king.

EXEUNT

SCENE II

BEFORE CAMELOT CASTLE.

(Enter Lancelot and Kay.)
LANCELOT.
Sit down, Sir Kay, and breathe the enlivening air, and rest thyself a while. Moreover, I would hear thee tell of the Coming of Arthur.

KAY.
'Tis said, that when King Uther died, Merlin and Bleys, soothsayers both, saw on the sea a dragon-ship, all bright from stem to stern with shining people on the decks.
   And as they watched the great sea fall, wave after wave, - each mightier than the last, - a ninth wave, full of voices, rose and plunged, roaring, and all the wave was in a flame.
   And down the wave and in the flame was borne a naked babe, floating to Merlin's feet. Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried, "The King! Here is an heir for Uther!"

LANCE.
But when I met Merlin and asked him if these things be truth - the shining dragon-ship and naked child, descending in the glory of the seas, - he laughed as is his wont, and answered me in riddling triplets of old time, and said:
"Rain, rain, and sun!
A rainbow in the sky,
A young man will be wiser by and by,
An old man's wit may wander ere he die!"
KAY.
Ha ha! That sounds like Merlin. But truth to tell; - Arthur was born after his father's death, within the castle by the Cornish sea. And, all as soon as born, delivered at a secret postern-gate to Merlin; to be holden far apart until his hour should come. Because the lords of that fierce day had surely torn the child piece-meal among them had they known, for each but sought to rule for his own self and hand.

LANCE.
Ah well, I ever held great Arthur king! Did I not see him throw the kings of Erin, Wales, and Orkney, - till, like a painted battle, the war stood silenced, - the living quiet as the dead.
   And then he turned to me and laughing said: "Thou dost not doubt me king, for well thine arm hath wrought for me today."
   "Sir, and my liege," I cried, "the fire of God descends upon thee in the battlefield. I know the for my king."
   Whereat we twain, for each had warded either in the fight, sware on the field of death a deathless love.
   But come, let's seek the hall, for, seems to me, I hear the sound of footsteps nigh at hand.

KAY.
Aye, aye! And I must to my knaves and scullions and bid the villain-vassals to their work again - for if their fire be low 'twill kindle mine!

(Enter Gareth and two companions.)
FIRST COMP.
Let us go no further, Lord. Here is a city of enchanters, built by fairy kings!

SECOND COMP.
Lord, we have heard from our wise men at home to northward, that this king, is not the King, but only changeling out of Fairyland who drave the heathen hence by sorcery and Merlin's glamour.

FIRST COMP.
Lord, there is no such city anywhere. 'Tis all a vision!

GARETH.
Pshaw! Have I not enough glamour
In my own blood, my princedom, youth and hopes,
To plunge old Merlin in the Arabian Sea!

(They approach the gate. A long bearded aged man appears.)

SEER.
Who be ye, my sons?

GARETH.
We be tillers of the soil,
Who leaving share in furrow come to see
The glories of our king: but these, my men, -
Your city moved so weirdly in the mist -
Doubt if the king be king at all, or come
From Fairyland, and whether this be built,
By magic, and by fairy kings and queens,
Or whether there be any city at all,
Or all a vision.

SEER.
Son, truly as thou sayest, a fairy king
And fairy queens have built the city.
They came from out a sacred mountain-cleft
Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand,
And built it to the music of their harps.
And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted, son;
For there is nothing in it as it seems
Saving the king; tho' some there be that hold
The king, a shadow and the city real.
Yet take thou heed of him, for, so thou pass
Beneath this archway, then wilt thou become
A thrall to his enchantments. For the king
Will bind thee by such vows as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep. But, so thou dread to swear,
Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide
Without, among the cattle of the field.

GARETH.
Old master, reverence thine own beard
That looks as white as utter truth, and seems
Well nigh as long as thou art statured tall!
Why mockest thou the stranger that hath been
To thee fair-spoken?

SEER.
I mock thee not but as thou mockest me,
And all that see thee, for thou art not who
Thou seemest, but I know thee who thou art.
And now thou goest up to mock the king,
Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie.

(Exit Seer.)
GARETH.
My men,
Our one white lie sits like a little ghost
Here on the threshold of our enterprise.
Let love be blamed for it, - not she, nor I.
Well, we will make amends.

(They enter the gate.)

SCENE III

THRONE ROOM OF CAMELOT CASTLE.

(Enter Arthur attended by Page and Jester and knights. The king takes seat on throne.)

(Enter Widow.)
WIDOW.
A boon, Sir King! Thine enemy am I, and loathe to ask thee aught.
Yet lo! my husband's brother had my son
Thralled in his castle, and hath starved him dead,
And seized upon that goodly heritage
Which thou that slewest the sire hadst left the son.
Grant me some knight to do the battle for me,
Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my son.

KINSMAN.
A boon, Sir King! I am her kinsman, I, -
Give me to right her wrong, and slay the man.

KAY.
A boon, Sir King! E'en that thou grant her none,
This railer, that hath mocked thee in full hall -
None, or the wholesome boon of gyve and gag!

JESTER.
"Gyve and gag!" Poor old Kay! He must have a pain somewhere. Sir King, I would fain ask thee a riddle.

KING.
Say on. Thou art a fool, but fools are sometimes wiser than the wise. Moreover, thou mayest relieve the Seneschal of his pain.

JESTER.
Suppose then, Sir Pendragon, this doughty kinsman going on his quest, were to be seized with a fit of colic on the way, - Where and When would it take him?

KING. (Repeats question.)
Faith, I know not! Sir Kay, canst thou tell?

KAY.
Nay, verily. I vex me not with such fool questions.

(Knights murmur, asking each other the riddle.)
KING.
Well Sir Jeffrey, and when and where would the colic attack the warrior?

JESTER.
In the middle of the (k)night of course!

(Laughter.)
KAY.
Ha, ha, ha! I would like to see him doubled up. (Points to long slender knight.) He is too long as it is. But, Sir King, grant him no boon.

KING.
We sit King, to help the wrong'd
Thro' all our realm. The woman loves her lord.
Peace to thee, woman, with thy loves and hate!
The kings of old had doomed thee to the flames.
                                       But get thee hence -
Lest that rough humor of the kings of old
Return upon me! Thou that art her kin,
Go likewise; lay him low and slay him not,
But bring him here, that I may judge the right,
According to the justice of the King:
Then, be he guilty, by that deathless King
Who lived and died for men, the man shall die.

(Exit Widow and Kinsman.)
KING.
Go, Jeffrey, lad, and get thy lute.
I would thou'dst cheer me with a song. Sir Kay, in sooth, is sound and wholesome as an apple, - but like an apple plucked too soon, he's somewhat sour.

JESTER.
Enough to give one colic in the middle of the knight!

(Fetches lute and sings.)

SONG OF THE KING'S JESTER.
                                                             Every morning towards twelve o'clock
                                                                   I tumble out of bed,
                                                             And set to work quite hard you know,
                                                                   To earn my daily bread.
                                                             It's mighty tough to get up jokes,
                                                                   And always play the fool;
                                                             I sometimes think I might as well,
                                                                   Be back again at school!

CHORUS.
Everybody works but Arthur, and he sits around all day,
High on his velvet cushion chatting with old Sir Kay;
Squires and knights go questing, tourneying thro' the land
Kay and the king are resting in the castle grand!

                                                            But, boys, I'm only jollying you,
                                                                  You know it is my way;
                                                            For, poking fun it is my cue,
                                                                  I strive to make you gay.
                                                            King Arthur, every body knows,
                                                                  Is bravest of the brave;
                                                            Where others quail, he does not fail,
                                                                  But fights the weak to save.

CHORUS.
Everybody runs but Arthur, he always holds the field;
Whoe'er may fail or falter, right in the van his shield.
Right in the forefront dashes, Arthur with conquering spear;
There Arthur's bright sword flashes, while foemen fall and fear.

                                                            A truce, now, to the minstrel's jest
                                                                  And a song for the Table Round,
                                                            For true as steel in every test
                                                                  Our white cross knights are found,
                                                            Sir Lancelot, Gareth, Gawain, -
                                                                  Bors, Galahad, and Kay!
                                                            Yes, Kay a jolly fellow is,
                                                                  Laugh at him as we may!

CHORUS.
Everybody runs but Arthur, everybody runs but Kay;
Enemies run before Arthur, Kay keeps out of the way!
Everybody loves King Arthur, foemen fear his sword;
Then, a shout for the knights of Arthur, true knights, in deed and word!

(Enter Gareth leaning on his two companions.)
GARETH.
A boon, Sir King!
For see ye not how weak and hunger-worn
I seem - leaning on these? Grant me to serve
For meat and drink among thy kitchen knaves
A twelve-month and a day, nor seek my name.
Hereafter, I will fight.

KING.
A goodly youth and worth a goodlier boon!
But so thou wilt no goodlier, then must Kay,
The master of the meats and drinks, be thine.

KAY.
                                  Lo ye now!
This fellow has broken from some abbey, where,
I wot, he had not beef and brewis enow.
Howe'er that might chance, but an he work,
Like any pigeon will I cram his crop,
And sleeker shall he shine than any hog.

JESTER.
Hog! H-O-G, - big pig! What a fine dinner a fellow could eat, if he were as hungry as me, and as roomy as he!

(Points to the fattest knight.)

LANCELOT.
Sir Seneschal,
Sleuth-hound thou knowest, and gray, and all the hounds;
A horse thou knowest, a man thou dost not know.
Broad brows and fair, a fluent hair and fine,
High nose, a nostril large and fine, and hands
Large, fair, and fine! - Some young lad's mystery this!
But, or from sheepcote or king's hall, the boy
Is noble-natured. Treat him with all grace,
Lest he should come to shame thy judging of him.

(Exeunt Kay and Gareth.)
(Knight attendants, march past the throne saluting the King, and go before him as the court retires, the King's train borne by his Page.)

SCENE IV

THRONE ROOM OF CAMELOT CASTLE.

(Time, some months later. King seated on throne. Enter messenger, Only Page and perhaps Jester, or one other present.)

MESSENGER.
My Lord, there is one without craves audience with thee.

KING.
Bid him enter. (Enter Gareth.) Speak, my son.

GARETH.
Sir King, when I came hither I was bound by sacred promise to my mother to disguise myself, nor even tell my name.
      And I was glad for glory to endure the sooty yoke of kitchen vassalage, and eat with thralls my portion by the door; and couch at night, though prince, with kitchen-knaves, my comrades of the hearth.
      But to-day my lady-mother sends me full release from this my vow; and now I speak and own myself Gareth, the son of Lot and Bellicent. The queen hath sent me arms; and so this joy is mine, - to leap out of the smoke, at once from Satan's foot to Peter's knee!
      I have staggered thy strong Gawain in a tilt for pastime; yea, he said it! Joust can I. Make me thy knight in secret. Let my name be hidden, and give me the first quest, then I spring like flame from ashes.

(Gareth bows low, drops on one knee, and kisses the king's hand.)

KING.
Son! Thy good mother let me know thee here,
And sent her wish that I would yield thee thine.
Make thee my knight? My knights are sworn to vows
Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness,
And uttermost obedience to the king.

GARETH. (Springing from his knees.)
My king, for hardihood I can promise thee.
For uttermost obedience make demand
Of whom ye gave me to, the Seneschal,
No mellow master of meats and drinks!
And as for love - ah, well, - I love not yet,
But love I shall, God willing.

KING.
Make thee my knight in secret?
Yea, but he, our noblest brother, and our truest man,
And one with me in all, he needs must know.

GARETH.
Let Lancelot know, my king, let Lancelot know,
Thy noblest and thy truest!

KING.
But wherefore would ye men should wonder at you?
Nay, rather for the sake of me their king,
And the deed's sake my knighthood do the deed,
Than to be noised at.

GARETH.
Have I not earned my cake in baking of it?
Let my name be until I make my name!
My deed will speak, it is but for a day.

KING. (Taking sword from Page.)
I yield my will to thine. Rise, Sir Gareth! (Gives him accolade.)
Tell Lancelot I would speak with him.

(Exit Gareth. Enter Lancelot.)
KING.
I have given him the first quest; he is not proven.
Look therefore, when he calls for this in hall,
Thou get to horse and follow him far away,
Cover the lions on thy shield, and see,
Far as thou mayest, he be not ta'en nor slain.

(Enter Gareth with the Court.)
KING.
All hail, my noble knights! And now my merry men,
Who will make sport for us?

GAWAIN.
I challenge Sir Jeffrey!

(Mock combat between Gawain and Jester.)
(Jester rises and advances with outstretched sword. Suddenly he produces a bladder from behind his back, and drives Gawain from the stage, amidst general laughter. Sir Jeffrey returns limping.)

KNIGHT.
Why Jeffrey, Jester, what's the matter? Did yonder slender skeleton tread upon thy toe?

JESTER.
No - No - My shoes hurt me!

KNIGHT.
No wonder, fool. You have them on the wrong feet.

JESTER.
Well - well, I c-can't help that, can I? I haven't got any other feet.

LYNETTE. (Rushing in.)
O King, for thou hast driven the foe without,
See to the foe within! bridge, ford, beset
By bandits, everyone that owns a tower
The lord for half a league. Why sit ye there?
Rest would I not, Sir King, an I were king,
Till even the lonest hold were all as free
From stain of blood as thy white altar cloth.

KING.
Comfort thyself, I nor mine rest;
So my knighthood keep the vows they swore,
The wasted moorland of our realm shall be
Safe, damsel, as the centre of this hall.
What is thy name? thy need?

LYNETTE.
Lynette, my name, noble; my need, a knight
To combat for my sister, Lyonors,
A lady of high lineage, of great lands;
And comely, yea, and comelier than myself,
She lives in Castle Perilous; a river
Runs in three loops about her dwelling place,
And o'er it are three passings, and three knights
Defend the passings, brethren; and a fourth,
And of that four the mightiest, holds her stayed
In her own castle, and so besieges her
To break her will, and make her wed with him;
And but delays his purpose till thou send
To do battle with him thy chief man
Sir Lancelot, whom he trusts to overthrow;
Then wed, with glory. But she will not wed
Save whom she loveth, or a holy life.
Now therefore have I come for Lancelot.

KING.
Damsel, ye know this Order lives to crush
All wrongers of the realm. But say, these four,
Who be they? What the fashion of the men?

LYNETTE.
They be of foolish fashion, O Sir King,
The fashion of that old knight-errantry
Who ride abroad, and do but what they will,
Courteous or bestial from the moment, such
As have nor law nor king, and three of these
Proud in their fantasy call themselves THE DAY,
MORNING-STAR, and NOON-SUN, and EVENING-STAR,
Being strong fools. And never a whit more wise
The fourth, who alway rideth armed in black,
A huge man-beast of boundless savagery.
He names himself THE NIGHT and oftener DEATH,
And wears a helmet mounted with a skull,
And bears a skeleton figured on his arms,
To show that who may slay or scape the three,
Slain by himself, shall enter endless night.
And all these four be fools, but mighty men,
And therefore am I come for Lancelot.

JESTER.
"And all these four be fools, but mighty men!"
(Brandishes a broom.) A Broom, Sir King! A Broom!
And if I do not sweep the Sun and Stars away, and prove myself a braver, busier, bigger fool than they -

GARETH.
A boon, Sir King! This quest!
Yea, King, thou knowest thy kitchen knave am I,
And mighty thro' thy meats and drinks am I,
And I can topple o'er a hundred such.
Thy promise, King!

KING.
                                        Rough, sudden,
And pardonable, worthy to be knight -
Go, therefore!

LYNETTE. (Lifting both arms.)
Fie on thee, King! I asked for thy chief knight,
And thou hast given me but a kitchen knave!

(Rushes from the Hall.)
KING.
Now, forth, Gareth! And find without the gate
The King's own gift, a war horse of renown;
And thy companions from the north
Squires twain, with shield and casque, and spear.

(King rises to his feet.)
Now leap from thy disguise, cast thy dull cloak,
For 'neath thy dusky case there burns a jeweled harness.
Flame forth from smoke; break bright, and pass, and fly!

LANCELOT.
God bless the King and all his fellowship!

KNIGHTS. (Shouting.)
God bless the King and all his fellowship!

(Music, Processional march. Knights and attendants pass the throne saluting the king, forming procession before the king, the train of whose robe is borne by his page.)

SCENE V.

A WOOD NEAR CASTLE PERILOUS.

(Enter Kay.)
KAY.
Bound on a quest, with horse and arms -
The King hath past his time! -
My scullion knave!
Will there be dawn in West and eve in East?
Begone, my knave! Belike, and like enow
Some old head-blow not heeded in his youth
So shook his wits they wander in his prime;
Crazed! How the villain lifted up his voice,
Nor shamed to bawl himself a kitchen knave!
Tut! He was tame and meek enow with me
Till peacocked up with Lancelot's noticing.
Well, - I will after my loud knave, and learn
Whether he know me for his master yet.
Out of the smoke he came, and so my lance
Hold, by Heav'n's grace, he shall into the mire, -
Thence, if the king awaken from his craze,
Into the smoke again.

LANCELOT.
Kay, wherefore wilt thou go against the king,
For that did never he whereon ye rail,
But ever meekly served the king in thee?
Abide, take counsel; for this lad is great
And lusty, and knowing both of lance and sword.

KAY.
Tut! Tell not me, - ye are overfine
To mark stout knaves with foolish courtesies.

(Exit Kay and Lancelot.)                 (Enter group of knights talking.)

FIRST KNIGHT.
Didst see him loose
The cloak that dropped from collar-bone to heel,
A cloth of roughest web, and cast it down,
And from it, like a fuel-smothered fire
That looking dead, bursts bright with flash of flame,
- So Gareth ere he parted flashed in arms!

SECOND KNIGHT.
And when he donned the helm and took the shield
And mounted horse and graspt a spear, the people
Prest around him; from hall and kitchen came
The thralls in throngs, and seeing him who worked
Lustier than any, any whom they could but love,
Mounted in arms, threw up their caps and cried,
Echoing the shouts within,
God bless the king and all his fellowship!

THIRD KNIGHT.
But marked you not the damsel lingering by the field and muttering:
Wherefore did the king scorn me?
For where Sir Lancelot lackt, at least
He might have yielded to me one of these
Who tilt for lady's love and glory here,
Rather than - O sweet heaven! O fie upon him! -
His kitchen knave.

FOURTH KNIGHT.
Yea, and I saw Gareth draw nigh unto her -
And there were none but few goodlier than he -
Shining in arms. Damsel, the quest is mine, he said,
Lead, and I follow. She, thereat,
Nipping her nose with petulant thumb and finger
And shrilling, cried: Hence, hence! Avoid!
Thou smellest all of kitchen grease. Begone!

FIFTH KNIGHT.
Methinks this maiden somewhat of a shrew.
And did he take it gently?

FOURTH KNIGHT.
Aye, aye! Damsel, Sir Gareth answered, say
Whate'er ye will, but whatsoe'er ye say,
I leave not till I finish this fair quest,
Or die therefor.

FIFTH KNIGHT.
But come, my friends, I seek the forest; perchance we may meet adventure there. Who goes with me?

(Exit knights.)
(Enter Lynette, followed by Gareth, bearing blue shield, on which is white star.)

LYNETTE.
Sir, - and good faith, I fain had added knight,
But that I heard thee call thyself a knave, -
Shamed am I that I so rebuked, reviled,
Missaid thee. Noble I am and thought the king
Scorned me and mine. And now, thy pardon, friend,
For thou hast ever answered courteously,
And wholly bold thou art, and meek withal
As any of Arthur's best, but, being knave,
Hast mazed my wit! I marvel what thou art.

GARETH.
Damsel, in sooth, thou art not all to blame,
Saving that you mistrusted our good king
Would handle scorn, or yield you, - asking, - one
Not fit to cope your quest. You said your say;
My answer was my deed.
And seeing now thy words are fair, methinks
There rides no knight, not Lancelot, his great self,
Hath force to quell me. But, look, who comes behind?

(Enter Lancelot with shield covered, - seeing the shield taken from "Evening Star," he pretends to be the friend of the vanquished knight.)

LANCE.
Stay, felon knight, I avenge me for my friend

(They meet in combat. Gareth is thrown at first thrust. Finding himself so suddenly on the grass he laughs.)

LYNETTE.
Shamed! Shamed and overthrown, and - tumbled back into the kitchen-knave!
Why laugh ye? That ye blew your boast in vain?

GARETH.
Nay, noble damsel, but that I, the son
Of old King Lot, and good Queen Bellicent,
And knight of Arthur, here lie thrown by whom
I know not. All thro' mere unhappiness -
Device and sorcery and unhappiness -
Out, sword, we are thrown!

(Throws down his sword.)
LANCE.
O, Gareth, Prince, through mere unhappiness
Of one who came to help thee, not to harm, -
Lancelot, - and all as glad to find thee whole
As on the day when Arthur knighted thee.

GARETH.
Thou Lancelot? Thine the hand that threw me?

LYNETTE.
Lancelot?
Why came ye not when called? and wherefore now
Come ye, not called? I gloried in my knave,
Who being still rebuked would answer still
Courteous as any knight. But now, if knight,
The marvel dies, and leaves me fooled and tricked,
And only wondering wherefore played upon,
And doubtful whether I and mine be scorned.
Where should be truth if not in Arthur's hall,
In Arthur's presence? Knight, knave, prince, and fool!
I hate thee and for ever!

LANCE.
Blessed be thou, Sir Gareth! Knight art thou
To the king's best wish. O damsel, be you wise
To call him shamed who is but overthrown?
Thrown have I been, nor once, but many a time.
Victor from vanquished issues at the last,
And overthrower from being overthrown.
Well hast thou done, for all the stream is freed,
And the king's justice wreaked upon his foes;
And when reviled hast answered graciously,
And makest merry when overthrown. Prince, knight!
Hail, knight and prince, and of our Table Round!

LYNETTE.
O Lancelot, O Lancelot! (Clapping her hands.)
Full merry am I to find my goodly knave
Is knight and noble. See now, sworn have I,
- Else yon black felon had not let me pass,
To bring thee back to do the battle with him.
Thus as thou goest, he will fight thee first;
Who doubts thee victor? so will my knight-knave,
Miss the full flower of this accomplishment.

LANCE.
Peradventure he you name
May know my shield. Let Gareth, an he will,
Change his for mine.

LYNETTE.
Lancelot-like!
Courteous in this, Lord Lancelot, as in all.

GARETH. (Seizing the shield.)
Ramp, ye lance-splintering lions, on whom all spears
Are rotten sticks! Ye seem agape to roar!
O noble Lancelot, from my hold on these
Streams virtue, fire, thro' one who will not shame
Even the shadow of Lancelot under shield.
Hence, let us go!

(Exeunt.)
(Enter Knights on their way back from tourney and adventure.)

FIRST KNIGHT.
Comrades, the lad is brave, patient, and kind withal.
Down the long avenues of a boundless wood
I followed them. The damsel all the way
With hot and bitter speech Gareth beknaved,
But still he answered only with a smile: I shall assay.
Till presently the damsel cried, Sir Kitchen-knave
The wood is nigh as full of thieves as leaves;
Sir Scullion, canst thou use that spit of thine?
Fight, and thou canst, I have missed the only way.
Then to the shore of one of those long loops
Wherethro' the serpent river coils, they came.
There armed in armor blue, with starry shield,
Blue also, paced the lawless warrior, Morning-Star.
And Gareth silent gazed upon the knight.
Who stood a moment ere his horse was brought,
Glorying.                                     Then he that bore
The star, when mounted, cried from o'er the bridge:
A kitchen-knave, and sent in scorn of me!
                            Then spake the boy,
I spring from loftier lineage than thine own.
Have at thee! All at fiery speed the two
Shocked on the central bridge, and either spear
Bent but not brake, and either knight at once,
Hurled as a stone from out a catapult
Beyond his horse's crupper and the bridge,
Fell as if dead, but quickly rose and drew,
And Gareth lashed so fiercely with his brand
He drave his enemy backward down the bridge,
Till the lad's shield was cloven; but one stroke
Laid him that clove it grovelling on the ground.

ALL.
Bravo, bravo! Indeed, a noble combat!

SECOND KNIGHT.
Yea, hark to me!
I saw them at the second river loop,
Where, huge on huge red horse, and all in mail
Burnished to blinding, shone the Noon-day Sun.
                          Who, visoring up a red
And cipher face of rounded foolishness,
Pushed horse across the foamings of the ford,
Whom Gareth met mid-stream. Four strokes they struck
With sword, and these were mighty. The new knight
Had fear he might be shamed; but as the Sun
Heaved up a ponderous arm to strike the fifth,
The hoof of his horse slipped in the stream, the stream
Descended, and the Sun was washed away!

(Laughter.)
THIRD KNIGHT.
And I stood near them when he met
The last, the third fool of their allegory.
For there, beyond a bridge of triple bow,
All in the rose red from the west, the knight
That named himself the Star of Evening stood.
They madly hurled together on the bridge;
And Gareth overthrew him, lighted, drew,
There met him drawn, and overthrew him again,
But up like fire he started; and as oft
As Gareth brought him grovelling on his knees,
So many a time he vaulted up again.
Strike - Strike! the maiden cried,
Strike! Thou art worthy of the Table Round -
And Gareth hearing, ever strongly smote,
And hewed great pieces of his armor off him,
But could not wholly bring him under.
Till at length Sir Gareth's brand
Clashed his and brake it utterly to the hilt.
"I have thee now!" But forth that other sprang
And all unknightlike, writhed his wiry arms
Around him, till he felt, despite his mail,
Strangled. But, straining even his uttermost
Cast, and so hurled him headlong o'er the bridge
Down to the river, sink or swim!

(Kay, who has been listening unobserved, advances.)

FOURTH KNIGHT.
See, here is Kay. Now mark me well, he'll praise
Whom he was wont to scorn.

KAY.
Sir Knights, I like me well the tale ye tell. I always thought the lad was brave. He is some noble youth, perhaps a prince disguised. I will at once to the King, and tell the story of his knightly deeds. 'Tis worthy the best annals of the Table Round. Arthur will set his shield, full carved and blazoned rich and bright, above his name Gareth, on topmost rank of treble range in Hall.

FOURTH KNIGHT.
Go to, now, Kay. Too late to change your note of scorn. King Arthur knows the lad; nor seems it well to shift from cold contempt to hollow praise, as veers the weather-vane in varying winds.

(Exeunt.)

SCENE VI.

A CASTLE WALL WITH WINDOWS.

(Enter Gareth followed by Lancelot and Lynette. Gareth blows lustily upon a horn. The Lady Lyonors is seen at the window. At the third blast Mors, the monster, appears.)

GARETH.
Fool, for thou hast, men say, the strength of ten,
Canst thou not trust the limbs thy God hath given,
But must, to make the terror of thee more,
Trick thyself out in ghastly imageries
Of that which life hath done with, and the clod, -
Less dull than thou, will hide with mantling flowers
As if for pity.

(Lady Lyonors wrings her hands and weeps.)
(Fierce combat between Gareth and Mors. Gareth cleaves the monster's skull-helmet and out from this issues the bright face of a blooming boy.)

MORS.
Knight, slay me not, my brethern bade me do it.
To make a horror all about the house,
And stay the world from Lady Lyonors,
They never dreamed the passes would be past.

GARETH.
                                        My fair child,
What madness made thee challenge the chief knight
Of Arthur's Hall?

MORS.
Fair Sir, they bade me do it.
They hate the king, and Lancelot, the King's friend;
They hoped to slay him somewhere on the stream,
They never dreamed the passes could be past.

(Lady Lyonors, with maidens and courtiers enters, - Left.)

(Enter King Arthur and his court and Bellicent, - Right.)

KING ARTHUR. (Beckons Gareth to him. Gareth kneels.)
Sir Gareth, thou hast done full well, and I thy King am proud of thee.

JESTER. (Shaking hands with Gareth.)
Sir Gareth, thou hast done fool well and I, the fool, am proud of thee!

KING'S PAGE.
Sir Jeffrey, thou hast also done the fool well and all the court is proud of thee. Take thou this shield.

(Hangs over his shoulder a shield with the device, of a fool's head.)

BELLICENT. (Embracing Gareth.)
My own true son, my best beloved Prince!
(Turning to the front). Now springs the happier day from under ground.
Let Lady Lyonors and her house, with dance
And revel and song, make merry over Death,
As being, after all their foolish fears,
And horrors, only proven a blooming boy!
Let large mirth live, Gareth hath won The Quest!

LANCELOT. (Facing the knights)
'Rah! 'Rah! 'Rah! (Castle Cheer)

KING.
And now my gallant knights, let us sing in honor of Sir Gareth our song of the Round Table!

                                                                Upon King Arthur's throne to-night
                                                                The royal sword is flashing bright,
                                                                The dew of youth on us is laid,
                                                                The dew of heaven upon our blade.

                                                                Then lift the heart and raise the song
                                                                On manly voices fresh and strong;
                                                                To knightly manhood pledged are we
                                                                In life, in love, in loyalty.

(Tableaux.)

CURTAIN.

A CASTLE SONG

Rev. James Yeames

Tune - "Honey Boy".

See him gaily ride away,
              Our noble lad!
He must go, as you know,
On his quest for what is best,
              Sir Galahad!
With his shining sword, and armor bright,
Fighting ever for the right,
              Sir Galahad!
Courage high! Foemen fly!
Let not hope nor purpose fail,
Yonder shines the Holy Grail,
Arthur's knights ne'er quit or quail,
              Galahad!

                          CHORUS.

Galahad! We give you joyous speeding!
Galahad! We follow on your leading!
Where you are riding, riding on your way,
              Gallant boy, Galahad!
For each heart is filled with high emotion,
We will strive to copy your devotion;
              Comrades dear, Never fear!
We will follow, follow
              Follow after Galahad!

Strong as with the strength of men,
              Go, gallant lad!
Heart so pure, stroke so sure,
For your sword is "bathed in heav'n,"
              Sir Galahad!
To our white-cross flag we know you're true,
And our hearts are all with you,
              Our Galahad!
Hail the King! Shout and sing!
Here we pledge ourselves again
Loyal knights and gentle men,
Without fear and without stain
              Galahad!

                        CHORUS.

---

---

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: A PLAY

by

THE REVEREND JAMES YEAMES

ACT I. NEW YEAR'S DAY AT CAMELOT.
        Opening Chorus. "All Hail, All Hail! The Glad New Year!"
                Carol. "Pass the year into yesterdays."
                "Knights and Ladies dance and sing!"
(Minuet and Waltz movements)

ACT II. GAWAIN'S CHAMBER, HALLOWE'EN.
        Chorus. "To morrow is All Hallows' Day!"
        Dagonet's Song,--"The spooks and sprites are out to-night."

ACT III. THE BARON'S CASTLE. CHRISTMASTIDE.
        Lullaby. "Hush, hush! Goodnight! Goodnight!"

ACT IV. THE GREEN CHAPEL. NEW YEAR'S DAY.

ACT V. IN ARTHUR'S HALL.

CAST

GAWAIN.
THE GREEN KNIGHT.
KING ARTHUR.
QUEEN GUINEVERE.
MERLIN.
DAGONET.
AGRAVAIN.
LANCELOT.
FAME, afterwards DUKE OF WIRRAL.
GOLD, afterwards PHELOT, First Messenger.
PLEASURE, afterwards LADY OF THE CASTLE.
HUMPHREY, Second Messenger.
THE BARON.
GUIDE.
RALPH, the Kitchen-knave.
LADY EDITH.
OLD YEAR.
NEW YEAR.
Court Ladies, Servants, Knights, Squires, Pages, etc.

