Idylls of the King

IN TWELVE BOOKS

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

Flos Regum Arthurus (Joseph of Exeter)

 

Contents

 

Dedication

The Coming of Arthur

 

THE ROUND TABLE

 

Gareth and Lynette

The Marriage of Geraint

Geraint and Enid

Balin and Balan

Merlin and Vivien

Lancelot and Elaine

The Holy Grail

Pelleas and Ettarre

The Last Tournament

Guinevere

 

 

The Passing of Arthur

To the Queen

 

 

Dedication

 

These to His Memory--since he held them dear,

Perchance as finding there unconsciously

Some image of himself--I dedicate,

I dedicate, I consecrate with tears--

These Idylls.

 

             And indeed He seems to me

Scarce other than my king's ideal knight,

'Who reverenced his conscience as his king;

Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;

Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;

Who loved one only and who clave to her--'

Her--over all whose realms to their last isle,

Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,

The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse,

Darkening the world.  We have lost him:  he is gone:

We know him now:  all narrow jealousies

Are silent; and we see him as he moved,

How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,

With what sublime repression of himself,

And in what limits, and how tenderly;

Not swaying to this faction or to that;

Not making his high place the lawless perch

Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage-ground

For pleasure; but through all this tract of years

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,

Before a thousand peering littlenesses,

In that fierce light which beats upon a throne,

And blackens every blot:  for where is he,

Who dares foreshadow for an only son

A lovelier life, a more unstained, than his?

Or how should England dreaming of his sons

Hope more for these than some inheritance

Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine,

Thou noble Father of her Kings to be,

Laborious for her people and her poor--

Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day--

Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste

To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace--

Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam

Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art,

Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,

Beyond all titles, and a household name,

Hereafter, through all times, Albert the Good.

 

   Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure;

Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure,

Remembering all the beauty of that star

Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made

One light together, but has past and leaves

The Crown a lonely splendour.

 

                             May all love,

His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee,

The love of all Thy sons encompass Thee,

The love of all Thy daughters cherish Thee,

The love of all Thy people comfort Thee,

Till God's love set Thee at his side again!

 

 

 

The Coming of Arthur

 

Leodogran, the King of Cameliard,

Had one fair daughter, and none other child;

And she was the 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 Gorlois, 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 Gorlois,

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 Gorlois,

So loathed the bright dishonour of his love,

That Gorlois and King Uther went to war:

And overthrown was Gorlois 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 was she 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 Gorlois.  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 Gorlois 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 Gorlois, 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 dais, 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 Gorlois 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 Gorlois, 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 stern 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 the 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 thy 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 around 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.

 

 

 

 

Gareth and Lynette

 

 

 

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 Idolaters, 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 wheresoe'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 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 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.'

 

   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 fealty.

 

   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 as 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 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.'

 

   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, an 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 stout 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 art 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 he shall 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 shamed; 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 Morning 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, not 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

Where 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 makest 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 win.

Yet have I seen 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 bad 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 bad 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.

 

 

 

 

The Marriage of Geraint

 

 

 

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,

And 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 King 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 the 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,

Sweet 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 they 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 there 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 of sparrow-hawks!

Speak, if ye be not 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 wild 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 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 the 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 in 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 that I 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 thy asking, thine.

But in this tournament can no man 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, that 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 them 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 is 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,

Far 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 well 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 once 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,

That 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 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 she 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 its perilous glories:  and I thought,

That could I someway prove such force in her

Linked with such love for me, that at a word

(No reason given her) she could cast aside

A splendour 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.

 

 

 

 

Geraint and Enid

 

 

 

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 ever 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 heavens 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; choose 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 two 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-amorous 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 down 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 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 his 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 good 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 thy 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

Shore through the swarthy neck, and like a ball

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; fly, 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 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 lived 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 so 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 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.

 

 

 

 

Balin and Balan

 

 

 

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 thither, 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 fears 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 climed

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,

Redded 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.

 

 

 

 

Merlin and Vivien

 

 

 

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 Caerlon 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 forbore:  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 is perfect, casts out fear,

So Hate, if Hate is 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 hath 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 broken-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 board 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 me 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-glowings 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

Till 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 cursed 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;

Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:

"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 Gardener 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 answered 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 ever 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 that 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 sculptured 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 precincts 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 cause 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 now be 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.'

 

 

 

 

Lancelot and Elaine

 

 

 

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 the 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 comes thou, my guest, and by what name

Livest thou 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 Sir 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 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 will ye 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 own 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 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 young 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 a 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 me 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 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 answered 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, though 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 all 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 I will 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 day