INTRODUCTION

        The Poem upon which this play is based is contained in a manuscript of the fourteenth century, preserved in the British Museum, London.
        The story is necessarily modified in order to bring it within the appreciation of boys, and to adapt it, in its representation, to their powers and resources.
        The whole of Act II, and of Act III (except "The Lady") is an interpolation. The character of Dagonet, as also that of the Kitchen-knave, has been introduced to supply an element of humor.
        The source of the main incidents in the story is a prose rendering of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Jessie L. Weston.
        Of this Middle-English Arthurian Romance M. Gaston Paris has said: It is "The jewel of the English mediæval literature." To those who would test the justice of this eulogy we commend Miss Weston's book, which is published by The New Amsterdam Book Co., New York.

ARGUMENT

        The Green Knight, intruding upon a New Year's Festival at Camelot, makes a bold challenge. Gawain accepts the challenge.
        In Act II, Merlin's magic art brings to Gawain visions of the temptations which await him on his quest. Pursuing his quest, Gawain arrives on Christmas Eve at the unknown Baron's castle. Here, the temptations prefigured in vision meet him in reality.
        Resuming the journey, he reaches the Green Chapel on New Year's Day, and keeps the appointed tryst with the Green Knight. The Green Knight reveals himself, and explains how all that has happened has been a test of the honor and valor of the Knights of the Round Table.
        Gawain and his faithful squire, Dagonet, return to Camelot, to be received with favor by King Arthur and his Court.

PROPERTIES, ETC.

ACT I. NEW YEAR'S DAY AT CAMELOT.
In Arthur's Hall.
        Platform with Banquet-table furnished for the feast; with candles, silver cups, dishes, flagons, etc. Window in rear. Green bough and Battle-axe. (The handle should not be less than four feet long, and the blade at least a foot wide at the edge. Blade can be made of folded cardboard covered with tinfoil.)

ACT II. HALLOWE'EN AT CAMELOT.
Gawain's Chamber.
        Couch, candles, etc. Jack-o-lanterns (?) Colored lights, etc. Whistle, rattle, etc., to produce appropriate noises (behind the scenes) in Dagonet's song.
        In the scene at the back of the stage is set a picture frame, at least seven feet high and four feet wide. Here, painted on scrim, stretched tight, is a picture of King Arthur. In this frame, as Visions, Fame, Gold, and Pleasure, in turn appear. The back of the stage must be kept dark until the Vision is to be seen. Then light from behind (an electric hooded light from top of the frame at the back is best) should be thrown directly on the Figure. The picture of Arthur then disappears, to be seen again when the lights behind are shut off and the lights in front are thrown on.

ACT III. THE BARON'S CASTLE. CHRISTMAS TIDE.
Guest Room of the Castle.
        Helmet, shield, etc. (for Gawain) which Dagonet is polishing. Tin cover, dipper, spit or long spoon for Kitchen-knave. Handsome sword for First Mess. Casket with pearls and jewels for Second M. Large gilded key. Jewelled ring for Lady, also girdle of green and gold with gold tassels or pendants. Torches or candles for servants.

ACT IV. THE GREEN CHAPEL. NEW YEAR'S DAY.
        Battle-axe. (The same axe used in Act I., will serve. The edge of the blade should be touched with red ochre so as to leave a red mark on Gawain's neck at the third stroke.) The Green Knight wears the same covering green cloak or tunic, etc., as in Act I. but underneath is his splendid dress as the Baron. The Girdle, worn by Gawain.

ACT V. IN ARTHUR'S HALL.
        Scene. Same as Act I. but with dais and throne, etc. Battle-axe hanging above the dais, as in Scene I. Excalibur. A green sash for each knight and lady. White knight's tunic, sword and spurs for Dagonet. Each knight should carry or wear a sword. Esquires and pages a shield or spear, or both.

SUGGESTIONS

        In Act I. the high table should be set on a low platform near the back scene, which must show a window, through which the King and others may seem to look upon the courtyard.
        In Act II. the back scene must leave at least two feet behind, so that Figures may stand behind picture-frame, and pass in and out. The rear of the scene should be kept dark. Each Figure poses as a picture. Lights from the front must be so arranged as to produce this effect. As the time of this Act is Hallowe'en, the lights and setting (before and after visions) should be in harmony with the hour.
        In Act III. a handsome couch is needed for Gawain. Gawain's shield:--In upper half, pentangle (a continuous line interlacing at the five points) of gold or red. In lower half, head or figure of Virgin, with gold nimbus, on blue ground.
        Couch at R. Table and chair at L. Fireplace, with logs burning on the hearth. Other logs ready for Dagonet to put on the fire. If you have electric light it is easy to represent a blazing fire; if not, a good imitation can be made with red and gold tinsel paper and grey wool for smoke.
        Act IV. The back scene should be set two or three feet from the rear wall. The arch of the chapel may be filled with transparent cloth so as to show red or green lights burned behind. By some means, as of a rattle, a noise of grinding a weapon must be made behind the scenes.
        Act V. The scene is the same as in Act I. The platform and table have given place to dais and throne, and the surroundings can be arranged so as to produce a new effect.
        In Acts I, III, and V, the back scene may be set at the full depth of the stage, so as to leave room in front. In Acts II and IV, space must be left behind the back scene.

COSTUMES:
        For Knights, a sleeveless tunic, with cross or shield (with crest or arms). Tunics may be white, or colored, or even parti-colored (as black and orange, purple and yellow, etc.) They may be worn with or without belt, and have separate sleeves of another material and color. Full trunks, or knee trousers may be worn; and common underwear dyed makes a fair substitute for tight long hose. Low shoes with buckles, or boots. Consult pictures of mediæval dress. Some King Arthur books (Miss Macleod's "King Arthur and His Noble Knights," e.g. ) have suggestive drawings.
        Bright cambric, or cheese cloth, or sateen is a very good material.
        Dagonet wears the usual jester's costume,--except in Act IV and V. He must then be dressed as for a journey, in some sober color. In the last act he is invested at his knighting with white tunic, spurs, and sword. The King does not wear the royal robe in the first act, but should be dressed as magnificently as possible. In the last act he wears crown and robe. [Morgan-le-Fay may appear as described in the Third Act. She should be dressed as an old woman, with a white wimple under chin, hood, and cloak. She does not speak, and the character is not absolutely necessary.]
        (1) One reliable boy should be made property-man, and should have a list of things required in each scene, and see that they are where they ought to be. Other boys should serve as (2) prompter, (3) scene-shifters, and (4) in charge of the lights, and (5) curtain. The good management of these matters is as important as the work of the actors.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

ACT I
NEW YEAR'S DAY AT CAMELOT

        Scene.--Arthur's Hall.

(King, Queen, Merlin, Gawain, Agravain, Lancelot, etc., at High Table
                Knights, pages, etc., with Dagonet, in the Hall.)

CHORUS-- (discovered as Curtain rises.)
        All hail! All hail! the Glad New Year,
        With song and dance and hearty cheer,
        We meet, we greet, the Glad New Year!
        We meet, we greet, the Glad New Year!        (Repeat chorus.)

                         (Enter Old Year.)

OLD YEAR--
        But who are ye that feast and sing,
        While fleeting Time is on the wing?
        And I, the Old Year, bent and grey,
        Go tottering on my wasting way?

CHORUS--
        Farewell, Farewell! The Good Old Year!
        We keep in mind thy memories dear!
        Of glowing hearth, and verdant field,
        Of summer's flowers, and autumn's yield:
        Thy work is done, thy course is run,
        Spent thy last day, set thy last sun.
        Hail and Farewell! Hail and Farewell! The Good Old Year!

OLD YEAR--
        'Tis well! I have not lived in vain,
        All is not loss; like golden grain
        Stored in the past, my deeds and days
        Live in your lives, and live always!

                         (Old Year retires.)

LADY EDITH--
        But see He comes, Old Time new-born,
        Fair as the flowers, bright as the morn,
        The young New Year! The Glad New Year!

CHORUS--
        All hail, All hail! The Glad New Year!
        With song and dance, etc.

NEW YEAR--
                                 (Enter Spring.)
        Behold the green and goodly Spring!
        The old must go,--the new year bring,
        Grass to the field, leaf to the tree,
        And what has been, again shall be.

                                 (Enter Summer.)

        And Summer, too, all crowned with flowers,
        With song of birds, and perfumed bowers,

                         (Enter Autumn and Winter.)

        And Autumn, rich with fruits and grain,
        And Winter, whitening lake and plain!

CHORUS--
        All hail! All hail! The Glad New Year!
        With song and dance and hearty cheer,
        We meet, we greet the glad New Year,
        We meet, we greet the Young New Year;
        With budding Spring, and Summer's prime,
        And Autumn's store, and Winter-time,
        Hail and Farewell! Hail and Farewell!
        The Changing Years!

(Dance.)

(Exit--New Year and Seasons.)

(Enter Green Knight, green bough in one hand, huge battle-axe in the
                             other.)

GREEN KNIGHT.--Where is the ruler of this fold? I would gladly look upon that hero, and have speech with him.

(Dagonet creeps behind knight, touches weapons, grins and grimaces.)

KING ARTHUR.--Sir, thou are welcome to this place. Lord of this hall am I, and men call me Arthur. Be seated at our board, and tarry with us a while, and what thy will is that shall we learn hereafter.

G.K.--Nay, 'twas not in mine errand to tarry. But, the praise of this thy folk and this thy city is lifted up on high, and thy warriors are holden for the best and most valiant of those who ride mail-clad to the fight. The wisest and the worthiest of the world are they, and well-proven in all knightly sports. And here, as I have heard tell, is fairest courtesy, therefore have I come hither at this time.

K.A.--Thou art welcome, Sir Knight. What then is thine errand?

G.K.--By the branch that I bear ye may be sure I come in peace, seeking no strife. For had I willed to journey in warlike guise, I have at home both hauberk and helm, shield and shining spear.
        Since then, I seek no war, my raiment is that of peace. But if thou be so bold as all men tell, thou wilt freely grant me the boon I ask.

K.A.--Sir Knight, if thou cravest battle here, thou shalt not fail for lack of foe.

G.K.--Nay, I ask not fight. In faith, here are but beardless children. Were I clad in armour there is no man here might match me!
        Therefore I ask in this court but for a Christmas jest,--for that it is Yule-tide and New Year, and there are many here fain for sport.
        If any one in this hall holds himself so hardy, so bold both of blood and brain, as to dare to strike me one stroke for another, I will give him as a gift this axe, to handle as he may list, and I will abide the first blow, unarmed!

(Dagonet, behind the knight, pretends to lift the axe; mimics knight's
                        gestures, etc.)

G.K.--If any knight be so bold as to prove my words let him come swiftly to me here and take this weapon. I quit claim to it,--he may keep it as his own, and I will abide his stroke.
        Then shalt thou give me the right to deal him another,--the respite of a year and a day shall he have. Now, haste, and let see whether any here dare say aught!

(Knights, who have been frowning, and whispering to one another,
                        remain silent.)

G.K.--What! Is this Arthur's Hall? And these the knights whose renown has run through many realms? Where are now your pride and your conquests, your fierce wrath and mighty words?
        Now are the praise and renown of the Round Table o'erthrown by one man's speech: since all keep silence for dread, ere they have seen a blow!

(Laughs loudly.)

K.A.-- (Springing to his feet and approaching the G. Knight)
        Now, by heaven, foolish is thy asking, and thy folly shall find its fitting answer. I know no man aghast at thy great words. Give me here thine axe, and I shall grant thee the boon thou hast asked!

(K.A. grasps the axe and swings it round. The Green Knight strokes his beard, and draws down his coat, undismayed.)

GAWAIN.-- (leaning forward from his seat next the Queen.)
        I beseech thee, my lord, let this venture be mine. If my liege lady think it not ill, bid me rise and stand by your side.
        Surely it is not seemly that ye should undertake such a challenge, when there are so many bold knights in hall! Though I be the weakest, and the feeblest of wit, the less loss if my life be taken.
        For, save that ye are mine uncle, naught is there in me to praise. No virtue is there in my body save your blood, and since this challenge is such folly that it beseems ye not to take it, let it fall to me who have asked ye first.

ALL-- (loudly) Aye, aye! Gawain! Gawain!

(Gawain rises, kneels down before the king and takes the axe, while the
                    king gives him his blessing.)

K.A.--See to it well, nephew, that thou give him but the one blow; and if thou strikest rightly, I trow thou shalt well abide the stroke he may give thee after!

G.K.-- (as Gawain advances.)
        Make we our covenant, ere we go further. First, I ask thee, knight, thy name. Tell me truly, that I may know thee.

G.--In faith, Gawain am I called, who give thee this buffet, let what may come of it, and at this time twelve month will I take another at thine hand, with whatsoever weapon thou wilt, and none other.

G.K.--Sir Gawain, so may I thrive as I am fain to take this buffet at thine hand. It liketh me well that I shall take at thy fist that which I have asked here. Now swear me, by thy troth, to seek me thyself wherever thou hopest I may be found, and win such reward as thou dealest me this day.
GAWAIN.--Where shall I seek thee? Where is thy place? I wot not where thou dwellest; nor know I thee, knight, thy court, nor thy name.
        But teach me truly all that pertaineth thereto, and tell me thy name, and I shall use all my wit to win my way to thee; and that I swear thee for sooth, and by my sure troth.

G.K.--It is enough, it needs no more. And if I tell thee truly when I have taken the blow and thou hast smitten me, then will I teach thee of my house and home, and my own name; then mayest thou ask thy road and keep covenant.
        And if I waste no words, then farest thou the better; for thou canst dwell at thine ease in thy land and seek no further.
        But now, Come to the court yard of this castle-keep, and take thy toll, and let see how thou strikest!

(They go out, accompanied by a group of knights. The king and
          queen rise and look out of the window--Agravain and Merlin on either side.)

AGRAVAIN.--Aha! See! The Green Knight kneels and bares his neck! His long, light locks are thrown upward over his poll! Gawain, grip well thine axe!

KING A.--By Heaven, a mighty swing!

QUEEN.--See! The head falls! (shuddering, and covering her eyes) I'll look no longer!

(Sinks fainting into her seat.)

MERLIN.--What devil's marvel is this? See! the headless knight rises to his feet! He lifts the fallen head! He sets it in place again! I see the eyes flash and the lips move! Some dark, infernal magic is here!

(Noise without. Knights enter--all exclaiming and gesticulating--followed by Gawain.)

KING A.--Peace, peace! Let one speak. Tell us, Lancelot, if thou canst, what wizardry is this?

LANCE.--My lord, I know not; save that I saw the Green Knight bow his head, and lay his long locks on his crown. Gawain gripped the axe, and raised it on high. He let the blow fall but lightly, but it clave the neck in two, and the fair head fell to the earth!

QUEEN.--Just as I saw it, although I thought my eyes were cheated by a weird and ghastly vision.

LANCE.--But the knight neither faltered nor fell. He started forward, and with outstretched hand, lifted the head by the hair, and placed it on his shoulders again!

(Enter Green Knight. Knights fall back. G.K. faces Gawain and the king.)

GREEN K.--Look Gawain, that thou art ready to go as thou hast promised, and seek leally until thou find me, even as thou to-day hast sworn.
        Come thou, I charge thee, to the Green Chapel; and if thou askest, thou shalt not fail to find me. Therefore, it behooves thee to come, or yield thee as a recreant!

(Exit Green Knight.)

(The court, silent and astonished, gaze after him, until each turns
               and they look and laugh at each other.)

KING ARTHUR.--(turning to the Queen) Dear lady, 'tis well that thou smilest again! And all the court smiles with thee!
        Now, fair nephew, hang up the great axe, since it has hewn enough.
        As for us, we will be merry. For the New Year should be greeted with good will and blithesome cheer, and fair carols of knights and ladies.
        Where is the gay company who a while since cheered us with their song? (Music) Do not I hear music? Bid them enter.

(Enter New Year. Seasons, etc., Chorus.)

CAROL.--Dance with vocal music.

MINUET.

Pass the year into yesterdays,
Blither days are coming,
Where the snow fills the drifted ways,
Bees will soon be humming!
Flowers will bloom where snow-wreaths twine,
Purple clusters weight the vine,
Glowing suns will brightly shine
In the new time coming!
Pass the year into yesterdays,
Blither days are coming!
Pass the year into yesterdays,
Hail the glad time coming!

WALTZ.

Knights and Ladies! Knights and Ladies!
        Dance and sing!
Squires and Pages! Squires and Pages!
        Music bring!
Hail the glad to-morrow, hail the glad New Year!
And for royal Arthur raise a loyal cheer!

CURTAIN.

ACT II
HALLOWE'EN AT CAMELOT

Scene.--Gawain's Chamber. (Enter Dagonet, surrounded by a merry company.)

CHORUS--
To-morrow is All Hallowe'ens' Day,
Till midnight we may sport and play,
        For it is Hallowe'en!
Both witch and warlock are abroad,
And fairies trip it on the sward.
        For once by mortals seen!

DAGONET'S SONG.

                The spooks and sprites are out to-night,
                Both bogies black and pixies bright,
                And sheeted ghosts in ghastly white,
                (I shrink and shiver with affright!)
                What would you do? Now, tell me that,
                If spectres lean and goblins fat
                Crowded on you? Would you stand pat?
                 (Noises) --What's that? What's that? What's that?

Chorus.--Why, that's the CAT!

                I walked out in the castle yard,
                The bridge was hung, the gates were barred,
                Yet, spite of bolt, and watch and ward,
                And sentinel and armed guard,--
                Tall, shadowy forms in cloak and cowl,
                Gaunt skeletons with fleshless jowl,
                From crypt and tomb came forth to prowl--
                 (Noises) --What's that? What's that? What's that?

Chorus.--Why, that's an OWL!

                I sweated, shivered,--cold and hot!
                The while they closer to me got;
                Of sins I minded quite a lot,
                           My prayers, alas! were all forgot!
                With wagging jaws they stood and grinned,
                (Oh, could I up a tree have shinned!)
                But to the spot I felt as pinned--
                 (Noises) --What's that? What's that? What's that?

Chorus.--Why, that's the WIND!

                And one, all clad in scarlet gear,
                With horns and hoofs, and trident spear,
                And barbed tail, drew slowly near,--
                Methought I should have died with fear!
                And some with wings and ears, like bats,
                Round-bellied men with peaked hats,
                Who mopped and mowed, like Cheshire cats--
                 (Noises) --What's that? What's that? What's that?

Chorus.--Oh, Rats! Rats! RATS!

DANCE.

                        To-morrow is All Hallows' Day,
                        Till midnight we will sport and play,
                                For it is Hallowe'en!
                                        etc., etc.

(Enter Gawain.)

GAWAIN.--Cease, cease, ye noisy crew! The hour is late, and I fain would sleep.

(Takes off robe and moves toward couch. Lights lowered and lanterns
        extinguished as singers withdraw. Weird sounds.)

G. (sitting on the bed) --I am full weary, for the day has been long. Yet mine eyes wake wide, and sleep seems far from me.
        I must rise with the dawn, for the morrow is a holy day.
        And then I set out on my quest, for it is within a month of the year and a day on which I am to find the Green Knight.

(Lights tapers at shrine.)

(Crossing himself) --God and all good angels guard me!

(Lies down and covers himself.)

(Soft music. Sleeps.)

(Enter Merlin.)

MERLIN.-- (Waves wand over sleeper, as if invoking a spell.)
        Sleep, sleep well, my son! But, sleeping, thou shalt have strange dreams, and see visions of mystic meaning. The time of thy fiery testing is at hand, and I will strive to fit thee for the hour of trial.

         (Approaches picture in frame, and waves his wand. As he vanishes the scene is darkened, lights are thrown on the picture, and the figure of Fame appears.)

FAME--
        Rings the world with Arthur's name,
        And Lancelot, of deathless fame;
        And thou, Gawain, may'st gain renown,
        And win, perchance, a kingly crown!
        But go no further on this quest,
        What boots it to pursue a jest?
        Seek not the Chapel nor Green Knight,
        Put on thine helm and armor bright,
        Strike thou for fame and royalty,
        The tribes of Cambria beckon thee!
        The yoke of Arthur from thee fling,
        A freeman, thou mayest be a king!

(Figure vanishes)

MERLIN.-- (Appearing as Figure vanishes.)
        Methinks Gawain is strong for e'en so subtle and mighty a tempting.
        Crown and Kingdom! Fame and Glory! Aye, but the price!
Yet (looking down upon the sleeper) thou mightest be royal,--if thou couldst be disloyal!
        For the marches of Wales are all in revolt, and the wild Kymri would hail thee as their lord, if thou wouldst lead them against the king!
        But see, he wakes!

         (Waves wand over picture and retires.)

GAWAIN.-- (Rousing,--stretches,--rubs eyes.)
        By my troth, a strange vision!
        But, was it all a dream? Methought I saw a solid form, all clad in knightly guise, and heard a voice that hailed Gawain as king!
        The King! The King! Who but Arthur is king? (Points to picture.)
        But what strange spell is this which loads my eyelids as if with weights of lead? Awhile I could not sleep; anon I cannot wake!

         (Falls back drowsily and sinks into a deep slumber. Figure appears as picture in the frame as before.)

GOLD--
        What is FAME but a name? And what Glory, but a dream?
        Either is a breath, each a vanishing gleam!
        But GOLD, GOLD, GOLD! Who hath it, all doth hold.
        All that is solid can be bought with this treasure,
        Here is the price which procures every Pleasure:
        Jewels, wine, gear and grain, and feasting without measure!
        Speed thee, where Dee's river runs,
        There, within thrice seven suns,
        Castle gates shall ope to thee,
        Cambria's sons thy liegemen be.
        Arthur's tyrant sway disown,
        Thine may be a royal throne!
        All Caerleon's hoards despoil,
        Lord of men and mines and soil;
        Rich beyond the wildest dream,
        Come, Gawain, where treasures gleam:
        Shines thy star of Destiny,
        Wales and victory wait for thee!

(Vanishes.)

MERLIN.-- (appearing) --Now shall we see if Gold be more potent than Glory. Methinks, Gawain, gallant knight, thou art not to be bought! But, of a truth, he must needs be strong who would resist both Call of Fame and Glamour of Gold!
        King of Cambria! Lord of Caerleon! Possessor of all the gold and gems, the treasures of many kings!
        Ha! He moves! I must be gone.

(Waves wand over picture and vanishes.)

GAWAIN.-- (awakening, stretches himself.)
        Did I wake or sleep? Surely I saw one standing there and heard the voice? Am I dreaming or waking now? In sooth, the powers of heaven and hell are abroad this hour! (Rises and moves to L.)
        It is not much beyond the meridian of night. The sands in the glass have much to run ere the turn of the hour shall come.
        But I am fain to rest and sleep, for I am full weary with sport and toil, and the journey before me is long, and the task hard.
        I will get me to my couch again. Perchance, this time my eyes and ears will be sealed, and my soul sink to slumber, and I sense no more of glory or of gain.

(Lies down again. Soft, melodious music. Third figure appears as
picture in frame.)

PLEASURE--
        FAME may sound his loud, melodious trumpet,--
        Dies the ringing music, and dumb stillness reigns;
        GLORY wreathes his green and shining laurels,
        Soon they fade and perish,--nought but dust remains!
        Torches blaze, to smoulder into darkness,
        Dull oblivion swallows great renown,
        Sullen silence follows loud acclaiming,
        Pyramid and pillar fall in ruin down.
                But PLEASURE is Treasure!
        Spending in the having, and having while ye spend!
        Take now the lute and tread the joyful measure,
        Enjoying to the full the good the gods may send.
        Better the Game, than fickle, fading Fame,
        And the day that we have than the morrow never known;
        Fill up the wine cup, feast ye on life's dainties,
        Singing and dancing where the flowers are strown.
        Love waits for thee, in many bright eyes smiling;
        Charms and caresses, and wreathed lips beguiling;
                Come thou with me! Wake and be free!
                Let duty stern compel thee not,
                Let Death and Fate be all forgot:
                To-day! To-day! Live while ye may!
                Let life, if short, be merry!

(Figure vanishes)

MERLIN (appearing as Figure vanishes.)
        Fame,--Gold,--and Pleasure! Great Three! Too oft the tempting ministers of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil!
        My soul is dark with foreboding. Surely there are fierce ordeals awaiting thee, my son!
        Not that I mistrust thy knightly honor. But, though thou win in the fight, as win thou must, thou mayest be sorely wounded.
        What! Art thou waking?

G.--Then, 'twas not all a dream! Was it thou who camest to me as in vision, in such strange guise? Dost thou read my future?

M.--Nay; only that I see great trials awaiting thee. In what shape the ordeal shall come, I know not. Nor am I sure that the hand of the Foe who challenges thee shall strike the blow thou shouldst most fear.
        There are enemies that assail the fortress from without: I think, Gawain, thou wilt be able to withstand and over-throw them.
        But there are other foes,--crafty, unsuspected,--who sometimes lurk within. Be on thy guard, my son! Forget not the Vision of the Holy Grail, and to thyself be true!
        But get thee to slumber, for there are but three hours before thou must rise and make thee ready to set forth on thy quest.

         (Distant music. Monks in chapel heard chanting.)

M.--List! Already those who keep vigil sing the first office of a new day.

CURTAIN.

ACT III
THE BARON'S CASTLE

SCENE I.

        Guest Room of the Castle. Couch at R. Table and chair at L.

DAGONET. (Polishing Gawain's armour.)
        What luck! What luck! To think we should find this fine place on Christmas Eve! And to think of the three days we've had here!
        The singing! And the dancing! And the feasting! Oh my! Oh my! (smacking his lips.)
        The roast sucklings and the stuffed capons! The boar's head and the turkeys! The jugged hare, and the game pies!
        I could be content to tarry here until the next Christmas-tide!
        But Gawain talks of going on to the Green Chapel with the morrow's morn.
        Ugh! (shudders) That Green Knight! Did I not see his head fall from his body? And yet he walked, and carried his head in his right hand!
        But, if he should cut off Gawain's head, who will set it on Gawain's shoulders again?

         (Enter Kitchen-knave, with tin pans which he is polishing.) Knave. Hallo, brother! Are you brushing up your master's pans?

D. (indignantly.) Pans, forsooth! this is my master's helmet, and this his armor of proof!

KNAVE. Ah, well! (Sticks pan on his head, and advances, holding tin cover as a shield.)         And these are my helmet and shield! And you can put them to the proof!

D. Faugh! Thou are but a kitchen-knave, and smellest of the kitchen!

KNAVE. And wasn't Gareth a kitchen-knave? And did not the Lady Lynette turn up her proud little nose at him?
        Say! Thou dost not need to turn up thy nose,--Nature has done it for thee!

D. Well, well, good knave and sweet scullion, we will not quarrel.
        But, and it please ye, tell me where we are?

KNAVE. (laughs.) Ha, ha! Why fool, thou art there, and I am here!

D. I know, I know! But, what castle is this, and what is thy lord's name?

KNAVE. Oh ho! Perchance it is a Christmas jest? Well; Q-uestion begins with Q; and Q-uest begins with Q; and that is the Q for you and your master. And this is the castle of the Quest, and that is my cue; and my lord is Baron Q, and his good dame my lady Q, and so I can give you the cue!

D. (stammering.) Oh, I p-p-p-pray thee, ex-cu-cu-cuse me!

KNAVE. Nay, thou hadst better mind thy P'--and Q's!

D. (rising.) Now that seems very Pe-pe-cu-cu-liar!

(Puts on helmet and brandishes sword, with shield on his left arm.)

KNAVE. (Advances, flourishing spit or long spoon, tin cover on his
arm, and pan on his head.)

COMBAT--(as they clash.)

(Enter Gawain.)

GAWAIN. What folly is this? (Knave slinks away. Dagonet stands abashed.)

G. Surely thy cap--and--bells become thee better than the warrior's headpiece! Didst thou not promise me that thou wouldst not play the fool if I would take thee on quest as my esquire? Put down that sword, and take thy bauble!

(Exit Dagonet.)

G. Tut, tut! Surely I make much ado about nothing.
And why should not a knight on a fool's errand have a fool for his squire?

(Enter the Baron.)

B. Sir Gawain, I wish that while I live I shall be held the worthier that thou hast been my guest at God's own feast.

G. Gramercy, sir, In good faith all the honor is yours, and may the High King give it you, inasmuch as I am beholden to you in great and small.

B. Stay then, noble prince! It shall pleasure me to have thee as guest for as long as thou canst tarry.

G. Nay, Sir Knight, I must e'en depart on the stern behest which calls me. 'Tis a high quest and a pressing that hath brought me afield, for I am summoned to a certain place, and I know not whither in the world I may wend to find it.
        Therefore, I crave you, tell me truly if ye ever heard word of the Green Chapel where it may be found, or of the Green Knight that keeps it? For I am pledged by solemn compact sworn between us, to meet that knight at the New Year, if so I were in life; and of that New Year it wants but little.
        I' faith, I would look on that hero more joyfully than on any other fair sight! Therefore, by your will, it behoves me to leave you; for I have but barely three days: and I would as soon fall dead, as fail of my errand.

B. (laughing.) Now must ye needs stay; for I will show you your goal--the Green Chapel, ere your term be at an end, have ye no fear!
        But you can take your ease in your bed, friend, till the fourth day, and go forth in the first of the year, and come to that place at mid-morn if you will. Dwell here till New Year's Day, and then rise and set forth, and ye shall be set in the way; 'tis not ten miles hence!

G. (gaily. ) Now I thank thee for this above all else. Now my quest is achieved I will dwell here at your will, and otherwise do as ye shall ask.

(Enter Ladies and Nobles.)

B. Ha! Now surely ye have promised to do the thing I bid thee. Will ye hold to this behest, here, at once?

G. Yea, forsooth. While I abide in your burg I am bound by your behest.

B. Ye have travelled from far, Sir Gawain, and since ye have waked with me, and the festival
has ta' no heed of night or day, ye are not well refreshed by rest and sleep, as I know.
        Ye shall therefore abide in your chamber, and lie at your ease tomorrow. Nor shall ye be left without good company, and I will rise early and go forth to the chase.

G. (bowing to ladies, knight, and nobles.) Who but would accept such courtesy?

B. Sir Knight, we will make a covenant. Whatsoever I win in the wood shall be yours, and whatsoever shall fall to your share that shall ye exchange for it. Let us swear, friend, to make this exchange, however, our hap may be, for worse or for better.

G. I grant you your will; if ye list to do so, it liketh me well.

(Exit--ladies, nobles and Baron, singing:)--

                Now to all, goodnight, goodnight!
                Cover fire and quench the light;
                Hush, hush! Hush, hush!
                        Goodnight! Goodnight!
                Veils of darkness o'er thee sweeping,
                Stars their silent vigil keeping,
                Stillness soothe thy peaceful sleeping,
                        Hush, hush! Goodnight!
                        Hush, hush! Goodnight!

CURTAIN.

SCENE II--THE SAME

(Gawain sleeping. Enter Dagonet softly.)

D. Now if I waken him he will rail at me. And if I waken him not, he will chide me. For it is high noon, and the baron and his hundred men and a hundred dogs have been in the chase these full six hours past.
        I would I had never left Camelot.
        'Tis true we have had rich feasting and rare sport,--and all is not yet done!
        A right merry knight is the lord of this castle--(What said the Knave? Castle Q? Well, that's cu-cu-curious!)--and I am fain to stay,--or, to return!
        But we go not back,--if, indeed, we go back at all,--until we have found the Green Chapel and have met the Green Knight.
        And how can Gawain go back without his head? And how can I go back without Gawain? For my master is no necromancer like this Green giant--

G. (starting up.) Green gooseberries! Get thee my mantle, and put another log on the fire, for the day is cold.

(Dagonet obeys. A knocking is heard at the door. D. opens the door and admits a knight richly clad, who advances and salutes Gawain.)

KNIGHT. Is not this Gawain, nephew of the great Arthur, and Prince of Camelot? Sir Knight, I would speak with thee, alone.

(G. motions to Dagonet to retire, which he does very reluctantly.)

K. Sir Gawain, I am Howell, Duke of Wirral, and Lord of many Hundreds. Ten thousand men pay me soc and sac, and other thousands do me knightly service.
        With me are many noble knights, and we seek to throw off the yoke of Arthur Pendragon. Why should Uther's son-- (sneeringly) --if he be Uther's son?--be Lord of Wales? Why should Cornwall rule Cambria?
        We have men, we have arms, we have treasure. We need but a leader of the royal blood, and all will be bonded in a mighty league, invincible.
        Come, be thou our captain and our king! Speak but the word, and on every peak from Snowdoun to Skiddaw the beacon-fires shall flash thy signal, and repeat thy name.
        Sir Gawain, thou art of kingly line, and we will make thee king! A crown would well become that brow. Take thou this sword, and in thy hand it shall become the sceptre of dominion!

(Offers G. a richly jewelled sword, which G. pushes indignantly from him.)

G. Peace, caitiff, peace! Wouldst have me, duke, a traitor to my king? False to Arthur,--false to my uncle,--a rebel against the rightful sovereignty of my liege lord? (rising.)
        How darest thou approach me thus? What enemy told thee Gawain would lend his ear to a scheme so foul? Tell me his name, and I warrant thee I will slit his lying tongue in twain!

(Duke, startled by G.'s violence, retreats.)

G. Aye, get thee gone! And tell thy rebel crew that brethren of the Round Table hold themselves in sacred covenant,--True to ourselves, true to each other, true to our Order, and true to our country until we meet again!

(Exit Duke, leaving sword. Gawain sinks into a seat and drops his
head on his hands.)

G. Until we meet again! Oh, sweet uncle! great Arthur! my kinsman and my king! Shall we e'er meet again?

CURTAIN.

SCENE III--THE SAME

(Gawain sitting at table reading from a scroll, by light of a taper.
             Gawain's shield must be in view.)

        "Then the huntsmen coupled their hounds, unclosed the kennel door, and called them out. They blew three blasts gaily on their bugles, the hounds bayed fiercely, and they that would go hunting checked and chastised them. A hundred hunters there were of the best, so I have heard tell. Then the trackers got them to the trysting-place and uncoupled the hounds, and the forest rang again with their gay blasts.
        At the first sound of the hunt the game quaked for fear and fled, trembling, along the vale. They betook them to the heights, but the liers-in-wait turned them back with loud cries; the harts they let pass them, and the stags with their spreading antlers, for the lord had forbidden that they should be slain, but the hinds and does they turned back, and drove them down into the valleys. Then might ye see much shooting of arrows.
        As the deer fled under the boughs a broad whistling shaft smote and wounded each sorely, so that wounded and bleeding, they fell dying on the banks. The hounds followed swiftly on their tracks, and hunters, blowing the horn, sped after them with ringing shouts, as if the cliffs burst asunder.
        What game escaped those that shot was run down at the outer ring. Thus were they driven on the hills and harassed at the waters, so well did the men know their work; and the greyhounds were so great and swift that they ran them down as fast as the hunters could slay them.

GAWAIN. Well,--If that be sport give me battle; or the tournament, where brave men joust with brave men on equal terms!
        When lance splinters on shield, or sword cleaves through helm or hauberk, it is give and take; and each knight assailed is clothed in mail, and stands and strikes in his own defence.
        But these poor beasts,--hunted, helpless, wounded, bleeding, dying! Strong men, well armed, with horses and hounds, against painting, frightened hinds and does!
        If that be the boast and pride of venery, give me the nobler glory of chivalry! I had, surely, rather be a true and tender knight than a mighty hunter!

(Enter Dagonet.)

D. Sir Gawain, two men, seemingly from afar, stand without, asking to see thee. And they have horses and grooms, and servitors and mails.
        Perchance, they be merchants with much treasure.

G. Bid them enter. But who are they? And why do they seek me here, seeing I myself know not--much less can others know--where I am?

         (Enter first and second messengers. Second messenger carries a casket of jewels.)

PHELOT--First Messenger. Most noble knight and prince, we salute thee!
        Though thou hast been here but few days we have heard of thee, and with great desire have longed to see thee.
        Steward of many broad acres am I, and keeper of the treasures of this and other baronies.

(Opens the casket borne by second Messenger Humphrey and brings out a string of jewels.)

        Fain would I offer thee, most worthy knight of the Round Table, a Christmas gift--

G. Nay, nay! 'Twere without reason to receive, as indeed it is to offer such gifts. Pay tribute to the king; not to the unworthy knight who as yet has not paid his toll or won his quest!

PHELOT-- (drawing nearer, and taking a golden key from his
girdle.)
        Sir Knight, All this treasure and much more may be thine, if thou wilt but champion our cause. All North Wales and the shires beyond, from Chester to Caerlisle, are aflame with the spirit of liberty, of resistance to Arthur's iron rule.
        All that is needed is a leader. Of the ancient line of British kings he must be, and thou art he!
        With thy device blazoned on our banner, victory is sure!
        Let but the people see thy red shield, with its pentangle of gold and image of Our Lady, lifted high in the field, and they will rally round thy standard and make thee a crowned king!
        Take this Golden Key. It will open for thee vaults of treasure, beyond all the dreams of desire--

G. (angrily starting up.) What meaneth this? Into what nest of vipers have I come? Would ye have me another Judas, to betray my lord and sell my king for gold? Thy money perish with thee! Get thee to perdition with thy gold!

(The conspirators stand, struck speechless before the passion of Gawain.)

G. Seest thou this shield? Dost know what these five points in endless knot of gold portray? Speak they not to me of the five wounds of the Crucified, and of the five joys and dolors of His Blessed Mother?
        Go, tell them that sent ye, whoever they be, that Gawain cannot be bought. Begone!
        As for me, I shall be full glad when I win from this place; for sure no worse can befall me than to breathe the same air and hold speech with such as ye!

(Messengers retire, silent and subdued, leaving the golden key.)

(Enter Dagonet, bearing a salver with meat and drink.)

D. Sir Knight and good uncle, I bring you a nooning. 'Tis long since ye broke your fast, and when ye did ye ate but little. Perchance, the night was long and wakeful? Methought, as I lay at the threshold, I heard thee toss and groan.

G. What, good Dagonet, dost thou lie at my door? Foolish boy, what need have I of thee? From what wouldst thou defend me?

D. My lord, I know not. But I mislike this place, and I mislike the men,--and some of the women too! There are mutterings and making signs, and whisperings in corners,--And that ancient dame, with her yellow face and rough and wrinkled cheeks, and her skinny neck and her beetling brows, and bleared eyes and black chin! Yea, verily, for within her white wimple I saw the stubble of a beard!
        Now, the lady of the castle is lovely--

G. Ha, ha, Dagonet, who would have thought thee so close an observer of women? But thou art a kind lad, and a wise fool, to boot,--for, in sooth, some men's wisdom is folly, and e'en those counted fools are sometimes wondrous wise!
        Boy, I love thee for thy faithfulness, I will e'en eat, and then lay me down for a while. For thou art right, the night brought me little sleep.
        I' faith, I know not when I shall sleep again! Not until my quest is won,--or done!

(Exit Dagonet.)

         (G. eats and drinks, and then lies down on the couch.)

(Enter Lady of the Castle.)

         (Approaches the couch and looks down on Gawain. G. opens his
eyes, and--surprised to see her--tries to rise.)

LADY. (laughing.) Good morrow, Sir Gawain! Ye are but a careless sleeper, since one can enter thus. Now ye are taken unawares, and, if I would, I could bind you here, so that ye should not escape me.

GAWAIN. Good morrow, fair lady! But grant me this grace that ye pray your prisoner to rise. I would get me from my couch and array me better, then could I talk with ye in more comfort.

L. Nay, forsooth, fair sir; ye shall not rise, I will rede ye better. I shall keep ye here, and talk with my knight whom I have captured. For I know well that ye are Sir Gawain, whom all the world worships, wheresoever ye may ride. Your honor and your courtesy are praised by lords and ladies, by all who live.
        It behoves me, in sooth, to be your servant, and ye are welcome to my company.

G. In good faith, I think me that I am not he of whom ye speak, for unworthy am I to hold ye in thrall. In sooth, I were glad if I might set myself by word or service your pleasure; a pure joy it would be to me!

L. Sir Knight, for all that I have seen in ye, of beauty and of courtesy and blithe semblance, and for all that I have hearkened and hold for true, there should be no knight on earth to be chosen before ye!

G. Well I wot, madam, that ye have chosen a better, even the gallant knight, the noble baron your husband. But I am proud that ye should so prize me, and as your servant do I hold ye as my sovereign, and your knight am I, and may Christ reward ye!

L. If I then be your sovereign and ye are my true knight, why art thou so stern and cold towards me? And if ye are my servant to do my behests then shall ye stay here and make merry with me and my maidens.
         (Gawain moves as if to rise to his feet.)

L. Why shouldst thou go forward on this blind and bootless quest? And, what if thou shouldst not return?
        Who so void of wit as to choose the pathless wild, and the cold rain and the biting wind, and toil and travail,--when he may lie here lapped in silk and wool?
        Why go forth to hunger and to thirst, when ye might tarry where the banquest crowns the board, and the red wine flows? Likest thou the moan of the whistling wind better than the music of flute and harp, and the merry notes of pipe and tabor?
        Here, too, are mirthsome song and gay dancing, and fair maidens and brave gallants, and good cheer!
        Stay, stay, Gawain, where Pleasure bides!

G. (rising and standing.) Nay, good my lady, I must e'en set forth, and that with the morrow. For my word and troth are pledged to fulfil this quest.

L. Since, then, ye will not bide with me, at our parting do me this grace; give me some gift, if it were but thy glove, that I may bethink me of my knight, and lessen my mourning.

G. Forsooth, madam, I wish I had here some most precious thing that were worthy to be bestowed on ye in token of thanks for all thy courteous kindness. But it is not to your honor to have at this time even a glove as a gift from Gawain; and I am here on a strange errand, and have with me neither men nor mails (save only my most faithful fool and worthy gentleman, Dagonet). And that mislikes me much, lady, at this time. But each man must fare as he is taken, if for sorrow and ill.

L. Nay then, knight highly honored, though I have naught of yours, yet shall ye have some what of mine.

         (Offers him a costly, jewelled ring.)

G. I will take no gift, lady, from thee, now. I have none to give, and none will I take.

         (She presses the ring upon him, but he refuses.)

L. (much vexed.) If ye refuse my ring as too costly, that ye will not be highly beholden to me, I will give you my girdle as a lesser gift.

         (Takes girdle from her side and offers it. Gawain pushes it from him.)

G. Nay, I touch not gold nor gear, ere God give me grace to achieve the adventure for which I have come hither. And, therefore, I pray ye, displease ye not, and ask me no longer, for I may not grant it. I am dearly beholden to ye for all the favor ye have shown me; and ever in heat and cold, will I be your true servant.

L. Now, sir knight, ye refuse this silk for it is simple in itself; lo, it is small to look upon and less in cost, but whoso knew the virtue that is knit therein he, peradventure, would value it more highly.
        For whatsoever knight is belted with this girdle, while he bears it knotted about him there is no man under heaven can overcome him, for he may not be slain by any magic on earth.

G. (Aside,--starting at the lady's last words.)
        This were indeed a jewel for the jeopardy which awaits me! Could I so order it that, when I come to the Green Chapel to seek the return blow, I might escape unslain, 'twere a craft worth trying.

(G. falls on one knee and kisses lady's hand as he takes the girdle.)

L. 'Twas mine, 'tis thine! And none but we may know the gift hath passed. Keep loyally from my lord that which I entrust to thee, and as thou knottest the girdle around thee, so bind my secret to thy heart!

G. (rising.) Lady, I thank thee. Never shall any one know aught, save alone we twain.

         (She bends over Gawain, and kisses him on the forehead. He binds the girdle around him, beneath his robe.)

(Exit Lady, slowly.)

CURTAIN.

SCENE IV--THE SAME

The Baron returns from the chase.

(Enter Baron.)

GAWAIN. (rising and embracing the Baron.)
Hail to thee, safe returning! Doubtless thou hast had large success!

B. Aye, aye, Sir Gawain! Hie thee to the Great Hall and count the tale of game; of hinds and does, and e'en the wild boar I slew at the ford!
        To say nought of red Reynard, the one fox whose pelt and brush thou wilt find there. For all, sir knight, according to our covenant, are thine.
        But what luck had ye? And what spoil have ye won?

G. The deer and the boar and the fox are the triple trophies of thy prowess in the chase. But I, too, have won three tokens! See here,--this sword and this key!
        Mine,--as they were given to me and not reclaimed. (Aside.) Yet, not mine, for I spurned them from me! They are thine, by virtue of our bargain.

B. (perplexed.) But where is the third item of thy gains.

         (G. steps up to the Baron, puts his hands on his shoulders, and kisses him.)

G. These, given me without demand, I freely give to thee. Also this (pointing to sword and key) and this;--which I care not e'en to touch, nor e'er would hold. They are not mine but thine!

B. Will ye not tell me whence ye won such spoil, and this last favor of embrace and kiss? Where did ye win it? And was it by your own wit?

G. Nay, that was not in the bond. Ask me no more; ye have taken what is yours by right, be content with that!
        The hour is late, and the day has been very long, and ye must be bone-weary. For the fair sojourn I have had here at this high feast may the High King Himself reward ye! I must need, as ye know, go hence with the morn; and ye will give me, as ye promised, a guide to show me the way to the Green Chapel, and God will suffer me on New Year's Day to deal the doom of my weird.

B. By my faith, all that ever I promised that will I keep with good
will. And now, Goodnight!

         (Enter servants with tapers. Exit baron and attendants,--Gawain saluting all as they leave.)

CURTAIN.

ACT IV

THE GREEN CHAPEL

(Enter Gawain, Guide, and Dagonet.)

GUIDE. Sir I have brought ye hither, and now ye are near the place ye have sought so specially. But I tell ye, forsooth, since I know ye well, and ye are such a knight as I well love, would ye follow my counsel ye would fare the better.

DAGONET. (sadly.) Ye would fare the better!

GUIDE. The place whither ye go is accounted perilous, for he who liveth in that waste is the worst on earth. He is a discourteous knight, and shows no mercy.
        Be he churl or chaplain who comes nigh that chapel, monk or mass-priest, or any other man else, he thinks it as pleasant to slay them as to pass alive himself. Therefore I tell ye, if ye come there and that knight know it, ye shall be slain, though ye had twenty lives; trow me that truly.
        Good Sir Gawain, let this man be, and get thee away some other road--

DAG. Yes, Get thee away some other road!

GUIDE. For Heaven's sake, seek ye another land, and there may Christ speed ye! And I will hie me home again--

DAG. And I will hie me home again!

GUIDE. And I promise ye further, that I will swear by all the saints, or any oath ye please, that I will keep counsel faithfully, and never let any wit the tale that ye fled for fear of any man.

GAWAIN. Gramercy, Good fortune be his who wishes me good, and that thou wouldst keep faith with me I will believe. But didst thou keep it never so truly, an I passed here and fled for fear, as thou sayest,--then were I a coward knight, and might not be held guiltless.
        So I will to the chapel and talk with that man. And you, friend, go back a mile, and take with thee Dagonet--

DAG. Yes, friend, take with thee Dagonet!

GAWAIN.--and wait till I seek ye. And if I come not to ye ere the sun go down,--Thanks, and Farewell!

GUIDE. Well now that ye will to take your own harm yourself, an ye be pleased to lose your life, I will neither let nor keep ye.
        Now Fare-ye-well, noble Gawain! For all the gold on earth I would not go with ye, nor bear fellowship one step further!

         (Exit Guide, dragging Dagonet--weeping--with him.)

GAWAIN. Now will I neither greet nor groan, but commit myself to God, and yield me to His will. Fierce though the foe be in fight, yet He knoweth well how to save His servants.

         (Approaches the Chapel.)

G. Ah, can this be the Green Chapel? Here might the devil say his mattins at midnight. Now I wis there is wizardry here! 'Tis an ugly oratory, all overgrown with grass, and 'twould well beseem that fellow in green to say his devotions on devil's wise.
        Now I feel in five wits, 'tis the foul fiend himself who hath set me this tryst, to destroy me here!
        This is a chapel of mischance; ill luck betide it, 'tis the cursedest kirk that ever I came in!

         (Sound of grinding a weapon.)

G. By my soul, I trow that gear is preparing for the knight who will meet me here! Alas, nought may help me; yet should my life be forfeit, I fear not a jot!
         (Loudly.) Who waiteth in this place to give me tryst? Now is Gawain come hither: if any man will have aught of him let him hasten hither now or never!

(Enter Green Knight with huge axe.)

GREEN KNIGHT. Stay, and ye shall speedily have that which I promised ye!

         (Advances to meet him.)

G.K. Now, fair sir, one may trust thee to keep tryst. Thou art welcome, Gawain, to my place! Thou hast timed thy coming as befits a true man.
        Thou knowest the covenant between us. At this time twelve months ago thou didst take that which fell to thee, and I at this New Year will readily requite thee. We are in this valley, verily alone. Here are no knights to sever us, do what we will.
        Have off thy helm from thy head, and have here thy pay. Make no more talking than I did then, when thou didst take off my head with one blow.

GAWAIN. Nay, by Him that gave me life, I shall make no moan whatever befall me. But make thou ready for the blow and I shall stand still and say never a word to thee, do as thou wilt.

         (Gawain bends his head and bares his neck. The G. Knight swings the axe with a mighty feint of slaying Gawain. G. shrinks and swerves aside!)

GREEN KNIGHT. Thou art not Gawain, who is held so valiant that never feared he man by hill or vale; but thou shrinkest for fear ere thou feelest hurt!
        Such cowardice did I never hear of Gawain. Neither did I flinch from thy blow at Camelot. My head fell to my feet, and yet I fled not; but thou didst wax faint of heart ere any harm befell. Wherefore I must be deemed the braver knight.

G. I shrank once, but so I will no more; though an my head fall on the stones I cannot set it on again. But haste, sir knight, by thy faith, and bring me to the point; and deal me my destiny: and do it out off hand: For I will stand thee a stroke and move no more till thine axe have hit me. My troth on it!

G.K. Have at thee, then!

         (Swings the axe fiercely, but does not allow it to touch Gawain. Gawain does not move.)

G.K. So now thou hast thy heart whole it behooves me to smite. Hold aside thy hood that Arthur gave thee, and keep thy neck thus bent lest it cover it again.

G. (angrily.) Why talk on thus? Thou dost threaten too long. I hope thy heart misgives thee.

G.K. Forsooth, so fiercely thou speakest I will no longer let thine errand wait its reward.

         (Lifts the axe lightly and lets it fall on the bare neck, slightly wounding Gawain.)

GAWAIN. (Springing up, seizes helmet and puts it on, takes shield
and draws sword.)
        Stop, sir knight, bid me no more blows. I have stood a stroke here without flinching, and if thou give me another I shall requite thee, and give thee as good again! By the covenant made betwixt us in Arthur's Hall, but one blow falls to me here. Halt, therefore!

G.K. (leaning on his axe.) Bold sir, be not so fierce; no man here hath done thee wrong, nor will do, save by covenant, as we made at Arthur's court. I promisest thee a blow, and thou hast it,--Hold thyself well paid! I release thee of all other claims.
        If I had been so minded I might perchance have given thee a rougher buffet. First I menaced thee with a feigned one, and hurt thee not; for the covenant that we made as to exchange of spoils. I gave thee two blows without scathe, for that thou gavest me thy gain of Sword and Key, and e'en my fair wife's kiss! But thou didst not give me all thy gains, therefore hadst thou at the third stroke that blow which drew thy blood.
        For 'tis my weed thou wearest, that same woven girdle; my own wife wrought it, that do I wot for sooth!
        Now, I know well all that passed,--the temptings of the rebel messengers, and thine answers: and the wooing by my wife, and your conversation and her kisses,--for it was mine own doing.
        I sent her to try thee; and I think, in sooth, Sir Gawain, thou art the most faultless knight that ever trode earth! As a pearl of price among white peas, so is Gawain, i' faith, by other knights.
        But thou didst lack a little, Sir knight, and wast wanting in loyalty. Yet that was for no evil work, nor for wooing neither, but because thou lovedst thy life. Therefore, I blame ye the less.

G. Now, cursed be ye, Cowardice and Covetousness,--for in ye is the destruction of virtue!

         (Loosens girdle and gives to the G. Knight.)

        Lo, take there the falsity, may foul befall it! For fear of thy blow Cowardice bade me make friends with Covetousness, and forsake the customs of largess and loyalty, which befit all true knights.
        Now am I faulty and false, and have been afeared: from treachery and untruth came sorrow and care.
        I avow to thee, sir knight, that I have ill done: do then thy will! I will be more wary hereafter.

G.K. (laughingly.) I wot I am whole of the hurt I had, and thou hast made such free confession of thy misdeeds, and hast so borne the penance of mine axe edge, that I hold thee absolved and clean.
        And this girdle that is wrought with gold and green, like my raiment, do I give thee, Sir Gawain, that thou mayest think upon this chance when thou goest forth among princes of renown, and keep this for a token of the adventure of the Green Chapel, as it chanced between chivalrous knights. And thou shalt come again with me to my dwelling and pass the rest of the Feast in gladness.

         (Laying his arm over Gawain's shoulder.) I wot we shall soon make peace with my wife, who was thy bitter enemy.

G. Nay, forsooth, but I thank thee. I have fared ill, may bliss betide thee, any may He who rules all things reward thee swiftly.
        Commend me to that courteous lady, thy fair wife, and to the other my honored ladies, who beguiled their knight with skilful craft.
        But as for thy girdle, that will I take with good will. Not for its beauty and its cost, neither for weal nor for worship, but in sign of my frailty. I shall look upon it when I ride in renown, and remind myself of the fault and faintness of the flesh; and so when pride uplifts me for prowess of arms, the sight of this shall humble my heart.
        But, if it displease thee not, one thing would I pray. Since thou art lord of yonder land wherein I have dwelt, tell me what thy rightful name may be, and I will ask no more.

G.K. That will I truly. (throws off his green disguise.) Bernlak de Hautdesert am I called in this land. Morgan le Fay dwelleth in mine house, and through knowledge of clerkly craft hath she taken many. She sent me in disguise to yon fair hall to test the truth of the renown that is spread abroad of the valor of the Round Table. She taught me this marvel to betray your wits, to vex Guinevere and fright her to death by the man who held his severed head in his hand.
        That is she who is at home, that ancient lady. She is even thine aunt, Arthur's half-sister, the daughter of the Duchess of Tintagel, who afterwards married King Uther.
        Therefore I bid thee, knight, come to thine aunt, and make merry in my house. My folk love thee, and I wish thee as well as any man on earth by my faith, for thy true dealing.

G. Nay, I may in no wise tarry. But I thank thee, Sir Bernlak, and commend thee to the Prince of Paradise. Farewell!

         (They embrace, kneel, rise--and embracing again,--part.)

CURTAIN.

ACT V
IN KING ARTHUR'S HALL

(King and Queen on dais. Merlin, knights, and ladies. Enter Gawain,
             with Dagonet carrying Gawain's shield.)

KING ARTHUR. Sir Knights, Esquires, and Pages!

ALL. Hail to the King!

K.A. Hail to Sir Gawain!

ALL. (loudly.) Gawain! Gawain! All hail, Gawain!

         (G. advances to the throne and kneels. King raises him and presents him to the Queen. Gawain bows and kisses the Q's. hand.)

Dagonet. (standing unnoticed in the centre of the Hall.)

DAGONET! Dagonet! Now, all of ye! Hail! Hail! Where do I come in?

ALL. Hail to the fool! Hail, hail! Hail to the fool!

GAWAIN. Nay, nay! Sir Pendragon, I present to thee my faithful squire and true friend, Dagonet. His mirth hath often cheered my sadness, and his wisdom (an he be a fool) hath ofttimes been my counsel.
        My leal servant and steadfast companion, Dagonet!

         (Leads him to the throne. King takes sword from Page, and strikes D. lightly on both shoulders and on the head.)

KING. Rise, Sir Dagonet, worthy knight of the Round Table! Knights, Esquires, and Pages! Salute our brother!

ALL. (saluting.) Hail, hail! Sir Dagonet! All hail, Sir Dagonet!

KING. Sir Gawain, last night in banquet-hall we made merry at thy return, and heard the story of thine adventures. 'Tis indeed a mirthsome and marvelous tale. Thou hast done well to uphold the honor of our Order, and hast been loyal to thy king and to thy conscience. Even as gold tried in the fire thou hast stood the test.

G. Alas, my lord, I would thy words of kindness were well deserved. But I have not hidden from ye my fault and my failure. By the help of heaven I was true to my covenant, true to my king, and true to my host; but in this I faulted, that I was not true to myself.
        I have the pardon of my lord baron Sir Hautdesert; but thy praise I deserve not.

         (Addressing the Queen, and lifting the pendants of the girdle.)

        See, lady, This is the bond of my blame that I bear in my neck, this is the harm and the loss I have suffered, the Cowardice and the Covetousness in which I was caught, the token of the covenant in which I was taken.
        And I must needs wear it as long as I live; for none may hide his harm; but undone it may not be, for if it hath clung to thee once, it may never be severed.

QUEEN. Sir Gawain, henceforward thy girdle is a badge of honor, for thou has been brave and steadfast, thou didst live pure and speak true, and follow the King. If, for a moment, thou didst swerve, thou didst again stand for the stroke, and hast made confession of thy fault. Thy friends will not be less generous than thine enemy.
        Ladies, bring forth the badges of the Companions of the Green Girdle!

         (The ladies place a green sash over the right shoulder of every knight and return to the Queen, who then invests them with the green baldric.)

QUEEN. Now, Sir Pendragon, to this agree all the honor of the Round Table, that we will wear this baldric for the sake of Gawain. And they who wear it shall be held the more in honor, because they are decked with the badge of the Companions of the Green Girdle.

         (The queen then hands a sash to the king, which he throws over her shoulder.)

KING. Comrades, what is the motto of our Order?

ALL. (Swords raised and pointed to a common center.) "My sword shall be bathed in heaven!"

(Tableaux)

CURTAIN.

---

---

TIME AND THE WITCH VIVIEN

by

W. B. YEATS

A marble-flagged, pillared room. Magical instruments in one corner. A fountain in the centre.

Vivien ( looking down into the fountain ).
Where moves there any beautiful as I,
Save, with the little golden greedy carp,
Gold unto gold, a gleam in its long hair,
My image yonder? ( Spreading her hand over the water. )
Ah, my beautiful,
What roseate fingers! ( Turning away. )
No; nor is there one
Of equal power in spells and secret rites.
The proudest or most coy of spirit things,
Hide where he will, in wave or wrinkled moon,
Obeys.
Some fierce magician flies or walks
Beyond the gateway--by the sentries now--
Close and more close I feel him in my heart
Some great one. No; I hear the wavering steps
Without there of a little, light old man;
I dreamt some great one.
( Catching sight of her image, and spreading her hand over the
water. )
Ah, my beautiful,
What roseate fingers!

( Enter Time as an old pedlar, with a scythe, an hour-glass, and a black
bag. )

Ha, ha! ha, ha, ha!
The wrinkled squanderer of human wealth.
Come here. Be seated now; I'd buy of you.
Come, father.

Time. Lady, I nor rest nor sit.

Vivien. Well then, to business; what is in your bag?

Time ( putting the bag and hour-glass on the table and
resting on his scythe ).
Grey hairs and crutches, crutches and grey hairs,
Mansions of memories and mellow thoughts
Where dwell the minds of old men having peace,
And--

Vivien. No; I'll none of these, old Father Wrinkles.

Time. Some day you'll buy them, maybe.

Vivien. Never!

Time ( laughing ). Never?

Vivien. Why do you laugh?

Time. I laugh the last always.

( She lays the hour-glass on one side. Time rights it again. )

Vivien. I do not need your scythe. May that bring peace
To those your "mellow" wares have wearied out.
I'll buy your glass.

Time My glass I will not sell.
Without my glass I'd be a sorry clown.

Vivien. Yet whiter beard have you than Merlin had.

Time. No taste have I for slumber 'neath an oak.

Vivien. When were you born?

Time. Before your grandam Eve.

Vivien. Oh, I am weary of that foolish tale.
They say you are a gambler and a player
At chances and at moments with mankind.
I'll play you for your old hour-glass. ( Pointing to the
instruments of magic. ) You see
I keep such things about me; they are food
For antiquarian meditation. ( Brings dice. )

Time. Ay,
We throw three times.

Vivien. Three-six.

Time. Four-six.

Vivien. Five-six. Ha, Time!

Time. Double sixes!

Vivien. I lose! They're loaded dice. Time always plays
With loaded dice. Another chance! Come, father;
Come to the chess, for young girls' wits are better
Than old men's any day, as Merlin found.
( Places the chess-board on her knees. )
The passing of those little grains is snow
Upon my soul, old Time.
( She lays the hour-glass on its side. )

Time. No; thus it stands.
( Rights it again. )
For other stakes we play. You lost the glass.

Vivien. Then give me triumph in my many plots.

Time. Defeat is death.

Vivien. Should my plots fail I'd die.
( They play. )
Thus play we first with pawns, poor things and weak:
And then the great ones come, and last the king.
So men in life and I in magic play;
First dreams, and goblins, and the lesser sprites,
And now with Father Time I'm face to face.
( They play. )
I trap you.

Time. Check.

Vivien. I do miscalculate.
I am dull to-day, or you were now all lost.
Chance, and not skill, has favoured you, old father!
( She plays. )

Time. Check.

Vivien. Ah! how bright your eyes. How swift your moves.
How still it is! I hear the carp go splash,
And now and then a bubble rise. I hear
A bird walk on the doorstep. ( She plays ).

Time. Check once more.

Vivien. I must be careful now. I have such plots--
Such war plots, peace plots, love plots--every side;
I cannot go into the bloodless land
Among the whimpering ghosts.

Time. Mate thus.

Vivien. Already?
Chance hath a skill! ( She dies. )

---

---

GUENEVERE: A PLAY IN FIVE ACTS

by

STARK YOUNG

To
Edward Johnson
"longe quoa simul a domo profectos
diverse maria et viae reportant"

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
King Arthur.
Guenevere, his wife.
Sir Launcelot.

nephews to the king, and brothers:
   Sir Gawain
   Sir Mordred
   Sir Agravaine
   Sir Gareth

Sir Kay, the seneschal.
Dagonet, the queen's page.
Morwena, the abbess at Boscastle.
Agatha, a sister.

ladies to the queen:
   Lyone Le Blanche
   Ygraine
   Enid

knights of King Arthur's court; a woman; other minor persons:
   Tor, Colgrevaunce, Peleas, Idawc, Bors, Uriens,
   Meliagraunce,Cador, Breuse, Persaunt, Blamor, Urre.
GUENEVERE
"Quanto la cosa è più perfetta
Piú senta il bene e così la doglienza."
ACT I
A wood near Mordred's castle. A path runs across; on the right side the big rocks stand; on the left the ground is less broken. It is the first day of May, the wood is all green, and the wild flowers blooming. There is a sound of running water, and many birds sing in the trees.

Enter Sir Mordred, Sir Agravaine, and Sir Gawain.

Mordred
Curse those little feathered devils, all
The trees are full of them, singing as if
The air were silver sweet with feast bells,
And the world were sweet, and life sweet and free
From hate.

Gawain
Come, come, my lord, let the birds alone, their notes
Are sweet and limpid like the lives of simple
Men in this world.

Mordred
Aye, squeeze your stale morals from nature, brother,
For every weather a mood. As if she had
Not planted in our bloods the heaviness
Of hate, as I do hate Sir Launcelot,
And scorn the white-souled Arthur.

Agravaine
And I do hate this lusty knight.

Gawain
Brothers, brothers, stint your noise. Ye know
And well that had Sir Launcelot not proved
Himself in our behalf, we had been by now
Full cold at the heart-root. He hath saved us all,
And many a time, has wen-

Agravaine
Small matter that. He hath a joy in heat
And struggle.

Gawain
Small matter very like, and men do hate
The objects of their own ingratitude.

Agravaine
Daily and nightly he is with the queen.

Gawain
Ye know it not.

Mordred
Aye, do we. And the king is shamed--

Gawain
Nay, nay, spare that, you care not for Arthur, 'tis
Some privy hate you bear the queen, or grudge
Against Sir Launcelot.

Mordred
Tush! 'tis all prattle. Lend me your ear, good brother.
Come, think you not in any of us three
Were stuff for a king?

Gawain
Thou king? Said I not so? Shame, Mordred, shame!

Agravaine
Nay, nay, brother Mordred, 'tis the general cause
That moves thee, 'member that, the general cause.

Gawain
Be not so busy, I pray you, for of this
Will the whole realm be mischieved.

Mordred
Fall what may, what I have said I have said.

Gawain
That I believe, for thou hadst ever a tooth
For all unhappiness.

Mordred
King Arthur hath consented to this plan
To take the queen by force and lie in wait
For Launcelot to rescue her.

Gawain
Take the queen, thou sayest?

Agravaine
Then some romantic hour to catch the two
Together.

Gawain
Take the queen?

Mordred
Hist! here's two-the first is Idawc
Of Cornwall; 'tis your poetical,
Gapes-at-a-ballad cub-he'll be with us.
And old Sir Kay, sour as curds. (Enter Idawc and Sir Kay.) How now
Fair lords? We speak of the widening reft betwixt
The king and the queen, what think you?

Kay
'Tis a great tangle, this marriage knot.

Gawain
The king consents? To snare the queen?

Mordred
Consents, though we had nigh not brought him to it.
He hath a deeming strong as ours, but shuns
The outcome of such publishment of falseness
In the heart of the realm. 'Tis a dreamer, and his world
Peoples itself with airy shapes, and stretches
Rapt vistas for his eye to travel in,
Conversing with visions. They say he hath
Small ear for the queen but hourly weigheth him
Some cloud-vast enterprise or famous venture,
So that his kingdom is his spouse and not
The queen. To him she is fair womanhood,
The finer element within the scheme,
And not a woman. Therefore being human-

Idawc
True, dost thou--

Kay
True, most true. It is no king men see,
But is a mist.

Idawc
Dost thou remember once at harvest time-
'Twas at the dying twilight, and the moon,
Drowsily waking from the dusky east,
Did shed a glamourous vapour o'er the water,
Bargemen hither, thither ran to light
Their torches, music strummed, and on the bank
Thronged with embarkings for the river pageant-

Agravaine
Came what-well what is't at the pageant? Here's
No time for fooling, youth.

Idawc
Why, on a barge sheathed all in golden samite,
We saw the white queen like fair summer wings
Upon a lotus flower. There apart
Stood Arthur musing, chin in hand, or gazed
On the stars, and sad dim space, as he would read
Their meaning. Lo! one said, "Seest not the queen
Upon yon barge, my lord?" Arthur turned
Where she did beckon him to look on her,
And said, "White hue on yellow, sure some sign,
Fair virtue thus surmounteth jealousy."
So killed all joyaunce with his moral carp.
But Launcelot beheld her as a vision,
And cried, all dazed with her loveliness,
"God's life, thou'rt fairer than the heaven!"

Kay
Odds, by my beard, 'tis past my patience.
What woman cares to prate of attributes,
Of whys and wherefores and such moral twaddle?
These axioms be poor pudding for their stomachs
When they might hear men sing their beauty's praise-

Idawc
Fie, my lord!

Kay
Fie not. The king is blinded with star-dust,
For once I ventured: "If thou thoughtest more
Of this same fleshly world, my lord,
'Twere better haply for thee and for it."
Said I, "There's holiness as true, I wis,
About the humblest, rushlit cottage door
As at the Portal of the Starry Lamps.
Men's souls need human fellowship to ripen
Them for God, as many twigs do lift
Higher the flame." Methought in that
I was fair eloquent-

Mordred
And he-mark me it was some ponderable
Stuff he spake-

Kay
He turned and said, "Here in this life the soul
Is solitary and yearns ever toward
The Solitary, the Great One beyond."
Meaning somewhat I dare say, for he bent
Upon me his wide-dreaming eye
Till I was wildered with their steady burning.

Mordred
Come, 'tis no time now for remembrances.
Soon come the knights to hear our plot. They will
Lend hands, for ever trouble-brew draws men.
From diverse causes-

Gawain
Aye, some like me for stubborn certainty
Desire to prove at all costs what they know.

Agravaine
Be not too sure.

Gawain
For some men rather would be sure and die
Than live in midst of doubtings. Ah how,
How if this cause splits brothers thus, will all
The court be rent!

Mordred
Some for gain-

Gawain
Aye, you will reward them, brother.

Mordred
I did not say so.

Agravaine
Leave wrangling, they are at hand.

(Enter knights, Sir Bors, Sir Uriens, Sir Tor, and others. All wear blank shields.)

Mordred
Good morrow, fair knights! The time doth press, come,
   come,
Ring me round here, and let me speak our plan.
Who here knows not the shame that flares at court,
Open as day? Think not the king deceived;
He hath a deeming, but he is full loth to speak,
Seeing how ofttimes Sir Launcelot hath served
The king and the queen and saved their worship.
And if we take not Launcelot with the queen
And make accusal, you know the accuser must
Prove't on Sir Launcelot himself; the which
No living wight hath yet done. But if
We take him-

Meliagraunce
But, my lord, how may this be done?

Mordred
Peace, and I will tell you. This day
Is the queen's maying and even now she rides
To woods and fields. With her come ten of the Queen's
   Knights,
Who ride thus ever near to her, and joust
For her, and wear no manner of arms but hers.
They shall be dressed in green and white, and go
Gathering herbs and flowers to deck themselves
For maying. There'll be songs-

Meliagraunce
Well?

Mordred
Well, I saw them start, and they shall come
This way, and we will take them.

(Confusion.)

Nay, nay, stir not, nor mutter discontent,
But hear me. We will take the queen and hers
To my castle hard by, she will send in secret
Unto Sir Launcelot and he will come.

Meliagraunce
Aye, he will come, mark you he will come!

Mordred
Aye, he will come. We'll seem to yield, then take
Him later with the queen. The king himself shall
   see it.

Agravaine
Sir Launcelot will come to rescue her,
The king shall be brought, and we shall catch our birds
Together.

Kay
Here's Cador and Breuse linked arm in arm, and drunk
As always. 'Tis strange they lack preferment
At court. Now sure 'twill not be long for them,
Such worthlessness could never fail to be
Rewarded by the state. Sir Breuse hath bound
A tavern garland on his brow, and look,
Cador hath him a bread-cake for a shield.

(Enter Cador and Breuse.)

Cador
Steady, steady!

Breuse
Steady! We go to make a kingdom now.

Cador
Aye, we be statesmen, and 'twere well to walk
Straight.

Breuse
'Tis a hard matter.

Cador
Keep hold on me, and 'twill be well.

Kay
Aye, that's politic. Ho! young sops,
What is't in the air?

Breuse
'Tis a new king I scent, methinks.

Mordred
We have no time for them, come, come! Doubt not
But we shall catch our birds together.

Gawain
Catch them together-how? Think you the queen
Will bide an hour longer than need be
In thy black walls?

Mordred
That I do. Sir Launcelot hath pained
Himself too much already on her part,
She will keep low to 'scape the scandal. That,
Or we can hobble up her knights that they
Will not depart so speedily. The queen
Will not desert them methinks.

Gawain
Scandal!

Mordred Aye, scandal, 'tis the eye of the matter.

Cador
Scandal, what is scandal?

Kay
'Tis piety with a bit of news to tell.
A fair garland thou hast, my lord.

Breuse
To keep my memory green, belike.

Kay
The fruit of the vine is within, is't not? A gallant
Shield hast thou, Cador. 'Twill keep off death.

Cador
Truly it may be.

Breuse
Nay, nay, eat not thy defence, brave lord. Stand up!

Kay
'Twere more avail to swallow thy spear, methinks.
'Twould help thee stand.

Breuse
Art thou the king, Sir Mordred, yet-yet?

Mordred
Silence, thou muddled fool. Not yet, nor ever!

Breuse
I went to say I could not worship thee.
I serve the fallen angel that the priest
Told me of, naming him not.

Mordred
Angel?

Breuse
Wine, 'tis a fallen angel.

Knight
Keen-carved, Sir Garland.

Kay
Sure one would listen at thine ear as at
A sea-shell for the empty roaring.

Mordred
'Tis no time for such chaffering. Get them aside,
Good Sir Kay, stop but their noise and I
Were much beholden to you.

Kay
'Twould merit somewhat. Come, ye princely wits,
Let me but tell my latest dream-'twas that
A shower of wine will fall this Friday next-

Cador
Wine! Haste thee, Breuse, find one that hath a moat
To sell. Good Sir Kay, tell more!

Kay
Come then and I will satisfy you. (They go to the left of the stage.)

Gawain
My lords, let me speak.

Agravaine
Nay, hear him not, my lords, for he had rather
Corruption bred and rotted at the court
Than he should stir his sluggish feet in struggle.

Knight
Craven! Fie!

Second Knight
We'll hear Sir Gawain.

Cries
Sir Gawain! Sir Gawain! Fie! Craven! Sir Gawain!

Gawain
Hear me briefly. My lords, it is a grievous
Thing to wreck a good man's fortune. God
Will break the evil. Therefore have we no need
To avenge the king. That Launcelot is false ye
   know
Not yet, but know if he be found so what
Will fall on us. Shipwreck and storm and split-
Arthur is king, but Launcelot hath lands,
Hath bournes and territories of huge extent
Here in this island, and doth own a realm
In Fraunce, castles and followers. Let but
Discord raise her head between them two,
And this demesne of Britain will be rent
In twain, racked and overwhelmed; the fellowship
Of the King's Round Table broke, the noblest face
And form of chivalry be felled and gutted
In a civil strife. And if in truth-

Agravaine
Hurry, man, art thou old Nestor come
Back from Hell, and windier than ever?

Mordred
True, brother. Come closer, Sir Knights, and ye
Shall see the better justice of our plans. (They withdraw to left.)

Kay (on the right)
Calm thee, calm thee! Spare thy words. The world
Hath deafened itself already with much speech.

Breuse (mounts a rock)
I'll be a king, have I not a crown?

Kay
But little in it.

Cador
Brains were not missed in a king, good sir. He is
My friend.

Breuse
I will be an historical king, and marry
Me three wives.

Cador
Nay, sweet friend, when thou art king, wed not.
King married is not king, but the queen's husband.

Breuse
Weep not, thou mayst serve me.

Kay
Aye, listen yonder.

Gawain
If Launcelot doth then love the queen, hath he
Not championed her more than the saintly Arthur?
If still ye head on this I say I am
Not with you, and depart.

Bors
Nor will I hear your tales, nor share your counsels.

Blamor
Nor I be traitor 'gainst the noblest knight
In all the world.

Mordred
Wilt thou take hence that two?

Gawain
Glad were I. When they be sober they
Will give me thanks.

Kay
Go, Cador, and thou Breuse, this man hath found
A fishpond lately dried. 'Twill hold thy wine.

Cador
Come, come, good Sir. What is't to Friday? (Exeunt Gawain, Breuse, Cador, Bors,    and Blamor.)

Agravaine
They are like some fishes, my lord, and dread the light.

Kay
Let Launcelot and the queen be caught.

Knight
Ho! Sir Kay, 'tis the cream, the cake of solid
Sense.

Mordred
Silence, I pray you.

Kay
Have I not told the king to tread on Earth?
Answer me that.

Agravaine
Yea, yea, greybeard.

Kay
Once Sir Launcelot changed mail with me
And saved me at a venture. Odds, at my
Best feasts they cannot eat for love. I had served
Him for his courtesy-leave out the queen-
And I had fed him fat as the Duke of Dutchmen.

Agravaine
Rattle your keys, Sir Kay, instead of your tongue,
Your jams are sweeter than your words.

Kay
Sweeter for thy tongue haply; for it
Hath tasted of more jam than of wise words.

Tor
The shame burns deep, the purging of the court
Will uplift all the realm and bring to bloom
Again the chaste flower of the earlier days.

Persaunt
Nay, I dare swear my lady's purity. Be the truth
As it may, shame unto a man that speaks
Shamefully of a lady and a queen.

Agravaine
You wear fresh flowers, youth, but they will fade.

Cries
I am against this thing. Let it be tried, Cowards!
   And I!

(Confusion, and the taking of sides.)

Mordred
Thus is the whole court rent to many minds,
The venture is dangerous.

Agravaine
Nay, speak to them with that tongue of thine and they
Will follow--

Mordred
Fair lords, young knights full of the noble fire
Of youth, put up your swords, hear me!

(Confusion.)

Knights
Sir Mordred! Fie! Cowards! Sir Mordred!

Mordred
My lords, none of us would the queen took hurt
From this we go to do. Think ye not so.
The thing is this, doubt like a hidden mould
Eats up the peace of the court--sure the thing
Touches us all equally. Certain
Evil would I rather choose than blank
Uncertainty.

Knight
And after she is ta'en, my lord, what then?

Mordred
Then I will feign hot love for her, and threaten
Masteries. Sir Launcelot will come
And we shall see what door the wind blows in.

(There is the sound of talk and laughter.)

Agravaine
They come.

Mordred
'Tis too late but to prove the thing as planned.

Persaunt
Would I had kept out of this.

Kay
Too late for temperance after the lips are wet.

(Exeunt all, hiding themselves behind rocks and trees to the left. Enter the queen with twelve knights and three ladies, all in green and white, wearing wreaths and bearing garlands of flowers.)

Guenevere
But leave, good sirs, this hunting talk
Of falcons, jesses, leash and lure, there's love,
We have not spoke of that, and it is May.
Sing my lord, one of the songs you learned
In your knave service at the court.

Gareth
'Tis but a kitchen song, my lady, sung
By humble wenches at ring-time.

Guenevere
Sir Knight, if thou wert armed, I'd send thee back
To bring me water in thy helmet all
This way, as penance for thy dulness.
Cannot the humblest woman sing her love,
My lord? Love maketh any woman as
A queen, I pray you sing.

Gareth (sings)
   The white-thorn blossoms blow,
   And sweet buttercups in the grass,
   Go woo, my lad, go wooing!
   In winter frosts the blood is slow,
   But lusty May makes every lass
   Come smiling to your wooing.
   Weave marigolds within your hair,
   Go woo, my lad, go wooing,
   For spring makes all the lasses fair
   And ready for your wooing!

Guenevere
'Tis a fair chaunt. Sweet season hath ever sweet song.
Lo! there a little woodland pool, rimmed round
With crocuses, and tangled water-flags,
Here shepherd's purse and vetch and meadow-sweet--
See how the blue sky lieth in it--come--
And now a cloud sails by. This is the time
When maids may learn what manner of fortune waiteth
Them, and who their knights haply may be.
Therefore Lyone and Enid and Ygraine,
Bide with me here. And ye, Sir Knights, shall leave
Us and go on a little space ahead,
And one by one each maid shall search the pond
For her fate's image.

Lyone
Thou too wilt read thy glass, wilt thou not, my lady?

Guenevere
Nay, nay, I am an aged dame, and all
My ships are in already. Seest thou not
The furrows in my picture there?

Lyone
'Tis but the ripple from the rushes breaks
Thy feature, else 'twere fair as the flowers mirrored
Near the marge.

Guenevere
Ah, flatter me not, child, 'tis youth alone
Hath still its bright sails growing on the horizon's
Verge, flocking like gulls, the crafts of hope.
Now do ye listen to this play of fortunes.
Sir Knights, ye shall go on, nor dare look back,
And when that ye are gone, one of these maids--
But ye must know not which--shall watch her here
In the water for her true love's face to look
Over her shoulder. Meanwhile ye shall
Draw lots to find which knight returns. 'Tis he,
By the faith of this blue pond, shall be her lord.

Gareth
Go now, my lady?

Guenevere
Yea, but go not too far. And he that wins,
If he be wise, will hasten back
To meet the fair eyes laughing in the pool.

(Exuent knights to left.)

I will take me three petals thus and tear
In one a rent--thou seest--and ye shall choose
One each, and she that holdeth the torn leaf--
Wit ye 'tis the pierced heart-- 'tis she shall watch
First in the pool. Choose quickly. (They choose.)
Ah, Lyone le Blanche, my lily maid,
'Tis thou; then kneel thee here, one comes.
Child, thy fair hair mingles its pale gold with the
   crocus
Flowers, and is as fair as they. Hist!

(Enter Sir Colgrevaunce. He comes and looks in the pool.)

Lyone
Sir Colgrevaunce!

Colgrevaunce
Lyone!

Guenevere
Fie fie, Lyone, thy cheeks are flame, and thine,
Sir Knight!

Colgrevaunce
'Tis but the stooping.

Guenevere
Ah nay, now I do swear these eyes have met
For love ere this. 'Tis a pretty jest to bribe
Beforehand Mother Fortune thus. Ye shall plight
Your troth with rush-rings from this friendly bank.
Go now, my lord, send others to assay.

Colgrevaunce
God send another good grace as mine.

Guenevere
Now, Enid and Ygraine, choose ye from these
Two petals, as but now ye chose. Who has't?
'Tis thou, Ygraine? Then kneel. (Ygraine kneels.)

Ygraine
Ah, Jesu, keep me, my lady, some reptile stirs
The slime beneath and muddies the whole pool.
'Tis an ill omen, I will not read my lot
To-day. (Rises.)

Enid
Nor I. See, all is foul, 'tis an ill omen.

Guenevere
Think you? I will not say these signs are true
Or false, seeing we know not what be hid
From the eye of man. Yet I like it not.

Ygraine
Still it muddies, I will not look!

Guenevere
Then let us leave it and go on. (They start out to the left.)

Enid
What noise was that, the sound of bosses clanking
On armed heel?

(Enter Mordred and the knights. The latter have their visors down.)

Mordred
Good morrow, madam.

Guenevere
My lord, you know this is the first of May,
When men's souls like the white clouds float in
   dreams.
What means this froward battlement of steel
At such a time? Out of my way, I like it not.

(The Queen's Knights have come up on the left; commotion off the stage in that direction.)

Guenevere
Hold yet, my knights, 'tis useless, ye have no shields.
If my lord Arthur or Sir Launcelot
They, if they were here, would teach thee how
To budge, thou caitiff Mordred.

Mordred
Aye, but our lord Arthur is not here,
Nor thy Sir Launcelot. If either were,
Who knows what he would do? So I will speak.

Guenevere
Speak then and go.

Mordred
Hear then and stay. 'Tis long that I have loved thee,
And passing well, and have long eyed my time.
This day I have thee, and thou leavst me not
Till thou dost love with me, or I and all
These my men-at-arms be dead. Come
To my castle near, come willingly, for come
Thou shalt, whether thou wilt or no.

Guenevere
Hast spoken?

Mordred
Aye, madame, for the nonce.

Guenevere
Then this is my answer. Your love and you I spurn
Out of my path like offal. Know, Sir Mordred,
I had liefer cut my throat in twain
Than love with you. Who these be, for there
Are knights among your menials here, what men
Of my lord's these be, that lend their hands to you
And do preserve this vile incognito,
I know not, but what they be I know,
Vile dust to which your spittle give a mould
And shape, without it, formless atoms.

Mordred
Slow, madam, slow, your hot words cannot sink
In my cold ears.

(Off the stage to the left, the Queen's Knights break nearer through the ranks
of Mordred's men.)

Colgrevaunce
Ho, we come, my lady!

Mordred
Back, puppets.

Gareth
Way there, cowards!

Guenevere
Nay, nay, ye are not armed!

Peleas
Whether we die or not we care not, so
We keep thee safe.

Colgrevaunce
We care not! On, on!

(Confusion increases off the stage to the left.)

Guenevere (aside to Dagonet)
Go boy, go Dagonet, go, take this ring,
Watch thy chance and go. Give to Sir Launcelot
This ring, and pray if he would ever see
My face again, to come and succour me
From shame. Go, spare not thyself!

Lyone
O Jesu in heaven, help thy knights!

Guenevere
Stay, stay your blows!

Mordred
Stay your blows.

Persaunt
Stay your blows, fools!

Guenevere
The most valiant are as chaff before armed baseness.
And this I know, good men have naught to fear
Save only cowards. Therefore, Sir Mordred, slay not
My knights. I will go with you if you hurt
Them not, and bring them to my prison,
For I will slay myself if they be not
In presence while I am with you.

Mordred
For your sake, madam, it shall be done. But where
Is Dagonet, the page? Nay, madam, you
Have played me false. Give the boy chase, you two,
(Aside) But do not stop him. Let there be litters
Made, and bring these wounded after us.

(The queen and her ladies go out with Sir Mordred and his party. The wounded knights are borne on litters made from the shields and spears. Sir Agravaine remains. Enter Sir Kay.)

Kay
Come you not with us, my lord? We wait.

Agravaine
No, I will bide if haply the page returns here.

Kay
How will it end? Think you Sir Launcelot
Will come?

Agravaine
Think you 'twill ever rain again?

Kay
There'll be wild deeds to follow this day's work,
Sure man's devilry doth pass the devil;
And thy brother hath outdevilled Hell. I'll no
More o't, but get me home.

Agravaine
Go plan a feast, 'tis suited to thy wits
Some better than these plotted policies.

Kay
Belike 'twere better for thee too. The realm
Were safer then. And sure thy brains and belly
Are all one. (Exit Kay.)

Agravaine
Sour but sharp likewise. 'Tis no noodle head.

(Enter Dagonet running.)

Dagonet
Gone, oh, my lady!

Agravaine
Stop your whimpers, cub, have you found him?
Speak, fool!

Dagonet
Yea, my lord, at the edge of the wood, he had
Already got word of mischief to the queen.
And hither gat him armed.

Agravaine
He comes?

Dagonet
Close behind, my lord, there! there's his breastplate
Flashed through the trees--there! my lord.

Agravaine
Ha, ha, the broth thickens, come, come, shag-head.

Dagonet
There, my lord!

(To the right is heard the sound of a galloping horse.)

ACT II

A day later. One of the chambers in Sir Mordred's castle. The wounded knights lie in the adjoining room to the left. On the right is a window with bars. A flight of steps outside leads up to the door at the back. The room has a canopied bed, tapestries, and armorial ornaments. Below is the sound of hammering. Dagonet sits by the window. Sir Colgrevaunce stands by the window.

Colgrevaunce
Dagonet, what means that knocking?

Dagonet
They mend what wreck Sir Launcelot wrought.

Colgrevaunce
On yesterday?

Dagonet
Yesterday, my lord, when he came here
To succour my lady. In he rode and smote
Thrice with his spear, and the hinges groaned.
And he smote down the door, and stoutly thrang
Amid the press, hewing about from right
To left, until Sir Mordred came and yielded
Him in terror, and granted the queen's release.

Colgrevaunce
You saw it, boy?

Dagonet
Yea, did I. some day my Jesu grant
That I may be a man, even such a knight
As our Sir Launcelot, and serve some lady
Like the queen.

Colgrevaunce
The lad dreams. Right, thou art in the orient
Of life, and at that hour the daylight's hue
Is golden.

Dagonet
I do not know all thou sayst, my lord.

Colgrevaunce
But why lingers the queen here? To still
The shame maybe. Let her then tell,
She cometh now?

Dagonet
Not yet, my lord.

Colgrevaunce
Haply she will tell us when she comes.
Hither, boy, and tell us more of this
Late prowess of Sir Launcelot's. Shut to
The door, the wind from yonder casement blows
Too much over the floor here.

(Exeunt Dagonet and Sir Colgrevaunce. Enter Sir Mordred. He makes a circuit of the room, and examines the bars of the window.)

Mordred
I'll seem to hesitate. 'Twill make him like
A goaded horse by mad leaps lead himself
To mishap--there's jealous prying for you.
Yea, my lord, the chamber is vacant, come.
Too fast intent to hear. 'Tis sport to watch
This greatness with its single view and aim,
And keen half-sight, steer for its end, all blind
To the rest. My lord, 'tis vacant here. Come!

(Enter King Arthur.)

The queen is in the courtyard with the hounds
And falcons, the bird's flight seems to charm her.

Arthur
'Tis fair without, and yet methinks the air
Hath lost the nipping flame that spurs the blood.
'Tis stale and heavy. I like not the red
Streak in the west, nor the dun mound over it.
Knows naught, poor wretch, of what draws over
   her.
'Tis a poor, weary, foolish world where we
Blow in like wind, ruled by dark outer forces,
That floods the hollows and low places here
On our globe, and lo! is gone again.

Mordred
Nay, nay, my lord, naught ever came of dreaming.

Arthur
Sir Mordred I repent that ever I
Did lend mine ear to this. A grievous hurt
To me and mine will fall of it if she
Be false. If she is not, then all this shame
Were undeserved of her.

Mordred
Then give it up, my lord.

Arthur
Nay, we have gone too far now to draw back,
Yet I do repent me. You were
Too forward in it.

Mordred
It was not I, my lord, but those behind
That pushed me on as kinsman to yourself,
Saying the court reeked with the stench of the queen's
   falseness.

Arthur
There's foulness in thy words, I like it not.

Mordred
'Twere best forgotten all. Why should we credit
Vile slander. Thou knowest--

Arthur
I had some warning of this same thing once
From Merlin, the wizard, long before I took
The daughter of Leodograunce to wife.
But when I saw her I did heed him not.
Still, whether she be false or true, I will
Not swear. To me she hath been ever fair
And gentle, and to my knights and to all ladies,
A queen among women and a woman among
Queens. And that Sir Launcelot loves her
I dare say. He hath succoured her from danger,
As when--

Mordred
But she, my lord, loves she him?

Arthur
Whether she loveth him I will not say--

Mordred
Thou wilt not say. Men say that thou striv'st not
For certainty, loving the peace of thy court
More than thy wife and honour.

Arthur
Thou holdest well the evil said of me.
Whether she loveth him or not I will
Not say. God hath given him fair seemliness
Of form, and hardiness to work so largely
That he hath had always the better in combat.
And she hath a heart passionate and wild,
But yet her soul beats high--

Mordred
Nathless ere this have men said that they took
Long draughts of love together.

Arthur
Her lofty soul yearns toward the heights, she fain
Would keep the purity of the court,
And love Sir Launcelot as soul loves soul,
But then her eye takes fire at sight of him,
Her veins surge hot with the glory, colour, pomp,
And beauty of this world,--the mortal strife
'Twixt flesh and spirit, which hath won I know not.

Mordred
My lord, I speak, methinks, as should become
Your nephew, and I am but an unwilling
Mouthpiece of mine ears.

Arthur
It is an old lie.

Mordred
Yea, my lord, an old lie, and I
Do doubt it altogether.

Arthur
It is a lie.

Mordred
Yet there be whispers in the court.

Arthur
And 'twould be well to prove it false.
What whispers?

Mordred
About Sir Launcelot and the queen, my lord.
Men say that when Sir Launcelot departs,
She in her secret bosom writhes and welters
Like a madwoman, though she give no sign
Outwardly to men.

Arthur
She is the queen.

Mordred
Aye, my lord, and bears it with a proud
Countenance, as though she felt no fears
Of her love, nor scented her own peril.

Arthur
She is the queen.

Mordred
Only last night, but 'tis a lie--

Arthur
What is a lie?

Mordred
My lord, it is a lie I blush to tell.
Some caitiff swore Sir Launcelot to have come
Here to the queen, even last night.

Arthur
Came here? God's life!

Mordred
Be calm, my lord, my men slept 'fore the door,
He could not enter there, nor by yon threshold
Where the knights sleep. There is no place
Save the window here and that is barred.
And--

Arthur
Why did you start, when your hand touched the bar?

Mordred
Did I start, my lord?

Arthur
Aye, and broke off your speech. Why do you hold
The bar as if you fear to fall?

Mordred
Hold the bar, my lord?

Arthur
You trifle with me, dog, playing parrot thus!

Mordred
Put up your sword, wild man. I would save you
Even at this last moment. Some hand
Hath torn the bar out of its place, and all
Its fellows likewise have been set loosely
In notch again.

Arthur
My brain scorches. Let me but wait with thee,
Good Mordred, till the end.

Mordred
Come, we cannot wait here.

(Mordred takes down the torch. Exeunt. The chamber is dark.)
(The door from the knights' chamber opens, and the light streams into the room. Guenevere stands at the door. Lyone, Enid, and Ygraine are with her. Dagonet carries a lighted lamp and a torch. The ladies have their lamps still unlit. Sir Colgrevaunce follows them in, and stands near the door.)

Colgrevaunce
My lady, I do speak for them that here
Lie weary past all standing with their wounds.
We ask why stayest thou here within these walls?
They slime with falseness.

Guenevere
Well may you know that tis not any love
For this foul place that keeps me here, 'tis dread
Lest word of this should come to the king and new
Strife rise, now through me. This poor realm is
Already like to flame a holocaust
From courtly feuds and smouldering ashes, dull
And waiting to be stirred, kindred hates
And new-old grudges. Pray God none come
By me. Therefore when you are come with me
To Camelot and the court, speak not of this
Black, treacherous deed, but 'scape the noise and scandal.
Three days let us bide here as if we came
By chance into this castle of Sir Mordred's,
Where entertainment proffered pleased us so
That we must needs remain to bask in it.
Meantime the hours will pass--

Knight (in chamber to the left)
Nay, we shall be shamed, they are traitors all.

Colgrevaunce
Nay, the queen hath judged aright, 'tis well.
Let Mordred sour now, uneasy, crafty,
Brewing discontent, better this cloak
To hide his guilt than some new war in Britain.

Guenevere
Here too my knights lie wounded in my cause,
Think you I will forsake them thus? Not so,
But I will take them with me hence to-morrow
If they be strong enough. If not I bide.

Knight (in chamber)
'Tis half the world's mishap lies in that word
To-morrow!

Guenevere
Ye lack nothing, fair knights? Then sweet sleep
Visit your eyelids all the night long. God
Gave sleep for brave men.

Knights (in room)
Jesu keep thee, my lady.

Colgrevaunce
They are already half asleep, my lady,
And my brain muddles strangely since I supped.
Here within is the tankard we drank from--
It was a sleepy draught. Think you 'twas drugged?

Guenevere
I know not. Wherefore?

Colgrevaunce
Mine eyes are lead--aye me, my heart is heavier
With some foreboding. 'Tis foolish surely,
But I do feel that if I sleep I shall
Not waken.

Guenevere
'Tis but the wound in thy arm. Set down the cup.
Good night.

Colgrevaunce
Good night. God keep thee, my lady, good night.

(Exit.)

Guenevere
'Tis a strange drowsiness, would God I had it.

Lyone
I have it not either.

Guenevere
Ygraine and Enid, ye have wearied much
This day, and thirst for the sweet mead of dreams
In the cup of sleep. Lyone le Blanche, my fair
Lyone, thy head hath need of resting-place,
Though thou know'st it not. For love in the heart
   beguileth
Like the sea-air.

Lyone
Nay, madam--

Guenevere
Ah, tell me not, have I not loved? Now do
Thou kiss me here on my brow, for I have strange
Shadows on my soul to-night, and I
Have need of woman's love. Wherefore I know not,
But my heart is sad.

(The three ladies light their lamps at hers, and kiss her forehead as they go out.)

Enid
Good night, and a long sweet sleep to thee.

Ygraine
Good night, and the honey of dreams to thee, my lady.

Lyone
Nay, I protest, though I do love
I fain would stay with thee, my lady. I have
No need of sleep.

Guenevere
Ah, nay, go to thy pillow, child. There, there,
I kiss dear rest upon thy brow. Do I
Not know, have I not loved? (Exit Lyone.)
God, have I not loved!

Dagonet
What hast thou done, my lady?

Guenevere
'Tis nothing. Smother those sconces, Dagonet.

(He puts out torches by the window.)

Dagonet
How beautiful thou art, my lady, thou
Art like the meadows.

Guenevere
Like the meadows--how, child?

Dagonet
Why, now 'tis summer in the meadows, so
For thee it is the summer of thy beauty.
Beauty hath her seasons like the air,
Hath she not, my lady?

Guenevere
Haply.

Dagonet
Her spring and summer and autumn--

Guenevere
And winter. True, very true! Boy, canst thou sing?

Dagonet
'Twill be sung badly, for I am not gay
To-night. Art thou too sad, my lady, yea,
Thou'st said it. Last night I could not sleep,
And while I tossed in wakefulness I heard
Knights clatter in their sleep; one leapt out
Of bed, one dreamed he grasped a naked sword.
It bodes no good, my lady. And this eve
At dusk I saw big knights in the outer courtyard
Polishing their mail, and all the squires
Busily set. What doth it mean, my lady?
It bodes no good.

Guenevere
Ask me not, boy. Take down thy harp
And sing. Not loudly, 'tis late. Rouse not
The happy, happy souls that can lie down
And sleep. (Aside.) If I were with him always, were
It well? Nay, passion feedeth on itself,
'Tis mastery of self that bringeth water
For the old stain.

Dagonet (by the window, sings)
   Look out, my lady fair, and see
   The lustre of the night,
   The moon beneath her canopy
   Sails beauteous and bright,
   The hawthorn bough swings to and fro,
   The nightingale sings low, sings low,
   Look out, my lady fair!
   Look out, my lady fair,--
Some cloud eats up the moon, I cannot sing.
See how the shadows grow, and now the wind
Gins rise. Dost hearken?

Guenevere
Thou'rt fanciful. Stir some low murmuring sound
Among thy strings, to bear thy song to me
Like distant burthen on an evening wind.
'Tis well--now come the gentle syllables
Slipping like pearls upon the lovely thread.

Dagonet (sings)
   Lean out, my lady fair, and hear
   The twitter of my lute that wings
   My heart to thee--
Madam, I hear noises 'neath the window,
Rattle of pebbles and scratching 'gainst the walls.

Guenevere
It was some bed-sore knight in yonder room
Turning to rest him. Thou art sleepy, go,
Nay, go, good night.

Dagonet
God keep thee well, and make thee a good night,
My lady.

(Exit Dagonet. Guenevere draws the bolt after him, and fastens other door.)

(Enter Sir Launcelot at the window.)

Launcelot
On yesternight to show my love for thee
I tore out of their sockets these iron bones,
Strove with might to show my love.

Guenevere
Ah, my beloved, I have set thee as
A seal upon my heart, as a signet ring
Upon mine heart have I set thee.
But yet, Sir Launcelot, my blood is heavy
With misgiving.

Launcelot
And mine. I know not wherefore I am racked
With dread. But now I did see black shapes hurtle
Think upon the gust; the wind doth reek
With pests and fevers, rank and rotten fogs
Come from the sloughs. This stinking of the air
Liketh me not. The stars are stubborn, all
This darkness here is much too thick.

Guenevere
'Tis so. But now the moon shined clear, now she
Is gone. The morbid air doth suck up humours
From the glens, a death-sweet perfume that
But half doth please me. The heaven is silent,
And round the world the mantle of the dusk
Cloaks heavily. What noise was that?

Launcelot
It was the clock at the postern gate that smote.

Guenevere
What hour, didst thou take count?

Launcelot
Eleven, my lady.

Guenevere
Think you it a lucky hour?

Launcelot
Nay, I know not, but I--

Guenevere
My lord Sir Launcelot, it was a hapless
Hour that ever we twain met together.
I 'member me the day thou first didst come
To Camelot and the jousts. Ah, we were young--

Launcelot
And I did lack my sword and would have been shamed
Hadst thou not brought it to me wrapped in thy robe.

Guenevere
And I did see thee fight so strong and seemly.

Launcelot
And I saw thee, Queen Guenevere, saw thee,
Fairest among all women and all queens.
And then as the rising moon looms like a white
Fire from the world's edge, flaming into heaven,
So burned up love through all my veins.

Guenevere
And as the streams of Araby do nurse
The myrtle flower, and the wind and the rain lead up
Till it bursts with prisoned sweetness, so hath love
Opened my heart. And yet to-night have I
Fears lest no good will come of it.
How often have we made our promises,
Made prayers to the cross that never more we fall
In deadly sin--Alas, Sir Launcelot,
An 'twere not for this earthly taint, thou hadst
Succeeded in the quest.

(The sound of wind and distant thunder without.)

Launcelot
Yea, madam, I had seen the Sangreal
But for this stain to blot it from mine eyes.
Once I saw a great clearness in a chamber,
And in the midst a silver table held,
Covered with red samite from my sight,
The cup that bore the blessed blood of God,
With many angels singing nigh. And then
The holy vessel of the Sangreal passed,
And the fire smote me in the visage that
I might not see, but only stand, my poor
Eyes hungering, my nostrils filled with the sweet
Savour round. For never did I battle
For God's sake, but only to win worship
Or be better loved of thee.

Guenevere
Many a night--

(Thunder. Guenevere goes to the window.)

The aspect of the heavens groweth perilous.

Launcelot
How sweet is hearth and fellowship on such
A night. Together--

Guenevere
Aye, frightened children cowering with dread.
Hark to the bellowing elements! Methinks
'Tis all the wrath of the world met here to-night.
Look how the wind heaves darkness past the window!

Launcelot
Come from the lightning's reach. 'Tis well. What was't?
Many a night, thou saidst?

Guenevere
Many a night, Sir Launcelot, have I
Lain in the castle of silence, when, slowly
Dropping dew-like round the caves of sleep,
Came dreams and separate lives. And then I saw
That other life our younger visions painted.
Ah, one soul liveth many lives, my lord,
During our days' short span. Without this taint
The purity of the court were still unbroke,
And still unmarred were chivalry and worship.
But from our love I fear me there will come
Downfall and woe to many.

Launcelot
Grieve not thus o'ermuch. Dost not know well
God pardoneth all things sooner than despair?

Guenevere
Methought there must be holiness somehow
When soul drinketh up soul for love. Somehow--
But since it may not be, we needs must grieve
And make but mournful cheer.

Launcelot
Not so, for all the quest and hoped-for heaven!
Surely God wearies of repentant wretches,
And the prostrate flesh of wailing men cumbers
The path of the world too much already.
Let me stand up till I be dead, I cry,
And if I sin I have eternity
To bide the punishment. I loved thee, thou
Art near me--

Guenevere
Beware! Thou dost o'erleap thyself, as ever
At the moment's heat. Yet I do love thee sure
No whit less that thou canst forget nice counsel
In fond madness. Reason speaks to reason
But unto heart only the heart can speak.

Launcelot
Heart calleth heart.

Guenevere
But who knows not man's heart is but Fate's tool.
And somewhere in the depths of space our separate
Fates call to each other through the void,
And draw them near.

Launcelot
Let us not reck of Fate!

Guenevere
And life sweeps by us like a wind of flame,
While we do wait unseeing in the caverns
Of Fate, like blind things in the sea-caves.

Launcelot
Alas, why looms the shade of Fate thus on thee?

Guenevere
I heard strange stories long ago amid
The leaping shadows of my father's hearth
And sea-howls echoed from the haunted crags,
And oft the dreaded of my Danish forebears,
Wyrd, great goddess of Fate, hath loomed on me,
Hath beckoned out of her marble mist, O Christ,
And I draw on but cannot read her face.
And 'yond her sitteth Darkness in the road.
O God, if Fate be in thy hand, let her
Not come upon me yet!

Launcelot
Nay, nay, thou art o'erwrought--who knows but I
May drive Fate back from thee with might of love?
Man's will is half his destiny.

Guenevere
She hath loved long the nations of the North,
Sea-king and thane, how if she wait their daughter?
How if e'en now she smote me from the sun?

Launcelot
Thou'rt rapt!

Guenevere
Lo, at the window there, 'tis she!

Launcelot
'Tis what?

Guenevere
Wyrd! 'Tis Fate! See you not her face
There in the blackness? Do I not know thy face,
Thou Hell-Queen? Now do I learn its feature!
Spare me, O Christ, Christ may not spare me from
   thee!

Launcelot
'Tis frenzy come upon thee!

(Clamour without. Gauntlet strikes door.)

Nay, Thou'st said it!

(Thunder and wind. Flashes of lightning.)

Voices (without.)
Ah, traitor knight, we have thee! Come out! Open
   to us! Ho!

Launcelot
Madam, is there any armour here that I
May cover my body 'gainst their numbers?

Guenevere
Alas, none, no armour here!

(Knocking and cries again.)

Launcelot
O God, this shameful cry I may not suffer.
Most noble Christian queen, if I am slain, good night,
And pray for my soul. Know well my kinsmen--they
Will save thee from the fire.

Guenevere
Nay, wit thou well, Sir Launcelot, if thou
Art slain, I will take my death meekly as ever
Did any woman.

(Knocking. Cries. Sir Launcelot gets a bolt from the window. They are battering at the door with a beam.)

Launcelot
Leave your dashing, cowards, and I will set
Open the door.

Mordred's Voice
As well ye may, traitor, for there be men
Here against all odds.

Voices
Eight! Twelve! Score!

Guenevere
Nay, have I not my knights? 'Tis strange they
Stir not at such clamour.

(She opens the door to their chamber.)

Launcelot
'Tis no matter.

Guenevere
Sir Colgrevaunce! Sir Gareth! Ho! Wake, wake!
They wake not, O God, they wake not,
'Twas the tankard! Oh, treachery!

(Sir Launcelot opens the door wide enough to admit one man. A big knight pushes in. Sir Launcelot fells him with the bolt, draws him in, and fastens the door.)

Launcelot
Off with his armour, help, madam! Do thou
Dash out the torches here when I am gone.

(Outside there is an astonished silence. Hammering and cries again. Sir Launcelot, now armed, opens the door and rushes into their midst. They fight on the stair and in the corridor. Guenevere has put out the torches. Darkness broken only by flashes of lightning. Mordred rushes terrified into the room, followed by Agravaine, whose helmet is broken off. They are revealed by a flash.)

Guenevere
Ah, God, Sir Mordred!

(He is unbolting the door to the knights' chamber. She snatches the great tankard from the floor and hurls it.)

Coward, have that for thee!

(Lightning. Mordred has escaped. Agravaine lies on the floor.)

Dark! O God, dark! Oh, alas!
Who is it there that draweth nearer me?
Hell, is it thou revisitest me once more
To-night? Nay, it hath armour! Speak!
No armour but a mantle, speak, oh speak!
Thou wilt not speak--I know thee! Oh, oh, oh!

(Enter Sir Launcelot with torch. He places torch in sconce by door.)

Launcelot
What woe is this? Thy cry hath roused the very
Falcons in the mews.

Guenevere
One touched me in the darkness! I am mad!
'Tis naught. Art thou hurt?

Launcelot
Nay, but do faint with dealing blows. Calm thee,
Calm thee! Thou shalt not come to harm. Hear
The wind moan!

Guenevere
How if the king knows not what hath befallen?
'Twere fond to think they would not tell him.
But he is just and blind--and yet 'twas Fate
That came but now to my window.

(Footsteps without.)

Launcelot
Some knight returns to--

(King Arthur stands in the doorway.)

Guenevere
Jesu Mari, it is--!

ACT III

The throne-end of the council-hall. The throne at the back to the right is under a blue canopy, spangled with gold, the whole elevated on a dais. To the left are arched doorways leading to the courts. Bells are ringing. Two knights on guard.

First Knight
'Tis the third bell for the court.

Second Knight
Aye, the trial of the queen hath caused delay
In opening the tribunal.

(Enter Sir Kay.)

First Knight
The queen will be tried, then, this day. What hast
Thou heard in the matter, Sir Kay?

Kay
Ask me not. Are mine ears then carrion dumps?

Second Knight
Much both false and true, methinks. Men say
The queen would fain stay at the court, holding
Her present station. There are two ways open: one
To bide here as queen, the other to depart--

First Knight
With Launcelot to Joyous Garde?

Second Knight
Aye, with Launcelot.

First Knight
Then she is traitress to the king, sayest thou?

Second Knight
Men say it.

First Knight
And the king?

Second Knight
This treason hath power to stir a sea that tops
The very promontories of men's souls.

First Knight
Life were not dearer than her station. 'Twere
Better she be dead than queen no longer.

Second Knight
Few there be that will arm to speed the queen's death.

First Knight
Few. Not I.

Second Knight
'Tis a dark hour.

Kay
Carp, carp! What then, what would ye have? Wrong
Or right, the queen hath courted hazards, wooed
Mishaps. Can one head think for the world? Once
I said to her: "Look, madam, look to your road!
Whatever your thoughts be of wrong or right,
The world goes on its destined pace, and where
You err 'tis you that fall. And men sing on
Though your poor ears be stopped with death."

Second Knight
Forgotten of men, that were the tragedy
Of death methinks.

First Knight
All may not be so wise as thou, Sir Kay.

Kay
All do not try.

Second Knight
I have spoke more of question than of what
Mine ears have gleaned about this buzzing court.
Mark you, Sir Knights, mark you, and mark you
   well,
Mark you the queen will be forgot in the bloody
Strife that follows on this day. I have
An inkling of Sir Mordred's schemes. Mark you,
The queen will be forgot. First Sir Mordred
Strips Sir Launcelot's forces from the king,
Then he revolts. His eyes are green long since.

First Knight
True. There is wind of it very like. 'Tis through
The queen he strikes the king. Were she not here
He'd find another way.

Second Knight
Guenevere had eyes that saw ere this, wherefore
Hath she been blind and sightless in this treachery?

First Knight
She hath a sorrow of her own, poor lady,
Bleak winter yelling round her troublous heart.

Second Knight
They say the queen is contrite.

First Knight
I know not if her mood be so, my lord.
She seemeth as one grieving for the end
Her deed hath wrought, but holds not shame nor sor--
   row
For the deed, feeling that heaven in some deep way
Doth justify this love and madness.

Second Knight
I understand not such things, but I know
That men may do these things, but women never.

Kay
Faugh! 'tis rubbish. Thus my cook will say
"Bread must be so, and cake be thus, or they
Will never rise." I tell thee 'tis all rubbish.
Leaven is leaven, and fire, fire! And men
And women burn and rise and fall, as bread
And cake, alike. 'Tis rubbish but 'tis men's
Philosophy, I look not there for sense.

Second Knight
Here comes Sir Launcelot, and his kin with him
Stepping with his steps.

(Enter Sir Launcelot, Sir Bors, Sir Lionel, Sir Urre, and others.)

Bors
All your kindred and their followers
Do stand without, ready and armed
If there be need. We drank your wine with you
When fortune ran it, and now we will drink water.
Your will is ours--

Launcelot
Most noble kinsmen, I am much beholden
To you. Give me your counsel, for if ever
Man needed it, 'tis I at this time.

Bors
My lord, this calm of thine is well--

Launcelot
'Twas spoken idly--what is counsel now?
Who thinketh I will let harm light on her
Doth know me not. No red drop brims at my
Heart's fountain but doth run for her.

Urre
And we are strong--

Launcelot
My sword hath rived in twain men's flesh ere this!
For every sorrow laid on her I will
Set wells of blood running in this vile court,
And many filthy, lying mouths will set
To eating up their ordure! Spread wreck--

Bors
Hold, my lord, the king comes.

(Enter King Arthur, Sir Mordred, Sir Gawain, Dagonet, and the court. Few are armed. Arthur sits. Mordred and his party take their place on the right of the throne.)

Arthur
My lords, good morrow. The queen comes not yet?
What justice is there to be rendered?
For the king must needs judge timely and wisely though
The man hath vitals tortured on the rack.

Gawain
My lord, here is a man whose fields are waste
And grain downtrodden by your last assay
Of hunting.

Arthur
Enough, enough, you shall be paid. Sir Kay,
Look to it.

Kay
Aye, my lord, pay, pay, we are always paying.

(Enter Cador and Breuse, drunk.)

Arthur
'Tis out of form and reverence that ye come
Thus here, muddled with wine.

Cador
'Tis out of form and reverence what we have
To tell the king. 'Tis somewhat for thy ears.

Arthur
Speak, then.

Cador
Last night before the feast, in a dark place--
Some say the dark is devilled--before the cups
At the feast, I heard two speak together.

Arthur
What said they, good fellow?

Cador
Thou heardst it, Breuse, what was't? I cannot think.
My lord, I wake not early thus all days.

Breuse
I cannot think. Sure the place was dark,
And they spake ill.

Arthur
Spake ill?

Breuse
One was a kinsman of the king.

Arthur
Kinsman?

Cador
High-voiced and hot.

Arthur
Who? Cudgel thy brains, who?

Breuse
Who, sweet friend?

Cador
Speak, thou leanest heavily! Leave rocking,
Thou art not the ship of state.

Breuse
'Tis thou, thou weight. Speak!

Arthur
Take these two hence, Gawain. Kinsmen? Spake
   ill?

Mordred
'Tis naught, my lord. It is a drunken fancy
Now I do think me, Dagonet did sing
A ballad of King Mark's black treachery
Against Tristram his kinsman. This same tale
Is but the coinage of their drunken ears
From the same song.

Arthur
Treachery--did they say treachery?

Mordred
Spake ill, no treachery.

Arthur
Didst thou sing so, boy?

Dagonet
Not I, my lord.

Mordred
'Twas then another.

Arthur
Very like, 'tis naught. Let us begin again.

Gawain
Here is a woman, lord, whose husband scorns
And beats her like a dog.

Woman
My lord, King Arthur, by your leave. I loved
This man with a mad, woman's love, and he--
My lord, he loved me. But he spurns me now,
And flouts me in my face. He hath struck me
And I bore with that, cursed me and I took that,
But he hath wronged me, and I will--

Arthur
Wronged thee? He hath wronged thee?

Woman
Yea, shamefully.

Arthur
Calm thee, calm thee, thou wretched broken wretch.
Thou shalt have justice, there is much too much
Of wrong done in the world.

Woman
Nay, I would not have him hurt, my lord.

Kay
Aye, that is the way of woman. Pardon me,
My lord Arthur, I must speak-- 'tis wisdom.
Woman, if thou dost love a man, and fain
Would keep his love, show not the excess of thy
Affection and feed him well. Many is a brute
To be held by the muzzle and not by the heart-
   chords.

Arthur
Ho, Sir Kay, thy words o'ershoot thee, man,
Thou hast been seneschal so long that thou
Dost think all things concerned with food.

Kay
If I am cynical of men, my lord,
'Tis this.

Arthur
'Tis wherefore?

Kay
My lord, I have seen them eat.

Gawain
Here is another woman who hath wrongs
She cannot tell--

Arthur
So have we all, woman.

Gawain
She wears her wits awry.

Kay
'Tis no new ailment.

Gawain
My lord, she hath--

Herald
The queen, make way for the queen!

Arthur
Woman, thou shalt return.

(Enter Guenevere. A noise of cries and wailing comes from the outer courts. Guenevere takes her stand at the left of the throne. Launcelot comes nearer to the front.)

Arthur
Madam, there are charges here to-day
Imperilling thy life and Launcelot's honour.
What noise dins in the court?

Gawain
My lord, it is the people making dole,
And wailing lest the queen be burned.

Arthur
Lay it, such clamour is unseemly.

Launcelot
My lord, let me speak.

Arthur
Ah, Sir Launcelot, Sir Launcelot,
Thee have I loved in gone days passing well,
And now thou hast cast sorrow over me.
Once I mind me, 'fore mine eyes were weary
Feeding on their dear faces, thou didst take
My knights on the Quest of the Holy Grail, and
   ne'er
That goodly company met whole again.
But now thou hast done worse and ta'en away
More than my Round Table. And thou hast edged
Treachery 'twixt me and thee.

Launcelot
Hear me, my lord.

Cries
Hear him, hear him! Hear him not! Sir Launcelot!

Gawain
My lord, go slow. To lose a noble friend
Is like a loss of the dear life, is such
A loss; for a man's friends are his life.
Go slow, a day may show the evil, but
The time is longer that makes manifest
The good.

Arthur
Doth baneful Fate will thus that we must see
To understand, be blind to act? Oh, would
That I were blind in this. For well I know
That now indeed is my whole kingdom mischieved.

(Cries without.)

There will be war, Sir Launcelot, now, 'twixt me
And thee, thy blood and my blood, cruel strife,
Tearing the vitals of this realm. Mine arm
Is powerless for seeing what will fall.
Madam, I rejoice to see thee weep,
'Twere best wept sooner when there was some boot

Launcelot
Then I will out, willy nilly. King Arthur,
I own the debt I owe to thee, for thou
Didst give me knighthood, and of thee
Have I had honour and much worship. Yet
In all thy quarrels have I lent what aid
I might in thy behalf, shoulder and heart
Have been thine, buckler and helm and sword,
Vassal and steed, been thine. Nor have I cast
Green eyes of envy on thy station, nor
Champed a restive bit, hearing thy fame
Exalted, as have some nearer of kin
To thee, I name them not.

Arthur
Why do ye glare on my nephew Mordred?
But 'tis naught.

Launcelot
But I did add
Ever what inches I might unto thy stature.
In all thy heat thou canst not yet forget
How many a venture have we had together
Of joy or woe. Therefore, my lord, for this
Old brotherhood, I pray thee think on me,
And judge not rashly.

Arthur
Yea, truly must I think on thee, yea, truly,
Bitter or sweet, still must I think on thee.

Launcelot
Nay, think what thou wilt then, on my soul I care
Not. I cannot sit as thou and weigh
Vantage 'gainst vantage, and knit prudence up,
Search whether't be good or bad or what,
Teach mine eyes to rob their sockets of flight,
And stop mine ears with silence. 'Tis fitter work
For hermits and white hairs, not men. I know
No honied speech nor do I value aught
The slippered dalliance of the favoured few,
But strike with this arm what harmeth me or them
I love. 'Tis many times I championed her
Whilst thou sat dreaming high emprise or plan
To win wide rumour for thy name. Thinkst thou,
God's life, I can no longer wield this sword?
'Tis blood for blood, hate for hate thou'lt have?
She is the queen, who then shall judge her?

Arthur
Stay, Sir Launcelot, thou art mad in thy heat.
'Tis hot blood that hath cost thee dear ere this.

Launcelot
Thou knowst 'tis fellowship and humility
That kept me thine, not lack of realm or power.
Lands have I, kinsmen and followers,
And all are hers whom through me ye would shame--
Therefore show me him that dares accuse her.

Arthur
The clamour in the court increases.

Gawain
My lord, it cannot be stilled. Some there be
That think the queen condemned to be burnt, and
   they
Bewail piteously her death. But some
Deem she is cleared of blame, and they do growl
And mutter underneath their breaths, and curse
Loudly this tribunal.

Arthur
But how if she be pardoned here?

(Noise in Sir Mordred's party to the right.)

Gawain
My lord, to my eyes, judging as best I may,
If she bide here there will be blood and strife,
Whether she be burned or pardoned. Either
Way is dangerous.

Launcelot
Nay, hear ye this, if she stay not as queen,
She shall not stay at all.

Bors
Yea, think ye we will let the queen be burnt?

Urre
To arms for the queen!

Arthur
Silence!

Cries
To arms, to arms! For the king! For Mordred! For
   the queen!

Arthur
Mordred? what cause is that?

Guenevere
I pray you, Sir Knights--

Cries
The queen speaks! Let us hear the queen!

Kay
Stop your gabble, fools, and hear the queen!

Voice
She hath been overlong silent now.

Arthur
Silence, she is yet the queen!

Cries
The queen! the queen!

Guenevere
I will put off thy crown and robe before
I speak in trial.

Arthur
Speak. 'Tis well!

Guenevere
Lords and vassals of this island realm
Hear me speak. I will say briefly and
Have done. My lords, I am a woman, whom
The gods built bigger than their wonted mould,
Wilder, more diverse, waging fiercer war
And conflict 'twixt the good and evil. He
That hath pinions larger than the common flight
Must needs take greater pains lest they be sullied.
My lord Arthur, I have ever loved
Thee since I came from Cameliard,
My father's land, loved thee as men love saints.
Not with the petty pulsing of the veins,
Nor jealousies nor heat of mad desire,
But at the topmost of my soul's bent.

Arthur
Is that the love men ask of women--good men?
I know not.

Guenevere
Since thou'rt ideal, they that love thee love
Thee as a mystic symbol, or a bodied
Soul of some dear thing, not as frail man.
Thou hast not known the low brown earth, nor it
Known thee. So wast thou ever loved, and so
Thou hast loved me, however much thou'st loved.
For thou knowst well, my lord, this is no husband's
Nor no lover's jealousy that moves
Thee in this sifting trial thus, but is
The jealous eye the king bends on the crystal
Perfectness of his long-dreamed-of court.
Thy kingdom is thy spouse, my lord, not I.
I fear I speak o'erboldly.

Arthur
Nay, 'tis no matter. Speak.

Guenevere
Then, ah, then--

Arthur
Well, well, then--?

Guenevere
I have loved Sir Launcelot too. All the pomp
And glory of this world, of sights and sound,
Of summer air and downs of May, of stars
And white dawn leaping over dewy fields,
Of life and love and the little moods men know,
And bossed arms, and chivalry, and jousts,
Of blood and wild, unquenchable revenge,
Of bowers drunk with music and sweet sound,
All this my woman's heart hath found to love
In him, Sir Launcelot. So have I loved
You both, but differently. Methinks that God
Hath placed in me such high, opposing tides
That if my soul be shipwrecked he could blame
Me not.

Arthur
Madam, me seemeth 'twas all love with you.
Were there not other things stirring at court?

Guenevere
The diverse uses of the world make men
Take love only as a part of the whole
Existence, but women--as a jewel liveth
By the light, so live women by love.

Arthur
Haply. And now?

Guenevere
Now--I speak not for the din.

Arthur
What if ye be our queen no longer?

Launcelot
Go with me, thou shalt go with me, my lady!

Arthur
Queen no more!

Cries
With Launcelot! Queen no more! With Launcelot!

Guenevere
Nay, nay, not Launcelot, let that have done.
Steal thou my crown, I go not hence with him
To Joyous Garde, to be his love. Nay, nay.
I will not so. Sure life turneth bitter
In the cup, and I must dash it from me.

Arthur
Where wilt thou turn if thou art queen no longer?

Guenevere
If he rescue me hence, know ye 'twill be
To the sisters by Boscastle. There shall I
Be buried from this world, and let my soul
Crowd with its persons my life's stage. But if
I bide here--

Cries
Thou'lt burn! Treason! (Confusion.)

Guenevere
Aye, leave your howling, poor lean curs,
Fattened with this man's collops. Ah! Sir Mordred,
Why hast thou been so keen to fill black sails?
Art thou the giant Jubaunce or Goliath?
For I know well who set these on--

Mordred
Madam, I pray thee, I am all for peace.

Guenevere
Yea, very like,--my lord Arthur, look--
Thy dove of peace hath need of armour plate
Beneath his quills.

(She tears off Mordred's cloak. He stands in his breastplate.)

Ah, cowards have ever need of steel. I leave
Thee now to the kind leeches, they will suck
Thy veins dry to a drop. But who am I
That speak? (She starts out.)

Arthur
Nay, madam, nay, God's life, nay, dost think--?
Stay, thy cause must still be tried.

Guenevere
Queen no more. Aye, I have had my hour.
This hour my life hath spoken in full tone.
No more I strive in the world, for I am ashamed
Enough of men already. May I not
Go hence? I am all undone methinks.

Launcelot
'Tis I speak for her. Sir, what man shall judge her?
My lord kinsmen, close round.

(The kinsmen surround the queen. Exuent. Mordred and his party follow. The crowd vanishes. Sir Gawain and King Arthur remain.)

Arthur
'Tis blood for wrong. Take sword and follow me.

Gawain
But first have brought thine arms, my lord, 'twere folly
Else to venture.

Arthur
Nay, God forearmed me in this matter.

Gawain
Give over theories--

Arthur
Hold me not, or I may do thee hurt.
Come, come, let the horn blow.

(The commotion without lessens. Enter knight.)

Knight
My lord, they have buffeted their way
Through the outer gate, and they are gone by horse
Toward Boscastle. The people cheer for joy
At their escape. Let make pursuit? Or not?

(A bell rings. Enter Sir Kay.)

Kay
My lord, Mordred hath seized the south tower, and is
In open rebellion.

Arthur
Oh, traitors all! Oh, traitor roof that falls
Not on this day. (Flings off his crown.) Into the dust,
   thou ring
Of wretchedness! To arms! To arms!

(A crowd pours into the room. Confusion. All the bells of the castle are clanging.)

Cries
To arms! To arms! To arms! (Without.) Mordred
   for king! Mordred for king!
To arms!

ACT IV

Reception-hall of the convent on the cliffs near Boscastle. To the left, at the back, a flight of seven steps leads to the cloister corridor, beyond which is the garden with a wall and trees at the end. On the left, near the front, is a prie-dieu with flowers and lighted candles. At the back of the room a kind of Roman seat, long, with a low back and armpieces. Benches on the right. Outside in the garden it is early dawn, and beyond the trees shines the golden sky. Save for the sound of the surge below, there is a great stillness over the world. Two novices enter, and light new candles on the prie-dieu. Enter Saint Morwena, the abbess, and with her Guenevere in white dress and veil. On her breast she wears the emblem of the Sacred Heart.

Morwena
Hast thou found peace, my daughter?

Guenevere
Yea, mother, as doth the moon, whose burnt-out sphere
Keeps on face turned to sunward, so
The dead globe of my life hath one side lit,
The other dark. I am pale grown and weak,
And my poor body hath forgot its splendour.

Morwena
There is another splendour in whose light
All flesh is grass.

Guenevere
Now my soul calls to me with a hundred
Tongues, the heralds of my spirit.

Morwena
Evil is no thing within itself,
But is a lacking of the vital good.
And of thy life what man is there shall judge
Save our sweet father, Christ?

Guenevere
Gentle brother Christ, father and brother.
'Tis like to something lived in sleep thou stirrest.

Morwena
Life is a restless sleep.

Guenevere
The dreaming king forgot me, and another
Loved me, and I loved him. That was my right
To live. Think you I should have starved the life
I had for some uncertain good to come?

Morwena
Belike that were not all of life, this love.
God gave man love to lead him out of self,
And upward--

Guenevere
Man's self and God, I know not where they meet,
Nor where they part.

Morwena
To lead us out of self and upward.
For all things do but school us to God's end.

Guenevere
Very like. Writ round the cell of our narrow lives
Are runes we cannot read. Our days are but
A footbridge 'tween two worlds--nay, I do speak
By rote, knowing naught. My brain doth lose the thread.
Once at the sacrament methought I saw
A figure in the likeness of a child,
And lo! his face shined bright as any fire,
And smote itself into the blessed bread.
I never had a child whose little hands
Had drawn me from the tawdry passing world
Into the mother's holy chamber. Nay--
'Twas only empty hours and cold hearth,
And young love beating at the door without.
Woe to the woman whose happiest days do come
To be the days she most laments.

Morwena
Thou hast thought much within these quiet walls,
Meditation is fair Solitude's
True sister.

Guenevere
Yea, thought much, and well, well have I paid
For the worldly draught my cup hath brimmed. And yet
Meseems that there are others that pay less
And sin far more. Some there be that sin
Vilely and often, and then forget it straight--

Morwena
Him that forgotteth God hath forgotten.

Guenevere
And the world forgets likewise and blameth not.

Morwena
Yea, they be fools that live their lives, and do
Perceive the truth as little as do spoons
Perceive the taste of broth. Their clouds and thine
Have different heights.

Guenevere
And some torture themselves for every little
Wrong, pondering their deeds, and the world
Curseth them--

Morwena
Yet they are blest, for they do meditate,
And he that thinketh truly cannot die,
But the thoughtless are as dead already.
He that is wise doth choose the thoughtful life
As a clever woman findeth the right colour.
Long is the night to him that cannot sleep,
Long is the journey to the weary man,
And long is the span of life to the foolish. Take
Some quiet hour at sundown in some peaceful
Place, and look about the vineyard
Of thy soul. The moon is silver clear by night,
The water glimmers in the sun, but be
Thou shining in thy meditation.

Guenevere
For some that is an easy thing, but not
For all.

Morwena
Aye, passion breaks through unreflecting minds
As rain through ill-thatched houses, so the sage
Hath written. Oh, what a fool is man that sets
His lips unto the brimming cup of passion.
It is a galling drink that kindles thirst,
And sates but with exhaustion. But thine
Is drained. Daughter, thou dost well to pray
And keep thy vigils, for to-morrow is
The day thou tak'st thy vows, is't not?
Then thou mayst wear the garb of peace always.

Guenevere
Yea, mother, take the vow relinquishing
All the vain idols of the world, to purge
My flesh of earthly desire, and strip my soul
Naked before God.

Morwena
Bless thee, my daughter, I rejoice that thou
Art ready.

Guenevere
Ready--!

Morwena
Why dost thou stare and round thine eyes so, seeing
Naught?

Guenevere
Mother, I do fear I know not what
That yet may fall. Last night I had a dream.
And in it I did see a tournament
Of ladies fair and noble knights,
Whose spear-heads flickered when they moved like flames.
Then at the hurtling that did follow there,
All my wild blood boiled, and the strong, sweet taint
Of the world came back into my veins. How do
I know but having given up my worldly drink
I yet be ta'en athirst for Camelot and glory?

Morwena
Jesu defend me!

Guenevere
Then were I lost indeed, O God, if I
Do leave off woman and turn saint, give up
The world and cannot keep my heaven. Be neither
Spiritual nor fleshly, saint nor queen.

Morwena
Thou beatst too high, these words are wild. Let God
Choose for thee, daughter. Our hearts are frail
Barks for rough seas. Let God choose for thee.

(In the cloister corridor the sisters are passing. Guenevere looks at them till they are past, then follows after. The abbess stands before the prie-dieu and crosses herself. Enter Sister Agatha.)

Agatha
Mother, I cannot pray for watching her face.
Her soul doth seem to feed upon itself.

Morwena
How, child?

Agatha
The queen--there seems a clashing of two spheres
Within her frame. Last night I heard--thou knowst
Her cell is next to mine--last night the queen
Did clatter in her sleep, and clapped her hands
And cried out: "Ho, well struck! Avoid thy horse!"
And other speeches from the lists. Strange peace
For one that goes to take her vows so soon.

Morwena
She hath already told me of this dream.
What song is that?

Agatha
'Tis Dagonet, the queen's page. The lad
Is thoughtless to sing thus within these walls.

Dagonet (at the gate)
   Look out, my lady fair, and see
   The lustre of the night,
   The moon beneath her canopy
   Sails beauteous and bright--

(Enter Dagonet)
Madam, there is a knight at the gate, I hear
His horse's panting--I saw him near.
Haply it is King Arthur come to see
My lady--ah, if it were!--and behind, there
Southward on Tintagel Road, a cloud
Of dust like men-at-arms galloping. Haply
I may hold his bridle while he stays.

Agatha
The king?

Morwena
King Arthur?

Agatha (going to the corridor)
'Tis he. Madam, I will leave you. (Exit.)

(Enter King Arthur.)

Arthur
God keep thee, madam. The queen--?

Morwena
God keep thee, my lord. My lord, I am an old
Woman, and I speak my thoughts. I fear thy coming
Is but poorly placed. To-morrow the queen
Doth give her vows, leaving forever all
The transitory uses of this world--

Arthur
Ere this, ere this, I had come had not the brawls
That broke out on the trial day kept all
The realm bestead. Sir Launcelot's falseness is
Forgot in larger woes.

Morwena
Where is Sir Launcelot?

Arthur
Gone to his lands in France.

Morwena
And thou?

Arthur
My mantle clingeth heavier than mail.
Now am I like a father whose one son,
The sole issue of his loins, is slain. At morn
He minds him of his son's going, and at eve
His coming. Seeth his heir's house wasted,
The chamber of the winds, where harp sounds not,
Nor any joy within the court as once.
Wherefore am I come to bid farewell
To her that shortly goes to take her leave
Of life. Once was she queen, and well I know
Of her and me that each shall not see other
More with fleshly eyes.

Morwena
I fear me lest the sight of thee will rouse
The red tide of her blood and kindle heats
To her soul's detriment. She cometh now.
Show her all reverence, my lord.

(Exit the abbess. Enter Guenevere from the right.)

Guenevere
My lord.

Arthur
How dost thou, my lady--and queen?

Guenevere
My lord, I have turned from the world's eyes that
Were bent so long hotly upon me. And thou?

Arthur
I--I, but 'tis no matter. I am come to say
Farewell.

Guenevere
Farewell?

Arthur
And pity have I more for thee, indeed
Since I have suffered, suffered humanwise.
And yet I do not blame, thou didst no more
Than I to bring the false dome down--no more.
Together we wrought havoc, thou with thy love
Loosing bonds not to be loosed, and I
Seeing men not as men but as symbols vague.
Star-gazing I did lose the earthly road,
And visionary flashes blinded me
That I knew not the common lives.

Guenevere
Such blindness doth tempt men as dark doth thieves.

Arthur
The man blindly good is good to himself
Alone--to others he is evil.
And dreamers should be dreamers for themselves
Alone--for plain men facts! And thou?

Guenevere
What boots it us to weigh one 'gainst the other?
I have fought the rich life-passion from my heart,
Pray God I turn not back to it.

Arthur
Yea, cleave to this quiet thou hast found,
Hug silence to thee, lest thou shouldst feel perchance
All the deep wrongs that men can do. Feigned love
That covers deep designs, ingratitude
And thankless greed, kinsmen at war,
Murder, rapine, blood, despair, and hate,
Trusts betrayed, and confidence despised,
I have felt them all--all. Truly
I have known the low brown earth, have bit the dirt.
Ah, madam, pray to god to leave thee here
Till Death shatters the flower of thy life.

(There is the sound of horsemen without, and the noise of arms.)

Guenevere
What clangour is that?

Arthur
'Tis my horsemen, I did ride ahead of them
Some space.

Guenevere
Yea, my lord Arthur, all of life is not
This baseness that thou tellst me of. Are these
Then enemies of thine--nay, my lord, they follow thee
Far as the land lasts to the sea. I know
There be sweet human things in life for men;
The handclasp of old friends, and friends to share
Sadness and joy, old voices and old sounds,
Sunlight, and walled gardens, and wild moors,
Eye that readeth eye, and heart, heart--
Ah, my lord, there is more sweet than gall--

Arthur
Tell me not--

Guenevere
Or gladly we take the gall as well as sweetness,
For whether be the sunlight fierce or mild,
What man but fain would watch the shadow grow
And on the dial of his life mark time,
Rather than darkness and unhoured ways.

(Dagonet sings without.)

Ah, there is Dagonet singing a lay
Unto thy knights. It is an old song that,
And tells how Joseph of Arimithy came
Into this land. I have heard it oft at court,
At Pentecost, my lord, dost thou remember?

Arthur
Nay, I know not, madam, that time is gone.
And now farewell, I may not tarry, fare
Thee well. I know of thee and me that each
Shall not see other ever more with fleshly eye.
And now I must needs hasten and depart
Back to Camelot and the court and strife.
But afterward shall sail to Avalon,
And change my life from this world.

(From the chapel come the voices of the nuns singing matins.)

Guenevere
Not meet again?

Arthur
No mortal meeting.

Guenevere
Alas!

Arthur
Nay, madam, nay, haply thou mayest
Be queen, when all the goodly knights I lost
In diverse quests and ventures will awake
From their long sleep, and form in heaven again
The King's Round Table, perfect at last, and there
With shining arms will joust in Christ's fair courts
For diamonds like suns and carcanets
Of little stars.

Guenevere
Ah, God, all the gall of the world takes not
The dreamer from his dreaming! Thou speakst fair,
But slowly, slowly through the air of time
The drops of life fall on eternity.

Arthur
Yea, they pass slowly, perhaps no man
Can count them, yet they pass. And when thou hast
Set down thy staff and book, and they have laid
Thee in cold sepulchre, thou shalt not stir
To note the passing years, nor count the moons,
For drums or tramplings or the utmost heat
And noise of human conflict cannot break
The mood and spirit of the dead.

Guenevere
My lord, tarry!

(Horns and bugles sound outside.)

Arthur
Lo! I leave in thee the fairest part
Of all my fair, sad past. Yet--

Guenevere
Tarry.

Arthur
I know not yet what orisons ye pray,
But beg thee 'member me, and if thou seest
Me nevermore again, pray for my soul.
Farewell. (He goes.)

Guenevere
My lord, my lord Arthur, do not leave me!

(He looks back once and is gone.)

I love thee too, thou wilt not leave me!
Take me with thee to Camelot and the court.

(She runs out after King Arthur.)
Arthur! Arthur!

(The chaunt in the chapel leaves off, and now the frightened sisters rush into the room. Sister Agatha stands at the head of the stairs. Enter the abbess. Outside there is a clatter of horses departing.)

Agatha
Mother!

Morwena
Yea, the queen hath a wild mood.

Agatha
O God, O god, King Arthur hath ridden away,
And she weeps after him like mad. There, there!
She hath torn off her veil, the other hand
Hath rent the emblem from her breast, snatched out
The Sacred Heart.

Sisters
Alas! Oh!

(Enter Guenevere. She drags her veil in her left hand, with her right she has torn off the Sacred Heart.)

Guenevere
Oh, I am lost! Curse me, mother, curse
You sisters, and let me die!

Morwena
Nay, daughter--

Guenevere
Nay, thou shalt not touch me. I am she,
That woman that gave up the world's lust
For her spirit's health. And now I have trampled down
That shrine!

Morwena
Leave us, you sisters. My daughter, let God choose--

Guenevere
I have lost both kingdoms, O God, and now my soul
Is shipwrecked. Jesu, have mercy! Mother of God,
Be merciful!
(She falls toward the prie-dieu.)

ACT V

A year later. Same room in the convent of Boscastle. It is near dusk, but the afterglow lingers, and the garden and cloisters are filled with red light. Guenevere lies asleep on the Roman bench. The abbess and Sister Agatha attend her. On the right sit three nuns. Dagonet hovers about the room. Sir Launcelot talks with the abbess.

Morwena
'Tis nigh four seasons gone since thou hast seen
Her. A little and thou'st been too late.
She tarryeth not much longer in the world.

Launcelot
How she lies faded, poor lady, like a rose
When the rough wind sucks the freshness from its
   heart.

Morwena
That day my lord Arthur came and went,
That was the zenith of her spirit's star,
That day after vigils and hard fasts her blood
Burst bond and cried for Camelot and glory.
Then flesh fought spirit. Hardly she won, but lies
Here broken with the struggle as thou seest.
I know not if this may be well or no
To tear the heart-roots of your being out,
Seeking to be other than God made you.

Launcelot
Would God had either made us as we yearn
To be, or else had made us what we are
Without the yearning!

Morwena
She will soon waken, wait. Thou sayst, my lord,
King Arthur is slain, she had hath word of it.
What of Mordred, that vile traitor chaff
That maketh foul the wind?

Launcelot
Ah, madam, he is snatched from his base dealing
Here, he too is slain, and Camelot
Is but a den of plots and arms. Despair
Shadows the hearts of good men. Alas,
The glory of the realm of Logris
Is departed.

Dagonet
All day have horses' feet clicked by-- 'tis knights
That ride to court.

Launcelot
Yea, boy, there be jousts and feastings there.

(A distant bell sounds.)

Agatha
Saint Necton's tide-bell, 'tis later than
I deemed.

Morwena
See how strangely the sun's red lingers yet,
As if 'twere loth to yield the free, hot course
To the subtle-working, grey night. Likewise
Meseems our lady the queen still doth glow
After her life's hot span, and her veins pulse
With the rich past. How faint and tender the bell!
O Death, how subtle art thou in thy coming,
But afterward long night and haply stars.

Agatha
Rather say that like the moon she burned
In beauty all the night of sin, and then
Did fade in the new day.

Morwena
Peace, Sir Launcelot! Sure I am grown foolish
Thinking on her, poor lady.

Launcelot
Nay, likewise all my thoughts have been on her.
Whether in joyless wood or when
The thin prow scudded o'er the midnight swell,
Or Breton thatches waited in the harbour,
In every land my memory sought her.

Dagonet
And I. 'Tis many songs I read of late
In this lone house, of ladies beautiful
That suffered and are dead. And always when
I read I thought of her, and said she too,
She shall be beautiful in rhyme till the world's
End.

Launcelot
Aye, and her name into men's thoughts shall bring
The peerless ventures and sweet courtesy
Of this the summer of all time. For still
Her soul is as her station sovran, and when
The wild sowing of man shall be gleaned and the world
   be garnered
She shall be queen at fairer courts than these--

Morwena
Nay, nay, my lord, let not thy heart o'ersweep thee.
Daughter, thou spakest thoughtlessly, thou art
Yet young and thy young piety is hard.
Is there a moon, was't yesternight? This old
Head is so racked with care I mind me not.

Agatha
I know not either.

Dagonet
Yea, mother, 'tis but one night to the full.
Look! The sky stirs now faintly with light.

Morwena
Hush, she wakes. Sir Launcelot, go thou
Walk in the cloister. We will prepare
Her for thy coming when 'tis well.

Launcelot
Pray you be not o'erlong--I know not how much
Of this frail life she have.

(Exit Sir Launcelot.)

Guenevere (waking)
Ah, 'tis dusk! Even at this time it was
That in my sleep I dreamed of Camelot.

Morwena
Camelot, my daughter?

Guenevere
But yet somehow it was a brighter place
And newer city. The sun sank and the slim
Moon lifted her pale beauty into heaven,
And dome and turret glittered in the light.
Then Mary the Mother of God came and took
My hand, and her voice fell sweet upon my weary
Ear--

Morwena
Speak to her, boy.

Dagonet
Alas, I may not for looking on her face!
Hark, there is the nightingale, my lady, Look!
Too--the moon riseth!

Guenevere
The moon--

Dagonet
The moon like a white flame in the trees, like liquid
Silver in among the leaves. Mother,
I cannot speak! Oh, my lady! the moon!

Guenevere
Distantly rose Camelot out
Of the silver plain.

Dagonet
And the nightingales--

Guenevere
Aye, all the nightingales in Cameliard
Cannot sing my woes, nor every bird
That sings his tragic plaints of passionate
Mischance can wail my sorrows.

Morwena
Nay, madam, sit, thou hast not strength to stand.

Guenevere
I was a woman and I needed love,
I was a queen to long for courts about,
Strong lords and ladies and gay raiment.
I am a weary human thing that needeth
Rest. Rest is the thing we most do hunger
For and know it not. Sleep, sleep, it is
But the gateway of pure rest's abode. Nay, let
Me have sleep's sister, black-garbed death. For
   queens
Like other women have strong need of death
At times--oh, I am childish grown--

Morwena
Madam, my daughter--

Guenevere
Whose spurs clink walking in the cloister there?

Morwena
One come to see thee and to say farewell.

Guenevere
Farewell, 'tis always farewell in this world.
Is it Sir Launcelot?

Morwena
Yea, daughter, he.

Guenevere
Let him enter.

(Enter Launcelot.)

How dost, Sir Launcelot? Art well? Whence comest?

Launcelot
From Fraunce, my lady. And thou?

Guenevere
Thou seest I have found peace.
In Fraunce this twelvemonth gone?

Launcelot
When the sly Mordred bore an open front,
With vassals and kinsmen I had saved the king
But he would have it not. And I distraught
Got me to my father's land again.

Guenevere
And now?

Launcelot
Now having word of the king's death, I knew
The ravage and the spoil within this isle,
And hasted into boats and blew three days,
And drove into this tortured little harbour,
That thou mightst leave thy sorrows here and go
With me--

Morwena
With thee?

Guenevere
Thee?

Launcelot
The many-towered castle on the heights,
Below, a little Breton hill with trees
And slow white sheep, and farther west the grey
Rocks smoking in the sun at ebb-tide, heather
And pasture-bell upon the seawind mingling--

Guenevere
My lord, thou knowst through thee and me is this
Whole kingdom sore bestead, and the sails of the realm
Veered from the old lodestar of purity.
The Round Table is broke and many knights
Tasted the dolours of death through me and thee.
Therefore I pray thee now, Sir Launcelot,
Look thou not on me evermore. And well
As I have loved thee, I may not see thee
Again, for now mine eye it turneth not
To the worldward but to God, for my soul's health
Lest I be damned.

Dagonet
My lady, there be worse than thou now saints
In heaven.

Guenevere
Thou art o'erfond, child. Then, Sir Launcelot,
Much as I have loved thee, for Christ's sake I may
Not see thee. Therefore I pray that thou
Depart; and pray for me--

Launcelot
I have come far to see thee, but I will
Not trouble thee, poor lady, with fond words.
Sithence thou'lt have it so, I go, yet I
Sail never on the sea to Fraunce again
But to a hermitage, and make my prayers
For thy soul's rest and mine. I pray thee then,
Before I go, madam, kiss me once
And nevermore.

Guenevere
Nay, that may I never do--

Launcelot
Farewell.

Guenevere
And for our old love's sake, Sir Launcelot,
Do this; when I am dead, come thou with seven
Knights, and carry me to Glastonbury
Where my lord Arthur lieth. Pray God I have
Not power to see thee with my worldly eyes
Again for my soul's sake.

(He starts to go out.)

Morwena
She hath o'erspent her strength.

Dagonet
She sleeps.

Morwena
I know not if she wake again. Thou needst
Not go, Sir Launcelot.

Morwena
Weep not, my daughters, she hath fallen asleep
Gloriously.

Agatha
Yea, madam, Christ's mother hath ta'en her hand again.

Dagonet (falling on his knees)
Dead! Oh, my lady!

Launcelot
Nay, she doth sleep. Dead? Art thou gone?
Gone when thou art all mine at last tho late!
Nay, God's life, madam, she is not dead, or why
Drives the blood yet in my heart! Thou'lt
   wake?
Nay, dead, oh, dead--then all is dead
Forevermore!

Morwena
My lord--

Launcelot
Oh, then a long good night to you, my lady!
Good night.

(There comes the sound of knights clattering by and singing a catch.)

   What ho, heigho, with bridle and spur!
   Heigho, and away we ride,
   For men do love, heigho, do love!--

Morwena
Who sings?

Agatha
'Tis knights returned from Camelot and the feasts,
The new king, Constantine, is crowned.

Scene II

A wood near Glastonbury. The wood is dark and, save for a rustle of the leafage now and then, silent. Presently there comes a light through the trees, which heightens and brightens. The tramp of footsteps is heard growing gradually louder. Sir Launcelot and his seven knights enter with the queen's bier on their shoulders, and eight torches burning about her. Her head rests on a cushion, and on her breast is her crown. A pall of black samite bordered with gold lilies covers her body. The knights turn in behind a rocky mound, then reappear among the trees. Then as they go, every now and then, their torches flash further and further away, smaller and smaller points of light amid the columns of the wood, till the last twinkle is gone and the blackness returns.



CURTAIN

---

---

THE SAN-GRAIL

by

ELLA YOUNG

Sir Lancelot rode between the trees,
The evening sun was red:
He thought upon Queen Guinevere
With hair outspread.

He thought upon the Holy Grail
That he had come to win,
And knew his love of Guinevere
Was deadly sin.

Then from his horse he lighted down
Beneath the treen
And prayed that God would sain his soul
Of Arthur's queen.

A sudden glory filled the wood,
And there his eyes
Beheld a wonder that had come
From Paradise.

He saw the Grail-Maid with the Grail
Between her hands,
The sight that is most beautiful
In the world's lands.

Full humbly Lancelot bowed himself
Shamed and afraid
But the Grail-Maiden said to him
"Be not dismayed."

"Look up," she said, "and see the Grail
If thine eyes endure
And if thy heart hath flame of love
Through Love made pure."

He lifted up his eyes if so
The San-Grail might be found:
The splendour smote him to the earth
Deep in a swound.

But through the swound Sir Lancelot knew
The Grail-Maid stood
Like a bright-coloured bird of Heaven
In a dark wood.

And he besought of Christ the Lord
To lend him grace,
Although he might not see the Grail,
To see her face.

"Look up," she said, "and see my face,
The grace is won:
Quenched in me now the moon-fire is
And the fire of the sun."

He looked upon the Grail-Maid's face
Enshadowed by her hair:
He knew her, wan, and white, and still,
Queen Guinevere!

---

---

A SONG THAT TROSTAN MADE

by

ELLA YOUNG

If I were a king's son
I would give you a white hound
In a leash of silver,
I would give you a white stallion
From over the sea.
I would give you a cloak of purple
Wrought with findruiny,
And shoes of white bronze,
If I were a king's son.

You would talk with me
In the bright-coloured palace:
You would be glad at my coming,
If I were a king's son.

---

---

TROSTAN MADE THIS

by

ELLA YOUNG

The hawk in the cliff of Ben Edair
Knows that I am stricken.

The otter knows
In the pool by the hurdles.

Love has a short blossoming-
But the dead remember it.

---

---

THE HISTORY OF THAT HOLY DISCIPLE JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA

The History of that Holy Disciple Joseph of Arimathea. Wherein is contained, The true Account of his Birth, his Parents, his Country, his Education, his Piety; and how he begged of PONTIUS PILATE the Body of Our Blessed Saviour, after his Crucifixion, which he buried in a new Sepulchre of his own.
Also the Occasion of his Coming to ENGLAND, Where he first preached the Gospel at Glastenbury in Somersetshire; and where is still growing that noted White-Thorn, which buds every Christmas-Day in the Morning, blossoms at Noon, and fades at Nights, on the Place where he pitched his Staff in the Ground.
        With a full Relation of his Death and Burial .
Printed and Sold in Bow Church-Yard. London.

THE person we are going to speak of, named Joseph, was a just, holy, pious, and devout man, born at Arimathea, otherwise called Rameth, and afterwards Ramula. It was a city formerly allotted for the Levites, and situated near Sophim on mount Ephraim, near the confines of the tribes of Benjamin and Dan; and is also noted for being the birth place of Samuel the prophet, who here lived and died, and was buried.
       Here Joseph was born, and from hence was called Joseph of Arimathea; he was the son of one Matthias, who was considerable for his extraction, but more for his justice and authority in Jerusalem, which was the metropolis of that country; his bringing up, during his tender years, was with one Jonathan, who was his brother by the same father and mother, with whom he profited in all kind of sciences, having a good memory, and quick apprehension; so that being yet a child of fifteen years of age, he was praised by all men, in regard of the good affection he had to learning, that the priests and noblest citizens vouchsafed to all his opinion of things that concerned their laws and ordinances.
       He was born about eight years before the nativity of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and about the age of seventeen years, his desire being to search and have an insight, into the laws and customs of the three sects of the Jewish nation, the Pharisees, which is the chiefest, the second the Saducees, and the third the Esseans; to the end he might chuse the better of the three, when he understood them all. He declined the two latter, and adhered to the former, addicting himself to such great austerities and labours, that hearing of one Malachi an holy man, who lived in a desart, cloathed himself with nothing but what the trees brought forth, fed on no other kind of meat but what they freely yielded, and washed himself oftentimes by day and night in cold water; to keep himself chaste, he went and lived with him, and imitated his course of life, for the space of four years, at which time he returned to Jerusalem again, at the age of one and twenty years.
       But now, though Joseph of Arimathea had intirely devoted himself to the sect of the Pharisees, yet was he not addicted to the vices which too evidently appeared among them, especially hypocrisy; for he was really just in all his dealings, pious without ostentation, and very charitable in private: insomuch that he obtained the praise of the rich, and the benediction of the poor, where-ever he went, and gloried more to be a good man than a great senator, to which dignity his incomparable merits had justly preferred him.
       However, when Jesus Christ began to take upon him the great work of the ministry of the Gospel, and by his holy life, pure doctrine, and supernatural miracles, had procured many Jews to embrace what he taught them, among the rest of his followers this Joseph of Arimathea became a great admirer of our Saviour's preaching, insomuch that declining the Levitical laws, as then taught in the Jewish church, he became a sincere convert, and followed Christ in all the journeys which he took throughout the land of Judea and Galilee, for the promulgation of the Gospel.
       But when Jesus was betrayed by Judas, who sold the precious blood of our lord and master, for the value of thirty pence, after the condemnation was passed upon him by Pontius Pilate, the Roman president of Syria, and he was crucified on the cross, for the sins of the whole world.--As soon as he was dead, this Joseph of Arimathea, who was a rich man, went, as the evangelist St. Matthew tells us, chap. xvii, 58, 60, to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered; and when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in the rock, and he rolled a great Stone to the door of the sepulchre and departed.
       Now, as for the manner of the sepulchre wherein our Saviour was laid, take the description thereof, as given by Adricomius, in his relation of the Holy Land, and which is as follows: The glorious sepulchre of our Lord, says he, was a new monument, situated about one hundred and eight feet from mount Calvary, and distant one thousand paces from mount Sion. Here it was that Joseph of Arimathea, a noble senator, cut out of a rock that was in his garden, a place of interment, in which he, together with Nicodemus, the blessed Mary, and other women, buried form the cross by consent of Pilate, the body of Jesus, which they had wrapped up in fine linen, perfumed with myrrh and aloes; his head was placed towards the West, from whence it has been the custom ever since, among the Christians, to bury the dead, in many of their church-yards, with the feet towards the East; and those attending his sacred funeral, having rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, they returned to their several habitations.
       In the mean time, the priests, scribes, and pharisees, endeavouring to hinder the resurrexion of Christ, they set a guard of soldiers to watch the sepulchre, the mouth whereof they closely shut up, and set their seals on the door, that they might not be deceived thro' any frauds, either of his disciples or their own keepers; but this diligence of the Jews, who would have obstructed his rising, did rather increase the miracle, and confirm the faith of our Saviour's resurrection; for, on the third day after his crucifixion, receiving life again, he came to Mary Magdalen, first in the likeness of a gardiner, according to these words of the evangelist, Jesus saith unto her, woman, why weepest thou? she, supposing him to be the gardiner, saith unto him, If thou hast borne him hence, tell me: here thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. John xx. 15.
       After the death of our Saviour, Joseph of Arimathea led a solitary life, about six months, in commemoration of our Saviour's crucifixion for his salvation, as well as the whole race of mankind; but this time of penitence being compleated, he came again among the apostles, and by St. Peter was adopted one of the seventy-two disciples.--So to make good that great charge which he had took upon him, understanding from Felix, who then governed Jerusalem, that certain noble Christians, men of much honour, and more virtue, were, for preaching the Christian faith, sent to Rome by his commandment, to answer what was objected against them in Cæsar's presence; being desirous of the service, and having special intelligence, that * the torments wherewith they were martyr'd, lessened not their piety, but that they lived contentedly on figs and nuts. He, for this cause, departed presently for Rome, and was encountered with many and grievous hazards by sea; for the ship wherein he sailed was wreck'd in the midst of the Adriatick sea, and about six hundred of them were forced to swim all night long, and at day-break, by God's providence, a Cyrenian ship came in sight, and he, and about fourscore others, who outswam the rest, were taken up, and saved.
       After he had in this sort escaped, he went to Diarchia, which the Italians call at this day Puteoli, and grew acquainted with Baliturnus, a Jew born, who was a comedian, and in good reputation with Tiberius; by whose means, insinuating himself into the empress Poppeia's knowledge, he determined to beseech her to procure the liberty of those Christians in bondage; and being gratified likewise by her with many gifts, he returned again into his own country.
       Being now returned home, and having given a full account to the twelve apostles, of what special service he had done for the vindication of the Christian liberty at Rome, he was appointed and ordained to go and preach the Gospel in England; and according as the mission commanded him, he took shipping at Joppa, and sailing with a great deal of difficulty, and meeting many dangerous storms, through the Mediterranean sea, he at length landed at Barrow-bay in Somersetshire, and then proceeding onwards of his journey eleven miles that day; came to Glastenbury in the same county; where, fixing his pilgrim's staff in the ground, it was no sooner set in the earth, but just like Aaron's rod (which blossomed flowers when there was a contest betwixt him and other learned Jews for the priesthood) it was presently turned into a blossoming thorn, which supernatural miracle made the numerous spectators, who came to see this wonder, be very attentive to hear his preaching the Gospel, which was concerning Christ crucified for the redemption of mankind.
       He arrived at Glastenbury about three years after the death of our blessed Redeemer, being then in the forty-fourth year of his age, doing there such wonderful miracles, that he presently brought to the conversion of Christ above one thousand souls. Besides, as Eusebius, Sozomenes, and Ruffinus, three most faithful ecclesiastical writers, relate, he baptized at the city of Wells, which is within four miles of Glastenbury, eighteen thousand persons one day; so devout, zealous, and holy, was the life of Joseph of Arimathea, that although he found the inhabitants of this island very barbarous and superstitious, yet, by wholesome admonitions, in learnedly as well as strenuously exhorting them to change their erroneous opinions, representing before their eyes, the heinousness of their damnable folly and blindness, he piously persuaded them not to hazard the salvation of their souls, and their posterity, by embracing downright idolatry, in worshipping the sun, moon, and stars, as well as living creatures, both on the earth, as well as in the sea.
       Thus Joseph of Arimathea, by his godly life and good behaviour, having obtained the good-will of one Ethelbertus, a king then reigning in the western parts of England, and many other nobles, whom he converted to the Christian faith, he founded a most famous abbey at Glastonbury; which was the first Christian church in the world, and by the large endowments settled upon it afterwards by the Christian princes, it became one of the richest monasteries in Christendom.
       In the antient town of Glastenbury the holy Joseph of Arimathea continued till the day of his death, being forty-two years, so that he was eighty-six at his death; and so venerable was his person then held, that six kings of those parts honoured his corpse by carrying him on royal shoulders to the grave; which was made in the chancel of Glastonbury-abbey, and had a most stately tomb erected over him, with the following inscription: HERE LIES THE BODY OF THAT MOST NOBLE DISCIPLE, RECORDED IN SCRIPTURE BY THE NAME OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA, AND NOTED BY THE FOUR EVANGELISTS, ST. MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, AND JOHN, FOR HIS BEGGING THE BODY OF OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR WHEN CRUCIFIED TO REDEEM LOST MEN FROM ETERNAL DESTRUCTION, AND BURYING IT IN A TOMB OF HIS OWN MAKING. HE DIED A.D. 45, AGED 86.
       The church-yard of Glastonbury, formerly called Avolonia, is also noted for the burial-place of king Arthur, whose sepulchre was searched for by King Henry II. and found under a stone, with an inscription on it, declaring whose ashes it covered.
       And in veneration for Joseph of Arimathea, a lady living at Glastonbury, a little after the death of this holy man, obtained of her husband as much pasture-ground for the good of the inhabitants, as she was able to walk about barefoot in a whole day.
       But what is more remarkable is the White-Thorn, otherwise called the Holy-Thorn, which to this very time is noted thro' all Europe, for its budding on Christmas-day in the morning, blossoms at noon, and fades at night; and the reason is as abovesaid; for that it was the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, which he fixing in the grouad, it instantly took root where this famous thorn grows, and thereby proclaimed that spot a resting place for its master. And though the time of superstitious popery is in this kingdom abolished, yet do thousands of people, of different opinions, go annually to see this curiosity, which appearing supernatural, and contrary to the course of nature, makes us cry out with Psalmist, O Lord! how marvellous are thy ways!

FINIS.

* The original reads thst.

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---

Tom Thumbe,
His Life and Death:
Wherein is declared many Maruailous
Acts of Manhood, full of wonder,
and strange merriments:
Which little Knight liued in King Arthurs time, and
famous in the Court of Great Brittaine .

The Life and Death of
Tom Thumbe .

Of the Birth, Name, and bringing vp of Tom
      Thumbe , with the meery prankes that hee
     did in his Childehood.

In Arthurs Court Tom Thumbe did liue
     a man of mickle might,
The best of all the Table round,
     and eke a doughty knight:
His stature but an inch in height,
     or quarter of a span,
Then thinke you not this little knight
     was prov'd a valiant man:

His Father was a Plow-man plaine
     his Mother milkt the Cow,
But yet the way to get a sonne
     these couple knew not how,
Untill such time this good old man
     to learned Merlin goes,
And there to him his deepe disires
     in secret manner showes

How in his heart he wisht to haue
     a Childe in time to come,
To be his heire, though it might be
     no bigger than his Thumbe:
Of which old Merlin thus foretold,
     that he his wish should haue,
And to this Sonne of Nature small
     the Charmer to him gaue.

No blood nor bones in him should be,
     in shape and being such,
That men should heare him speake, but not
     his wandring shadow touch:
But so unseene to goe or come
     whereas it pleasd him Nill,
Begot and borne in halfe and houre,
     to fit his Fathers will:

And in foure minutes grew so fast,
     that he became so tall
As was the Plowmans thumbe in height,
     and so they did him call,
Tom Thumbe, the which Fayry-Queene,
     there gaue to him his name,
Who with her traine of Goblins grim,
     unto his Christning came.

Whereas she cloath'd him richly braue,
     in garments fine and faire,
Which lasted him for many yeares,
     in seemely sort to weare:
His hat made of an Oaken leafe,
     his shirt a spiders web,
Both light and soft, for those his limbes
     that were so smally bred.

His hose and doublet Thistle downe,
     togeather weau'd full fine,
His stocking of an apple greene,
     made of the outward rine;
His garters were two little haires,
     pull'd from his mothers eye,
His bootes and shoes a mouses skin,
     There tand most curiously.

Thus like a lustie gallant, he
     adventured forth to goe,
With other Children in the streets
     his pretty trickes to show,
Where he for counters, pinus, and points,
     and cherry stones did play,
Till he amonst those gamesters young
     had lost his stocke away:

Yet could he soone renue the same,
     when as most nimbly he
Would diue into the Cherry-baggs,
     and there a taker be,
Unseene or felt by any one,
     untill a Scholler shut
This nimble youth into a bore,
     wherein his pins be put,

Of whom to be reueng'd, he tooke
     (in mirth and pleasant game)
Black pots, and glasses, which he hung
     upon a bright Sunne-beame:
The other Boyes to doe the like,
     in pieces broke them quite,
For which they were most soundly whipt,
     whereat he laught outright.

And so Tom Thumbe restrained was
     from these his sports and play,
And by his Mother after that
     compel'd at home to stay:
Whereas about a Christmas time,
     his father a Hog had kil'd,
And Tom to see the puddings made,
     fear'd that they should be spil'd.

How Tom Thumbe fell into the Pudding-
     Boule: and of his escape out of the
     Tinkers Budget.

HE sate upon the Pudding-boule,
     the Candle for to hold:
Of which there is unto this day,
     a pretty pastime told:
For Tom fell in and could not be
     that euer after found,
For in the blood and batter he
     was strangely lost and drownd.

Where searching long but all in vaine,
     his Mother after that,
Into a Pudding thrust her Sonne,
     in stead of minced fat:
Which pudding of the largest size
     into the Kettle throwne,
Made all the rest to fly thereout,
     as with a whirle-wine blowne.

For so it tumbled up and downe,
     within the liquor there,
As if the Devill had there been boyld,
     such was his Mothers feare,
That up she tooke the pudding strait,
     and gaue it at her doore,
Unto a Tinker, which from thence
     in his blacke Budget bore

But as the Tinker climb'd a stile,
     by chance he let a cracke:
Now gip old knaue, out cride Tom Thumbe,
     there hanging at his backe:
At which the Tinker gan to run,
     and would no longer stay,
But cast both bag and Pudding downe,
     and thence hyed fast away.

From which Tom Thumbe got loose at last,
     and home return'd againe,
Where he from following dangers long
     in safety did remaine:
Untill such time his mother went
     a milking at her Kine,
Where Tom unto a Thistle fast
     she linked with a twine.

How Tom Thumbe was tyed to a Thistle,
     and how his Mothers Cow eate him vp:
     with his strange deliverance out of the Cowes belly.

A Thread that helde him to the same,
     for feare the blustring winde
Should blow him thence, that so she might,
     her Sonne in safety finde:
But marke the hap a Cow came by,
     and up that Thistle eate.
Poore Tom withall (that as a docke)
     was made the red Cowes meate:

Who being mist, his Mother went
     him calling euery where,
Where art thou Tom, where art thou Tom,
     quoth he, Here Mother, here;
Within the red Cowes belly here:
     your Sonne is swallowed by,
The which into her fearefull heart,
     most carefull dolours put.

Meane while the Cow was troubled much,
     in this her tumbling wombe,
And could not rest untill that she
     had backward cast Tom Thumbe:
Who all besmeared as he was,
     his mother tooke him vp,
To beare him thence, the which poore Lad,
     she in her pocket put.

Now after this, in sowing time,
     his Father would him haue
Into the field to drive his plow,
     and thereupon him gaue
A whip made of a Early straw,
     to drive the Cattle on:
Where in a furrow'd land new sowne,
     poore Tom was lost and gon.

How Tom Thumbe was carried away by a Ra-
     uen; and how he was swallowed by a Giant,
     with other strange accidents that befell him.

Now by a Rauen of great strength
     away he thence was borne,
And carried in the carrions beake,
     even like a graine of Corne,
Unto a Giants Castle top,
     in which he let him fall,
Where soone the Giant swallowed vp,
     his body, cloathes and all.

But in his belly did Tom Thumbe
     so great a rumbling make,
That neither day nor night he could
     the smallest quiet take,
Untill the Gyant had him spewd
     three miles into the Sea,
Whereas a Fish soone tooke him up
     and bore him thence away.

Which lusty Fish was afeer caught,
     and to King Arthur sent,
Where Tom was found, and made his Dwarfe,
     whereas his dayes he spent,
Long time in liuely jollity,
     belou'd of all the Court,
And none like Tom was the esteem'd
     amongst the noble sort.

Amongst his deedes of Courtship done,
     his highnesse did command,
That he should dance a Galliard braue,
     upon his Queenes left hand.
The which he did and for the same,
     the King his signet gaue,
Whith Tom about about his middle wore,
     long time a girdle braue.

Now after this the King would not
     abroad for pleasure goe,
But still Tom Thumbe must ride with him,
     plac't on his saddle bow:
When on a time when as it rain'd,
     Tom Thumbe most nimbly crept
In at a Button hole, where he
     within his bosome slept.

And being neere his Highnesse heart,
     he crau'd a wealthy boone,
A liberall gift, the which the King
     commanded to be done,
For to relieue his Fathers wants,
     and Mothers, being old:
Which was so much of silver Coyne,
     as well his armes could hold.

And so away goes lusty Tom,
     with three pence on his backe,
A heauy burthen, which might make
     his wearied limbes to cracke,
So trauelling two dayes and nights,
     with labour and great paine,
He came into the house whereas
     his parents did remaine,

Which was but half a mile in space,
     from good Kings Arthurs Court,
The which in eight and forty houres,
     he went in weary sort:
But comming to his Fathers doore,
     he there such entrance had,
As made his Parents both rejoice,
     and he thereat was glad.

His mother in her apron tooke
     her gentle Sonne in haste,
And by the fier side, within
     a walnut shell him plac'd:
Whereas they feasted him three dayes
     upon a Hazell nut,
Whereon he rioted so long,
     he them to charges put.

And there upon grew wonderous sicke,
     through eating too much meate,
Which was sufficient for a month
     for this great man to eate.
But now his business call'd him foorth,
     King Arthurs Court to see,
Whereas no longer from the same
     he could a stranger be.

But yet a few small April drops,
     which setled in the way,
His long and weary journey forth,
     did hinder and so stay,
Untill his carefull Father tooke
     a birding trunke in sport,
And with one blast blew this his Sonne
     into King Arthurs Court.

Of Tom Thumbs running at Tilt, with diuers o-
     ther Knightly exercises by him performed.

Now he with Tilts and Turnaments
     was entertained so,
That all the best of Arthurs Knights,
     did him much pleasure show,
As good Sir Lancelot of the Lake,
     Sir Tristram, and Sir Guy,
Yet none compar'd with braue Tom Thum
     for Knightly Chiualry.

In honour of which noble day,
     and for his Ladies sake,
A challenge in King Arthurs Court,
     Tom Thumbe did brauely make:
Gainst whom these noble Knights did run,
     Sir Chinon, and the rest,
Yet still Tom Thumbe with matchles might
     did beare away the best.

At last sir Lancelot of the Lake,
     in manly sort came in,
And with this stout and hardy knight
     a battle did begin.
Which made the Courtiers all agast,
     for there that valiant man,
Through Lancelots Steed before them all,
     in nimble manner ran.

Yea horse and all, with speare and shield,
     as hardly he was seene,
But onely by King Arthurs selfe
     and his admired Queene,
Who from her finger tooke a Ring,
     though which Tom Thumbe made way,
Not touching it in nimble sort,
     as it was done in play.

He likewise cleft the smallest haire
     from his faire Ladies head,
Not hurting her, whose even hand
     him lasting honors bred:
Such were his heeds and noble acts,
     in Arthurs Court there showne,
As like in all the world beside,
     was hardly seene or knowne.

How Tom Thumbe did take his sicknesse, and of
     his Death and Buriall.

Now at these sports he toyld himselfe,
     that he a sicknesse tooke,
Though which all manly exercise,
     he carelessly forsooke:
Where lying on his bed sore sicke,
     King Arthurs Doctor came,
With cunning skill, by physicks art,
     to ease and cure the same,

His body being so slender small
     this cuaning Doctor tooke
A fine prospective glasse, with which
     he did in secret looke
Into his sickened body downe,
     and therein saw that death
Stood ready in his wasted guts,
     to cease his vitall breath,

His armes and leggs consum'd as small,
     as was a Spiders web,
Though which his dying houre grew on,
     for all his limbes grew dead:
His face no bigger than an Ants
     which hardly could be seene,
The losse of which renowned Knight
     much grieu'd the King and Queene.

And so with peace and quietnesse,
     he left this earth below:
And up into the Fayry Land,
     his Ghost did fading goe,
Whereas the Fayry Queene receiu'd,
     with heauy mourning cheere,
The body of this valiant Knight,
     whom she esteem'd so deare.

For with her dancing Nimphes in greene,
     she fetcht him from his bed,
With musicke and sweet melody,
     so soone as life was fled:
For whom King Arthur and his Knights,
     for forty daies did mourne,
And in remembrance of his name
     that was so strangely borne.

He built a Tombe of Marble gray,
     and yeare by yeare did come
To celebrate that mournefull day,
     and buriall of Tom Thum:
Whose fame still liues in England here,
     amongst the Countrey sort.
Of whom our Wiues and Children small
     tell tales of pleasant sport.

FINIS

---

---

THE TEMPTATION OF ARTHUR

(ANONYMOUS)

Where to the sea the woodlands fair dropped down,
So close, that ever when the moon was full
Sea-fairies came and joined the wood-nymphs' dance,
The king walked musing through the summer morn;
For in the night strange dreams had vexed his sleep;
And sad pathetic voices haunted him;
And dim forms beckoned him to glorious deeds;
So that he started up with haggard eyes,
And would have no man's comfort.
                                                      Far and near,
The blossom-laden boughs were all astir,
And with delicious murmur filled the land;
Like playful children prattling on the beach,
The waves came up and hung around his feet;
Above, the sea-birds cried and flapped their wings;
Behind, the herons piped across the plain;
Through the dim wood a lark sang clear and shrill.

The wind-fanned woodlands and the peaceful sea
Were the familiar objects of his eye,
Herein naught beautiful or strange he saw;
But when the lark sang clearly through the woods,
And a deep stillness crept o'er sea and land,
He paused and listened to the bird's sweet notes.

Then said the king, "No common bird is this,
But some rare spirit poising like a lark,
And calling me to do some glorious deed
Which shall ennoble all my Table Round,
Making me worthiest of worthy knights."

Now, far and near, the lark sang clear and shrill.
"O sad, but happy spirit!" said the king,
"No tones of earth in those sweet notes find place;
Thou art of finer mould than our poor forms,
Which move but with the birth of new desires,
And are of constant elements devoid;
Thou dwellest somewhere in this happy place,
And I will search for thee, and find thy home.

"Now the great boughs bend as I pass along;
With silver heads upreared, snakes hiss at me;
Now through the deepening gloom glow many eyes,
And voices murmur like the midnight sea."

Soon, far away, he spied a little grove,
Through whose twined branches streamed the morning sun
Upon the soft green grass that waved beneath;
And hastening on, and quickly reaching here,
Behold, there sat upon a fallen tree
A maiden weeping.
                              In her saddened face
The lily and the rose each other vied;
Her eyes were violets hung with dewy tears;
Caressed by careless winds, her yellow hair
Lay like a web of gold above the grass;
Along her naked feet and soft white hands
The tangled brambles cruelly had trailed;
A samite mantle from her shoulders hung,
And hid the sleeky roundness of her arms;
At two spears' length there stood a milk-white steed,
Who neighed and watched the maid with blood-shot eyes.

The king drew near, and took her by the hand,
Whereat she shrank afraid, and would have fled,
But, looking up, and seeing a goodly knight,
She blushed, and bent her head, and plucked a flower;
Then, gathering strength, she spoke to him, and said:
"O art thou one of those who yester-eve
Slew my dear father and my brethren seven,
And wasted all our lands with fire and sword?"

To which the king: "Alas! most desolate maid!
Whose beauty seems as peerless as the skies;
Whose sorrows are as early flowers which droop
When frost-charms glitter in their chilly eyes;
Were these the chances strange which drove thee here
All unattended, save by this sad steed?"

Then, looking up to him, she said: "Fair knight!
Thy voice is soft, and low, and free from guile;
Thy eyes seem full of pity to behold
How I have fallen from my good estate;
For hither fled I through the weary night,
My purpose to escape these savage men,
And come to Guinevere at Camelot;
For then, indeed, some noble knight, intent
On deeds of valour, might adventure forth,
And re-instate me and my sisters dear,
Who now are held in bondage by our foes."

To which, with eager gladness, said the king:
"Gather thy garments round thee: dry thy tears:
Mount thy good steed, and lead me to the place.
For never yet adventure have I had
So full of wonder, and of promise too;
My heart feels younger, fresh blood through my brains
Rolls madly like a river in the spring;
Now through my mind there ever come and go
Dim visions which the magic mirror threw
When Merlin showed me all my life to be
Stretched out before us like a landscape fair;
Then felt I as I now feel -- never man
Was moved so much, if the intent were small."

Now high in heaven the lark sang clear and shrill,
While these twain wandered in the trackless woods;
And ever as they went upon their way,
In soft sweet syllables she told him all,
While on her face he looked, and she on his.
And like the moon, which comes while yet 'tis day,
Hanging upon the edge of some dark cloud
Which serves to throw its saddened beauty forth;
So she did place her hands upon her face,
Hiding her eyes, whose brightness shone the more
The more she strove their brightness to conceal.

"What eyes are these," he asked, "which shine so bright?
These are not eyes, but surely two bright stars
Which glimmer through the mists of coming eve."
"Fair knight," she said, "you blame, but flatter me;
These are but eyes: you do not blame the stars
Because the spirits of the moonlit sea
Do sing to them: the stars are not to blame.
So blame not me; and if my eyes seem bright
To your vain fancy, say it is the gloom
Which makes them seem so, or the happy fate
Which led me to you; and, my heart being full,
My thanks must needs be spoken by my eyes."

To which the king: "Thine eyes more glorious grow,
And fill me with strange wonder and strange doubts."
Then she, in anxious haste: "Far off I see
A glimmer in the east, it is the moon;
And, see, the trees are fewer, and beyond
The open country; further on the wood,
Where was my father's castle: let us on."

Then through the daisied meadows, where the flowers,
Whispering "Beware!" looked shyly at the king;
Along the banks of many languid pools,
From which came slimy things to gloat at them;
By gloomy groves, whence came the mocking sound
Of "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" all the livelong day;
And round the wave-washed melancholy coast,
O'er which the gathering clouds kept awful watch,
While sea-gulls wheeled and shrieked around the cliffs;
And by the plains where many herons piped,
He went with her; until, at length, they came
Unto the borders of a dismal wood.
She took his hand, and led him to a path
Which ran between two rows of savage pines;
And down this path she went, and he with her.

Cooing of ringdoves calling to their mates
Betokened that the day was waning fast.
Soon the drear forest and the evening shades
Enfolded them; and night came on apace.
Then dark clouds hemmed the sad and passionful moon,
And not one single ray of gentle light
Lingered amid that weird and awful place.
Ere long they came to where a mountain gorge
Lay coiled beneath a dreadful precipice,
All thick with firs and many a mountain yew,
High in the sky; and as the tempest rose
The branches bent and broke, and thickly fell
Around them; and huge rocks forsook the cliffs
And crashed and thundered down the dismal gorge;
And from afar a noise of waters came
Like the dull rolling moan of many seas;
And leaping cataracts foamed and hissed along,
And tumbled to the plains somewhere below.

Close to his face he felt her tangled hair
In snake-like folds twining around his neck,
While wan as wintry dawn did seem his face.
Then, when a hollow gust swept down the gorge,
Moaning and mocking like a thing of sin,
In melancholy mood she crept to him,
And hid her cold face close to his, and looked
Into his wildered eyes, and clung to him
And "Arthur!" cried, and all the mountain sides
Echoed "Arthur!" Then when calmer grown,
Because the storm was passed and it was light,
She murmured "Not far off my land doth lie--
Soft lawns, cool streams, and woodlands wondrous.
Come, prithee, sweet, and let us leave this place."
So ever on they went, until they came
To a rare valley nestled 'mid the hills
Like a sweet thought within a lover's heart;
Wherein there was a little wood all filled
With choicest scents and most delicious sounds,
Which the sad clouds withdrew far off to hear;
While full of love the tender moon came forth.
"All this is mine, and may be thine," said she.

To which the king, a melancholy man:
"Is this thy father's castle? Where are they,
Thy brethren seven and thy sad sisters three?
For whose dear sakes, and thine, and to add fame
Unto my name and to the Table Round,
Hither came I, led by thy guileful tongue.
This is no earthly place: these sights and sounds
Are most unholy; prithee, lead me forth
And leave me to myself, and let me go
To my brave knights and to my Guinevere!"

And even as he spoke this well-loved name
His mind ran back unto the happy day
When all the land was filled with holy joy
Because he called his Guinevere "Dear wife!"
But when he cast his eyes upon the ground
And they met hers which passionately uplooked,
A sickly sadness came and stayed with him.

Which seeing, she with anxious tone outspoke:
"Now, good sir knight, I trow thou art not pleased,
And wherefore? For these woods have sights to please,
And all of them are mine; say what thou wilt.
Should'st thou be merry?--then in truth no lack
Of food for merriment shall here be found.
And why not merry? I am never sad,
Who most have cause to be; for now, alas!
I see thou lov'st me not."

                                        To which the king:
"Woman with flame-like hair and lustful eyes,
Thy pretty syllables and dainty smiles,
Nought heed I; for I know now who thou art.
Not many moons have spent their mellow strength
Since by such arts as thine was Merlin trapped;
But, know thou that I am not one of those
Whose passions are their masters, not their serfs;
Soft arms and speechful eyes and rosy lips
I hold as nothing; therefore let me go!"

To which the guileful damsel, creeping close,
And twining both her arms about his neck,
And hiding his still face amid her hair,
And pressing her hot lips upon his lips,
With many a tearful start, replied, and said:
"Some there are who are sad, and, yet, therein
Find greater pleasure than in all their joys.
So be it, sweet, with you when you are sad.
And wherefore sad? Answer, ye moonlit woods!
O sweet! for thou art sweeter than the dawn,
Sweeter than violets by south winds kissed,
Sweeter than coo of doves when love is young,
Or than the moon when she is in her prime.
I love thee! For it fell upon a day
That coming up to Camelot at the jousts
(When deeds of daring thick as daisies were)
I saw thee with thy true and goodly knights,
And then I swore that I would make thee mine
Ere the young moon had burnt herself away."

While this she said, behold the mellow moon
Grew wan and wanner; and the happy stars
Slid from the sky like smiles from some fair face;
All unattended came the simple dawn;
The forest was astir with many sounds--
Birds, brooks, and fairy footfalls everywhere,
And gleeful laughter only half suppressed:
Then high in heaven a lark sang sadly shrill,
Like a lost spirit in a world of woe.

Then he: "If good things in this place there be,
Or in the heavens above, or earth below,
Who have of knighthood charge, I pray their aid."
Thereat she smiled a weird and hollow smile,
And put her lips close to his clammy brow,
And strove to comfort him with honeyed words.

To which the king: "Thy tender voice I hear
Sounding like whispers from the underworld;
Thy eyes of flame my weary senses pierce;
Thy snake-like tresses coil around my neck;
Upon my parched lips hot kisses fall;
And soft arms fold me in a fond embrace:--
But not thy gleeful words, thy eyes of flame,
Nor tangled hair which coils around my neck,
Nor kisses hot, nor arms which fondly twine,
Can make me break mine all-accustomed vows;
For I am cold as stone, and cannot melt
Before the white heat of a woman's love.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

And thou wilt give me all these wondrous woods,
And make me lord of many tables round!
O wily snakes, that show your speckled sides,
Ye are not wily as a woman's tongue!
Take off thy lips, they seem as hot as flame,
And when they fall upon my haggard face
Do hiss like sparks that fall into a pool.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

Come forth, O sun! and cheer me, or I faint.
Afar thou shinest in the happy south,
But shunnest this sad place. O, Guinevere!
Mine own dear wife! where art thou? Tristram, too,
The truest knight of all my Table Round;
And thou, most gentle Lady of the Lake,
Who gavest me my sword, and bid me forth
To consecrate the right and cleave the wrong,
Where, too, art thou, when most thy aid I need?"

Now high in heaven a lark sang very clear.
"Hush! what! that sound? Do'st hear it? 'Tis the lark
Which called me forth to this adventure sad,
And now, perchance, doth come to lead me back,
Sent by the gentle Lady of the Lake."

And now the birds stopped half-way in their song,
The weird sad voices died amid the woods,
And sudden silence dropped around the place.
A little breeze up-sprang, and tossed her hair
In savage splendour round about her face;
Her lips were cold and bloodless; with both hands
She trust him from her, while with stony eyes
She gazed at him; then, hissing through closed teeth,
"Fool!" turned away and fled among the woods.

Then high in heaven sang the happy lark,
And dropped and dropped, until it rested safe
Within the spreading branches of an oak.
And, as with eager haste he raised his hands
To catch the bird, he heard a rustling sound,
And, turning round, with wondering eyes he saw
Sir Tristram and the Lady of the Lake.

She took his hand, and led him forth to where
The silly sea toyed with the tangled weed;
And in this quiet creek a vessel lay.
Embarking here with Tristram, from afar
Up-sprang fair winds; so that in one day's space
He found his wistful knights at Camelot.
And all these wondered where the king had been,
And marvelled howo much older he had grown;
But none knew, save those twain who led him forth,
Sir Tristram and the Lady of the Lake.

---

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SIX BALLADS ABOUT KING ARTHUR

(ANONYMOUS)

MY DEAR CHILDREN

          I strung the following lines together hoping to give you pleasure. The stories are taken from a book called 'Morte d'Arthur' which you will read when you are older, and will see that I have often used the very words of the translator

                                                                                        YOUR LOVING GRANNY

1 The Birth of King Arthur

2 Arthur Made King

3 The Message

4 The Marriage of King Arthur

5 The Sancgreal

6 The Death of King Arthur

THE BIRTH OF KING ARTHUR.

'To horse! to horse! my noble lord,'
          Thus spake the fair Igraine,
'Ride hard -- ride fast all through the night,
          Nor stay, nor slack the rein.'

'Now why such haste to leave the Court?'
          The Duke of Cornwall cried.
'Ah me,' she said, 'King Uther wills
          Thy wife should be his bride.'

Fast, fast they rode all through the night,
          Nor stayed, nor slacked the rein,
Until the towers of Tintagel
          Rose shining o'er the plain.

But on the morrow, messengers
          Came riding from the King:
'Uther Pendragon bids the Duke
          Himself and wife to bring

Back to fair London town.' -- 'Unto
          The King this answer give:
Nor self nor wife shall tread his halls
          So long as either live.'

Then sware the King a dreadful oath,
          Or ere the fortieth day
He would unearth him from his lair,
          And waste, and burn, and slay.

Alack for right 'gainst regal might!
          It boots but ill to tell
How in a sally 'gainst the King
          The brave Duke Cornwall fell.

The towers he manned, the wife he loved,
          Became King Uther's prey,
And from her home at Tintagel
          Igraine was borne away.

And when her baby boy was born,
          In cloth of gold with state
'Twas given to a beggar-man,
          Who waited at the gate.

But this was Merlin, in disguise
          Of beggar old and grey,
The great enchanter, Merlin hight,
          Who bore the babe away

Unto a holy, saintly man,
          Who christened him by name
Of Arthur -- prince of chivalry,
          First on the scroll of fame.

And good Sir Ector's noble wife
          Nurtured the baby fair,
And brought him up in gentle ways,
          Befitting England's heir.

Eftsoons King Uther sickenèd
          And fell in woful plight;
He spake to non or great or small,
          By day nor eke by night.

Then Merlin rose in council full,
          And spake both loud and high:
'God's will be done, but I will make
          Him speak or ere he die!'

So in hot haste, without delay,
          Unto the King he hied,
Knelt down beside the royal couch:
          'Wilt thou, O Sire,' he cried

'That Arthur, thy own son, shall rule
          O'er England in thy stead?'
The noble vassals gathered round,
          Listening astonishèd.

For naught knew they of infant son,
          But every Baron there
Mighty of men, and strong of arm,
          Wended to be the heir.

King Uther Pendragon turned round
          Upon his dying bed,
And to the knights assembled there
          And to great Merlin said:

'May God Almighty bless my son!
          I, too, my blessing give;
Bid him use fitting holy prayers
          That my poor soul may live:

'And claim the crown right worshipful
          On pain of blessing lost.'
With that he turned him o'er again,
          And yielded up the ghost.

They buried him with regal pomp,
          While all his Barons wept,
As did Igraine, his beauteous queen --
          But Uther calmly slept.

ARTHUR MADE KING.

When Uther passed away, the realm
          Fell in great jeopardy,
For many wended to be king
          Through might and bravery.

Then Merlin to the Archbishop
          Of Canterbury went,
And they together council took
          This evil to prevent.

Thus they agreed -- that every lord,
          On pain of curses deep,
And every gentleman-at-arms
          A solemn tryst should keep,

On Christmas day, at London town,
          Since Christ, as all do know,
Was then created Lord of all
          The kingdoms here below;
So who should reign o'er England fair
          By miracle might show.

Some nobles made them passing clean
          From vice or crime, for fear
Their prayers might enter gracelessly,
          Within Christ Jesus' ear.

Inside the church on Christmas day
          (It was St. Paul's, I ween),
A mightly host of knights and lords
          And commoners is seen.

But ere they read the early mass,
          Or early matins sing,
Unto the Lord Archbishop there
          This startling news they bring:

'Outside, within the churchyard gate,
          Near to the altar stone,
There stands a large square marble slab
          With anvil perched thereon;

'And in the anvil, of pure steel
          A naked sword doth sit,
Of finest point, and all around
          Are golden letters writ:

'"Whoso from out this marble stone
          With his own powerful hand
Shall pluck this sword, he shall be Lord
          And King of all England."'

The Lord Archbishop ordered then
          That none should touch the stone,
But all within the church should pray
          Until High Mass was done,

And when all prayers were finishèd
          (This was his Grace's will),
Ten knights of stainless troth and fame
          Should guard the sword from ill;

That jousts and tournaments be held
          Upon the New Year's day;
That all who willed their prowess try
          To pluck the sword away.

Thereto there flocked a gallant host
          Of knights and ladies gay;
Sir Ector brought young Arthur there,
          And his own son, Sir Kay.

But then befel a woful chance --
          Sir Kay had lost his sword,
In sooth, had left it at his home.
          Then uttered he this word:

'O foster brother! backward speed,
          Ride fast for love of me,
And when thou reachest Ector's house,
          My sword bring back to me.'

'That will I,' said the gallant youth,
          Riding away alone;
But when he reached the castle gate
          He found the wardour gone,

And all the inmates, great and small,
          Off to the tournament;
Baffled and wroth he turned his horse
          And to the churchyard went.

'Ten thousand pities 'twere,' he said,
          'My dearest brother Kay
Should at the joust withouten sword
          Appear in disarray.

Whereat he lighted from his horse,
          And tied it to the stile,
While to the tent he bent his steps
          And loitered there awhile,

To see if the ten guards were there --
          He recked not that they went
With all the world, both rich and poor,
          To the great tournament.

So when he found no knights were there
          But to the jousting gone,
Lightly yet fierce the sword he seized,
          And pulled it from the stone,

And to Sir Kay delivered it,
          Who wist, as soon as seen,
That 'twas the sword from out the stone;
          Then said, 'Full well I ween

I have the sword, and I must be
          The King of all Englànd.
But when he showed it to his sire
          Sir Ector gave command

That to the church he should repair
          And swear upon the book
How gat he then the sword; but he,
          Fearing his sire's rebuke,

Told how his foster brother came
          When all the knights were gone,
And light and fiercely plucked the sword
          From out the magic stone.

'Now try again,' Sir Ector said;
          Whereat they all assayed,
But none save Arthur there availed
          To sunder out the blade.

And thrice again he made assay,
          And thrice the sword came free;
Sir Ector and Sir Kay fell down
          Upon their bended knee.
'O father! why,' young Arthur said,
          'Your homage pay to me?'

'Because that God has willed it so.
          Thou art no son of mine:
'Twas Merlin brought thee to my arms
          From some far nobler line.

'But, O my liege! for King thou art,
          Wilt thou to mine and me,
Who nurtured thee and brought thee up,
          A gracious sovereign be?

But Arthur wept and made great dole
          At what Sir Ector said,
That he no sire or mother had,
          Then sweetly answerèd:

'Else were I much to blame! I am
          Beholden so to you,
Command me, and may God me help
          I will your bidding do.'

'Sir,' said Sir Ector, 'I will ask
          No more than that of all
The lands you govern, my son Kay
          Be made the Seneschal.'

Replied young Arthur, 'That shall be;
          I here my promise give,
That none but he that office fill
          While he or I shall live.'

Then happèd it that on Twelfth day
          The Barons all assay
To pluck the sword, but none prevail
          Save Arthur on that day.

Then waxed they wroth, and Candlemas
          Was fixed for the assay,
Yet still no knight but Arthur
          Could pluck the sword away.

Then at high feast of Eastertide,
          Also at Pentecost,
None but young Arthur loosed the sword --
          The knights their temper lost.

But when the Lord Archbishop came,
          All cried with one accord,
'We will have Arthur for our King,
          God wills him for our lord.'

And down on bended knee they fell
          To pay him homage due;
And thus he won Excalibur
          And all fair England too.

Soon Scotland, and the North, and Wales,
          To him obeisance made,
Won by prowess of his knights
          And of his trusty blade.

THE MESSAGE.

On battlemented Camelot
          The moon was softly sleeping;
Within, King Arthur's noble knights
          Their wassail late were keeping.

'What ho! Sir Wardour, ope the gate,
          And let the drawbridge down;
I bear a message to your lord
          From Ryence of renown.'

Then up and spake the white-haired thrall
          That kept the castle gate,
'It ill befits our courtesy
          To one who comes so late,

'Who travel-stained and weary seems,
          To bar his entry free;
But tell me first your quest, I pray,
          And who may Ryence be?'

'My quest I tell but to thy chief:
          Enough for thee, I ween,
That Ryence reigns o'er Wales, and eke
          O'er Ireland's mountains green,
And isles unnumbered round about,
          Now glittering in the sheen.'

The wardour oped the castle door,
          And let the drawbridge down;
The herald crossed in silence o'er,
          And entered with a frown,

And when within the banquet hall,
          He never bowed the head,
Nor bent the knee, but strode right on
          And to King Arthur said:

'King Ryence vanquished in fair fight
          Twice six good kings save one;
He summons thee that one to be,
          Or proffers thee a boon.

'He bids thee here on bended knee
          Thy lawful homage pay,
Or he will come with fire and sword
          To waste, and burn, and slay.

'King Ryence hath a sammet cloak
          All purfled round with hair --
With human hair torn from the chins
          Of kings he slew in war.

'But still there is one little spot
          Uncovered at the base:
Flay thou thy chin, and send thy beard
          To fill the vacant place.'

Then started up King Arthur's knights
          Indignant at this word;
Each stamped his mailèd heel in ire,
          Each drew his trusty sword.

King Arthur rose with manly grace
          And to the herald spake,
'Quail not before my noble knights,
          But back this answer take:

'Say that of all the messages
          E'er sent from king to king,
This is the shamefullest and worst
          That herald e'er did bring.

' 'Tis plain Ryence has never been
          In knightly company;
He lacks the soul -- he lacks the speech
          Of common courtesy.

'Tell him, no homage do I owe,
          Nor sire nor kith of mine;
As for my beard, it is too scant
          To purfle cloak so fine;

'And if he come, as now he boasts,
          With fire and sword to slay,
On both his bended knees he shall
          To me his homage pay.'

The herald left the hall -- the King
          Thus broke the deep silènce:
'Now is there any here,' he said,
          'That knoweth King Ryence?'

Then answered him one night Naram,
          'I know him passing well;
In body few can match his strength,
          In pride none him excel.

'I doubt not he will war with you
          Full strong and powerfully.'
'Well!' said the King, 'I will ordain
          For him, as he shall see.'

THE MARRIAGE OF KING ARTHUR.

Then happed it on Allhallowmas,
          That Bors, the King of Gaul,
And Ban of Benwick, over seas,
          Came at King Arthur's call.

They came with full three hundred knights,
          All chosen, brave, and true,
To vanquish Arthur's enemies
          Who fierce and fiercer grew.

And while they kept high festival
          Beneathen cloth of gold,
A thrall came riding in hot haste
          And woful tidings told;

How that King Ryence of North Wales
          Had gone with sword and lance
From out his mountain fastnesses
          'Gainst King Leodogrance.

Now Arthur loved this king for aid
          In war, and friendly troth,
But hated Ryence of North Wales,
          So at this news was wroth.

King Bors and Ban made ready then
          Their chivalry from France,
And all the country rose in arms
          To aid Leodogrance.

Full twenty thousand men-at-arms
          Rode with King Arthur hard,
Until within six days they reached
          The towers of Cameliard.

And then and there the mighty host
          Engaged in dreadful fight,
They slaughtered twice five thousand souls
          And put Ryence to flight.

'Twas then King Arthur first beheld
          The lovely Guinever,
The King's fair daughter -- ever since
          He loved but only her.

When that the kingdom freedom gat
          From wars and jealous strife,
The barons begged King Arthur then
          To wed a loving wife.

With Merlin too was counsel ta'en,
          Who deemed it good and wise,
And asked the King if any maid
          Found favour in his eyes.

Then answered Arthur, 'There is one,
          I deem her passing fair,
The daughter of my trusty friend,
          The lovely Guinever.

'To him my father gave a prize
          I value more than gold,
The huge Round Table at whose board
          Sate knights a hundred told

'And fifty more.' 'Sir,' Merlin said,
          'I grant you passing well,
For beauty and for fairness too
          No maid can her excel.

'But an ye loved her not, I could
          Another damsel find,
Whose beauty and whose goodness should
          Be equal in your mind.

'But 'tis not meet a man should wed
          Where he can feel no love;
For where his heart is set, he will
          Be quick his feet to move.'

'Ah! that is true,' the King replied,
          Nor list what Merlin said,
How grief and sorrow would ensue
          If he the maid should wed,

But sent him to Leodogrance,
          In goodly company,
To plead his suit, and ask the King
          What might his pleasure be?

Leodogrance was overjoyed
          To welcome Merlin's suite,
Exclaiming that it pleased him well
          Arthur's demands to meet.

But said, 'What can I proffer him
          With Guinever for dower?
For gold and land he does not lack,
          He has such ample store.

'But I the huge Round Table have,
          Uther Pendragon gave
To me is trusted friend, and that
          His son shall gladly have.

'Alack for hap and woful change!
          Full many a gallant knight
Who sate thereat has perished since,
          Slain in the bloody fight.

'But still a hundred knights remain,
          My faithful bodyguard;
They shall escort my daughter when
          She leaveth Cameliard.'

So Merlin, knights, and Guinever
          Journeyed by land and sea,
Till they came nigh to London town,
          A goodly company.

Then did King Arthur joy to see
          The cavalcade arrive,
Bearing the Table that he prized
          And Guinever to wive.

He spake out openly and loud,
          'This maid I long have loved,
And more than land or precious gold
          These gifts my heart have moved.

'For nothing is so lief to me
          As Guinever the fair;
To wed her, and to crown her queen,
          We quickly will prepare.

'Let Merlin search through all the land
          If fifty knights be found,
To fill the places vacant left
          Beside the Table Round.'

But only eight-and-twenty knights
          Of prowess and good fame
Could Merlin find to fill the seats.
          Then Canterbury came --

He came with pomp right royally
          To bless the seats in state;
Upon each chair, the while he prayed,
          The eight-and-twenty sate.

When they arose and homage paid
          To Arthur, as was fit,
Were golden letters found on each,
          Telling who there should sit.

But two were void, and so anon
          Came riding young Gawaine,
To beg the king to dub him knight,
          Nor did he beg in vain

Then forthwithal a poor man came,
          And with him his fair son:
'Oh, where shall I King Arthur find?'
          He questioned every one.

'Yonder he stands -- what wilt with him?'
          Down on his bended knee
He dropped and said, 'O blessed King!
          O flower of chivalry!

'May Jesu save thee! here I come
          A humble suppliant,
Hearing that on your wedding-day
          Ye any boon would grant.

'Sir, I have thirteen stalwart sons,
          Who labour all the year,
And do my bidding passing well;
          But this thou seest here

'Will nothing do but bend the bow,
          And cast the dart afar;
He loves to watch the feasts and games,
          And mix where battles are.

'Make him, my King, a gallant knight.'
          ' 'Tis sooner said than done,'
Arthur replied; but all the while
          He watchèd well the son,

And found that he fair-visaged was,
          And passingly well made.
'What is thy name, and where thy sword?'
          He to the young man said.

'My name is Tor, and here is my sword.'
          'Unsheath it and alight.'
The youth leaped from his meagre steed,
          Kneeling in Arthur's sight.

'Oh make me, sir, a knight, I pray,
          Knight of the Table Round!'
Smiting him on the neck with sword,
          'May'st thou be ever found,'

King Arthur said, 'I pray to God,
          A good knight and a true!
But to be knight of Table Round
          Lacks worth and prowess too.'

And then there happed a wondrous sight;
          For when the King was wed
All solemnly at Camelot,
          And the high feast was made,

By Merlin's order every knight
          Sat silent, one and all,
Each in his siege in solemn state
          Within the banquet hall.

Till, as the portals open flew,
          Rushed in a hart milk-white,
A snow-white brachet followed on,
          And then, O wondrous sight!

Twice thirty coal-black hounds pursued
          The hart with yell and cry,
And when the brachet wounded her
          She moanèd piteously,

And gave a sudden bound that threw
          One knight upon the ground,
Wherefrom he soon arose and seized
          By force the snow white hound.

Quick out of hall, he leaped to horse,
          Bearing his prize away,
Riding as if for life and death,
          That no man could him stay.

Anon there came on palfrey white
          A lady fair and gay,
Who begged the King to give her back
          Her brachet stolen away.

That can I not,' said Arthur. Then
          A knight in full array
Came riding in, armed cap-a-pie
          And bore the maid away.

By force he snatched her that she made
          Such dole with shriek and cry,
That all within the banquet hall
          Rejoiced to see them fly.

Then Merlin spake: 'Ye may not treat
          These shames as poor and slight,
Else much disworship will arise
          To King and every knight

'Belonging to the Table Round;
          But order noble men,
Gawaine, and Pellinore, and Tor,
          To fetch them back again.'

'That will I,' said the King. 'Gawaine,
          Bring back the milk-white hart.
To you, King Pellinore, behoves
          To play a nobler part:

'The Knight and Lady you shall meet
          In war and fearful strife;
Bring them again before this court,
          Or sacrifice their life.

'And you, Sir Tor, your valour test,
          And knightly honour gain,
For bringing back the brachet white
          Within this hall again.'

It little boots me now to tell
          How each one's work was sped;
Suffice it that they all returned
          Their task accomplishèd.

Then Arthur stablished all the knights;
          To such as were too poor
He granted lands and tenements
          Dividing up his store.

And solemnly he charged them all
          No outrage e'er to do,
Murder, cruelty, and vice,
          And treason to eschew.

He said, 'To him that asketh you
          Mercy and pardon give,
Under the ban of forfeiting
          My service while ye live;

'The penalty of death be yours,
          If damsels in distress
Or gentlewomen plead in vain
          For succour or redress.

'And let no man for worldly goods,
          Or lands, or sordid pelf,
In wrongful quarrel battle make
          Or glorify himself.

'Swear,' said King Arthur -- every knight
          Uprose to do his will --
'Swear faithfully and loyally
          My precepts to fulfil.'

'Twas done -- in every future year,
          As Pentecost came by,
King Arthur's knights were bound by oath
          To truth and chivalry.

And thus was stablished in our land
          Honour and loyalty;
Long may they last, nor ever fail
          Till time itself shall die!

THE SANCGREAL.

It chanced, when Lancelot du Lake
          Had freed from durance vile
The fairest lady in the land,
          He journeyed on awhile,

Until King Pelles spied the knight,
          Whose castle stood hard by,
And begged him to alight and share
          His hospitality.

So courteously and graciously
          The twain passed through the gate,
Then sat within the banquet hall,
          The viands to await.

But lo! through window opened wide,
          Without or voice or sound,
A gentle dove came gliding in,
          And floated round and round.

Within her beak a censer hung
          Cast in pure molten gold,
Whence clouds of fragrance issued forth
          Which o'er the table rolled.

It seemed as Araby the blest,
          And every spicy isle,
Had garnered all their treasures up,
          To waft them there the while.

And forthwithal upon the board
          All kinds of meats were spread,
And drinks that might the palate please
          Were likewise furnishèd.

A damsel passing fair and young,
          Most beauteous to behold,
Came gliding in -- betwixt her hands
          She bare a vase of gold.

And thereunto the King kneeled down,
          Devoutly and with grace,
To say his prayers, as also did
          Each soul within the place.

Then spake Sir Lancelot du Lake
          And askèd of the King,
'What may this mean? I pray you tell.'
          'This is the richest thing,'

Replied King Pelles, 'that a man
          Can own, alive or dead;
E'en the Round Table, when this comes,
          Shall be abolishèd.

'And wit thou well, thou here hast seen
          The holy Sangreal --
The blessed gift -- the cherished hope
          Sought for and prayed of all.'

In after years when Lancelot
          Had wedded sweet Elaine,
King Pelles' child, within those walls,
          The wonder happed again.

For Lancelot's nephew, young Sir Bors,
          To Corben Castle rode,
And in the banquet-hall he saw
          Elaine, just where she stood,

Her baby on her arm; and when
          She said the lovely boy
Was Lancelot's child, he kneelèd down
          And wept for very joy,

And prayed to God, that when the child
          To years of manhood grew,
He might prove worthy of his sire,
          As brave a knight and true.

Then through the window opened wide,
          Without or voice or sound,
A gentle dove came gliding in,
          And floated round and round.

Within her beak a censer hung
          Formed of pure molten gold,
Whence clouds of fragrance issued forth,
          Which o'er the table rolled.

It seemed as Araby the blest,
          And every spicy isle,
Had garnered all their treasures up
          To waft them there awhile.

And forthwithal upon the board
          All kinds of meats were spread,
And drinks that might the palate please
          Were also furnishèd.

A damsel passing fair and young,
          Most beauteous to behold,
Came gliding in, betwixt her hands
          Bearing a vase of gold.

She spake, 'This babe Sir Galahad,
          Sir Bors, I bid you wit,
In future on Siege Perilous
          As knight shall surely sit --

'A nobler knight than is his sire' --
          Her words rang through the hall --
'For as he lives, he surely shall
          Achieve the Sancgreal.'

She vanished then. As of afore,
          King Pelles spoke out loud:
'No knight shall win, or honour have,
          Save he that loveth God.

'Be he a knight of high degree,
          Or be he e'er so brave,
An he nor love nor feareth God,
          No honour shall he have.'

Replied Sir Bors, 'Within these halls
          (I wot not what they mean)
Most strange and weird adventures hap,
          And wondrous sights are seen.
I will be shriven with good will
          And be confessèd clean.'

So was he shriven of his sins,
          And in the dead of night
Most marvellous adventures happed,
          Too lengthy here to write.

When morning broke, to Camelot
          He spurred his gallant steed;
For Arthur had returned from France
          Victorious, and decreed

That feasts and tournaments be held
          Upon that very day,
And all his knights at Table Round
          Should sit in full array.

But when uncovered was the siege
          Hight Perilous, behold,
The name of young Sir Galahad
          Shone forth in molten gold.

But no one at the Table wot
          Who Galahad might be,
Till long years afterward he came
          Out from the nunnery

Where holy women reared the child
          Till he to manhood grew,
And taught him to be good and wise,
          Noble, and brave, and true.

At Pentecost, he having first
          Performed the holy rite,
On bended knee he begged to be
          Installèd as a knight.

Sir Lancelot surveyed the youth,
          And found him passing fair,
With limbs well knit, of stature tall,
          Graceful beyond compare.

He struck him with his sword, and said,
          'Sir Galahad, arise!
God grant the virtue ne'er may fade
          Now shining through your eyes!'

Sir Galahad then hasted forth,
          To joust withouten shield;
He broke their spears, he threw the knights
          Save twain who would not yield.

He then unhorsed, unlaced him helm
          At Guinever's request,
Who, looking on his visage, spake,
          'No marvel he is best

'At jousting and at holy prayer;
          For, as you plainly see,
His face and mien bespeak him sprung
          From true nobility.'

Then all to the great minster sped
          To offer evensong,
King, Queen, the knights of Table Round,
          With all the motley throng.

Then back to Camelot to sup,
          Where in the lofty hall,
Each sitting as toforehand, lo!
          This marvel did befall:

The thunder growled, and cracked ahead
          As though the walls would rive.
Each knight made sign of cross, as though
          The priest had stood to shrive.

But in the midst of crash and blast
          A sunbeam entered there,
By seven times brighter than the day,
          When day is bright and clear.

It shed such lustre over all,
          Each scanned his neighbour o'er;
And each seemed fairer in that light
          Than e'er he seemed before.

No word was spoke, no sound was made,
          As they all dumb had been:
The holy Grail in white samite
          Came softly gliding in.

And as afore the hall was filled
          With perfumes where it moved,
And every knight had meats and drinks
          As each one wished and loved.

As quickly as it glided in,
          It quick evanishèd;
None knew from whence or whitherward
          The holy vision fled.

King Arthur rose with reverence,
          Bowing full low his head:
'Thank Jesu Christ our Lord for this
          So precious boon,' he said.

Then up and spake Gawaine, 'I vow
          By all I hold most dear,
In quest of this most holy Grail,
          To wander for a year.

'And eke a day nor e'er return
          Until it reappear
Unto my longing eyes more bright
          And openly than here!'

Then rose up all the knights around,
          And vowed, with one accord,
With heart and soul to join the quest,
          For love of Christ their Lord.

King Arthur spake with troubled mien,
          'Alas! Gawaine, Gawaine!
With this avow and promise made,
          Ye have me well nigh slain.

'Alas! this morn I held secure
          A band so brave and true,
The fairest fellowship on earth
          That knighthood ever knew.

'Ye have bereft me of this band.
          Alas! it grieves me sore;
For when they once depart from hence,
          I ne'er shall meet them more.

'For many in the quest will die --
          Those that I loved so well.
How close I held them to my heart,
          No words of mine can tell.

'And thus it now forthinketh me,
          I fain for grief would die;
For 'twas an old, old usage
          To have their company.'

This spake he, with the gathering tears
          Slow trembling in his eyes,
Fresh from his o'ercharged heart, so full
          Of loving memories.

Next morn, the band of gallant knights
          Through the great minster pass,
And kneel below the altar stair
          To celebrate the mass.

And then 'to horse!' The eager crowd
          Are gathering far and near;
Maidens forlorn and gentlefolk
          With wistful eyes are there:

The rich, the poor, the camp, the court,
          Arthur and Guinever;
They bid farewell with many a sob
          And many a bitter tear.

They mount, they ride, their glittering plumes
          Are waving in the wind;
Ah! what remains save aching hearts
          To those they leave behind?

THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR.

False Mordred spake to Guinever,
          'Arthur, thy lord, is dead,
And has appointed me to reign
          O'er England in his stead.

'We will be crowned right royally.
          To Canterbury haste;
We there high festival will make
          For fifteen days at least,

'And thou shalt be my wedded wife.'
          She shrank in mute dismay,
Knowing King Arthur had embarked
          His troops from Cardiff Bay:

Full threescore thousand gallant men,
          With his tried friend Gawaine,
To 'venge an insult, they had gone
          To Benwick over main.

And now, poor Guinever, take heart;
          Brush back they bitter tears;
Trust in thy subtle woman's wit
          Born of thy woman's fears.

She answered him in gentle guise,
          'I may not say thee nay,
But grant me that I journey first
          To London town, I pray,
To buy some guards and trinkets fine
          To grace my bridal day.'

False Mordred granted her request,
          In that she spake so fair;
Then quick she hied to London town,
          And bade her men repair

Unto the Tower, the which she filled
          With food, and arms, and men,
Nor aught that Mordred said or did
          Could lure her forth again.

He sued her with false honeyed words,
          They did not once prevail;
He stormed the Tower with mighty guns,
          It was of no avail.

Within her fortress Guinever
          Sent scornful answers true:
'Thou art a traitor to thy king,
          Which thou full soon shalt rue.

'Ere I come forth to thee, false knight,
          E'en though my lord be dead,
I liever by this sword will die
          Than ever I thee wed.'

When Mordred heard that Arthur's host
          Was coming over sea,
In eager haste to be avenged
          For this foul treachery,

He writ to all the barons round
          To come from far and near,
And studied words of treason dark
          He whispered in their ear:

How that with Arthur evermore
          Was naught but war and strife,
While he, Sir Mordred, gave them peace,
          And joy, and bliss of life.

Then many that King Arthur had
          Raised up from low estate,
And granted lands, now slanderous words
          And evil 'gainst him spake.

Now, all ye Englishmen, behold
          What mischief happened here:
This King, who was the noblest king,
          And knight withouten peer,

Who loved the fellowship of none
          But good and brave, who spent
His life redressing crime and wrong,
          Was held in discontent.

This old, old custom of the land
          Is not forgot, they say,
That Englishmen are ne'er content,
          Not even at this day.

This is their great default -- no thing
          Pleaseth this people long.
Thus happed it that false Mordred's force
          Waxed numerous and strong.

They met at Dover. Arthur's fleet
          Came sailing o'er the sea,
Bearing its freight of human worth,
          A goodly company.

Then was there launching of great boats
          And small, in eager haste
To lift King Arthur from the realm
          Whereto God had him placed.

They rushed ashore -- ah, woe is me
          For many a noble slain,
For barons bold, and gentle knights,
          Among them Sir Gawaine.

When Arthur saw his sister's son
          Fall with a deadly blow,
He took him gently in his arms,
          And kissed his pallid brow.

'Gawaine,' he cried, 'my only joy!
          I pray thee, do not die,
And leave me, in this cold bleak world,
          To utter misery.

'For now I will confess to thee
          That I have loved thee so,
I cannot bear, withouten thee,
          This life of grief and woe.'

The dying man thrice oped his eyes,
          And gasped amid his pain
Some words of comfort to the King,
          Then never spake again.

King Arthur mourned with bitter grief
          The friend he loved so well,
At Dover Castle buried him
          Within a small chapelle,
Where even to this day his skull
          Is shown, as travellers tell.

Meanwhile the battle hurtled on
          Far as to Barham plain;
King Arthur's troops victorious
          Drave Mordred back again.

But then there happed a wondrous thing,
          For in the dead of night
A vision to King Arthur came,
          Warning him not to fight.

Gawaine, surrounded by a troop
          Of ladies fair and bright,
Whom he had rescued from foul wrong,
          Or aided in the right,

Thus spake: 'God sends us here to you
          His purpose to maintain;
For if you fight to-morrow morn,
          You surely will be slain.

'Wait only till Sir Lancelot
          With aid shall reappear.'
Thus having said, he vanishèd
          As into empty air.

In council it was then decreed
          That when the morrow came,
When both the armies were afield,
          A herald should proclaim

A truce, with gold and lands in pledge,
          If Mordred would accede.
The morning broke, the herald cried,
          Each party was agreed.

But each, mistrustful of his foe,
          Gave orders to his men
To stand prepared for deadly fight,
          Should aught occur again

To mar the truce. Just then from out
          Some heather on the right
An adder glided forth, and stung
          Upon his foot a knight,

Who thought no harm, but drew his sword
          To strike the reptile dead,
Whereat both armies yelled aloud
          As by one impulse led.

At sound of trumpets, beams, and horns,
          They hasted on to fight,
And never in this Christian land
          Was seen more doleful sight.

Oh! there was rushing, riding fast,
          And many a grim word spoke,
Foining and striking everywhere,
          And many a deadly stroke.

They stinted not, but madly fought
          Through all that livelong day;
At night a hundred thousand dead
          Stark on the common lay.

When Arthur gazed across the down,
          And saw his valiant host
All slain, save two poor wounded knights,
          He knew that all was lost.

'Jesu have mercy!' cried the King;
          'Would that I too had been
Like these, my comrades, stricken dead,
          Ere I this day had seen!

'Now would to God I wist me where
          That traitor foul may be,
Who brought such mischief to the realm
          And misery to me!'

Thereat he suddenly turned round,
          And spied, across the plain,
False Mordred leaning on his sword
          Among a heap of slain.

Then cried he to a wounded knight
          Yclept Sir Bedevere,
'Yonder I spy the traitor false.
          Give me my trusty spear;

'For tide me life, or tide me death,
          I see him there alone
He shall not 'scape my vengeance now
          As he before hath done.'

With both his hands he seized the spear,
          Crying, 'Thy hour is come --
Die, traitor, die!' rushed headlong on,
          And drave the weapon home.

But with his sword the dying man
          Smote Arthur on the head,
Piercing his helmet to the brain,
          Then fell down stark and dead.

When noble Arthur fell to earth
          Thrice in a deadly swoon,
Sir Lucan and Sir Bedevere
          Thrice raised him up, and soon

They led him on betwixt them both
          Softly and tenderly,
Until they reached a chapel small
          Close by the moaning sea.

And while they sat and hearkened there,
          All in the broad moonlight,
They saw the pillers on the down
          Rob many a noble knight

Of brooch, and beads, and jewels rare,
          Of many a goodly ring,
Which much distressed Sir Bedevere,
          Who begged the dying King

To haste to some securer spot,
          Where they could hide away.
Arthur replied, 'My time flees fast,
          I have not long to stay.

'Now hie thee to yon waterside,
          And throw my trusty sword,
My own Excalibur, therein,
          And quickly bring me word

'What there thou see'st.' 'It shall be done,'
          Replied the willing knight.
But when he saw that noble sword,
          With precious stones bedight

On haft and pommel, to himself
          He reasoned in this wise:
'If I destroy this richest sword,
          But harm and loss arise,

'For an I throw it in the stream,
          No good to him or me.'
Whereon he hid Excalibur
          Under the nearest tree.

When he gat back unto the King,
          'What saw'st thou there?' quoth he.
'Naught but the waves and winds,' he said,
          'Moaning most dolefully.'

Then said King Arthur, 'Truth is good,
          To lie is deadly sin;
As thou art lief and dear to me,
          Go back and throw it in.'

Sir Bedevere returned again,
          But thought it sin and shame
To cast away the noble sword,
          So acted just the same.

He hid the sword amid the grass,
          Then, on his bended knee,
Told Arthur his command was done.
          'Say then what didst thou see?'

'Sire,' said he, 'I saw nothing there
          But the great waters wap,
And the waves wan; while I remained,
          Naught else to me did hap.'

'Ah, traitor!' said King Arthur, 'all
          Thou sayest is untrue;
Thou hast betrayed me twice, and now
          Thou would'st me quite undo.

'Who would have wend that thou, who wast
          So lief and dear to me,
And called a noble knight, for gain
          Should now deceitful be?

Go quickly hence. The cold strikes keen;
          I have short time to stay;
An if thou disobey me now,
          I surely will thee slay.'

Thereat Sir Bevedere rushed forth;
          Seizing the weapon fast,
He bound the girdle round the hilt,
          And threw it in at last.

When lo! an arm and hand appeared
          Above the watery grave,
Caught at the sword, thrice brandished it,
          Then vanished in the wave.

When Arthur heard what had befell,
          He spake, 'Sir Bedevere,
Alas! Now help me hence; I dread
          Too long I tarry here.'

He took the King upon his back,
          Close to the waterside,
Where hovèd in, fast by the bank,
          A little barge he spied;

Wherein there sate a stately queen,
          And many ladies fair,
Who shrieked and wept for grief when they
          Beheld King Arthur there.

'Now put me in the barge,' he said,
          Which softly was obeyed;
Three queens in sable hood therein
          Gently King Arthur laid.

Upon the lap of one of these
          His weary head he laid.
'Why have ye tarried, brother dear,
          So long from me?' she said.

'Alas! the cold has stricken deep
          Into this wound, I fear;'
And then they rowed far far away
          From sad Sir Bedevere.
Their wailing floated on the wind,
          Most pitiful to hear.

Soon as the barge was lost to sight,
          Forlorn Sir Bedevere
Wept and bemoaned the livelong night,
          Wandering about, in fear

Of armed foes and robbers vile,
          Through devious forest ways.
When morning brake, a hermitage
          Met his bewildered gaze.

Close by a little chapel stood,
          Where holy men might pray;
Within, low grovelling on the ground,
          A saintly hermit lay

Beside a new-made grave. The knight
          Inquired in accents low,
'What man is recent buried there
          Down in the grave below?'

'Fair Sir,' the hermit then replied,
          'I wot not who he be;
A band of lovely ladies brought
          Him here last night to me.

'A hundred tapers, too, they brought,
          A hundred besants gave,
To lay in earth his lovely form,
          His precious soul to save.'

'Alas! that was my honoured lord,'
          Replied Sir Bedevere,
'King Arthur, prince of chivalry,
          Who now lies buried here.'

Whereat he fell into a swoon.
          When he revived again,
He begged the hermit piteously
          To let him there remain.

'In life or death I would be near,
          Not evermore remove,
By fasting and by prayer to show
          My loyalty and love.'

And then he doffed his knightly gear,
          Putting on mean array,
And both together wept and prayed
          Their weary lives away.

Queen Guinever became a nun
          In cloistered Almesbury,
Spending her days in deeds of love
          And acts of charity.

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