Idylls of the King
Page 27
So those three days, aimless about the land,
Lost in a doubt, Pelleas wandering
Waited, until the third night brought a moon
385 With promise of large light on woods and ways.
Hot was the night and silent; but a sound
Of Gawain over coming, and this lay –
Which Pelleas had heard sung before the Queen,
And seen her sadden listening – vext his heart,
390 And marr’d his rest –’A worm within the rose.’
‘A rose, but one, none other rose had I,
A rose, one rose, and this was wondrous fair,
One rose, a rose that gladden’d earth and sky,
One rose, my rose, that sweeten’d all mine air –
395 I cared not for the thorns; the thorns were there.
‘One rose, a rose to gather by and by,
One rose, a rose, to gather and to wear,
No rose but one – what other rose had I?
One rose, my rose; a rose that will not die, –
400 He dies who loves it, – if the worm be there.’
This tender rhyme, and evermore the doubt,
‘Why lingers Gawain with his golden news?’
So shook him that he could not rest, but rode
Ere midnight to her walls, and bound his horse
405 Hard by the gates. Wide open were the gates,
And no watch kept; and in thro’ these he past,
And heard but his own steps, and his own heart
Beating, for nothing moved but his own self,
And his own shadow. Then he crost the court,
410 And spied not any light in hall or bower,
But saw the postern portal also wide
Yawning; and up a slope of garden, all
Of roses white and red, and brambles mixt
And overgrowing them, went on, and found,
415 Here too, all hush’d below the mellow moon,
Save that one rivulet from a tiny cave
Came lightening downward, and so spilt itself
Among the roses, and was lost again.
Then was he ware of three pavilions rear’d
420 Above the bushes, gilden-peakt: in one,
Red after revel, droned her lurdane knights
Slumbering, and their three squires across their feet:
In one, their malice on the placid lip
Froz’n by sweet sleep, four of her damsels lay:
425 And in the third, the circlet of the jousts
Bound on her brow, were Gawain and Ettarre.
Back, as a hand that pushes thro’ the leaf
To find a nest and feels a snake, he drew:
Back, as a coward slinks from what he fears
430 To cope with, or a traitor proven, or hound
Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame
Creep with his shadow thro’ the court again,
Fingering at his sword-handle until he stood
There on the castle-bridge once more, and thought,
435 ‘I will go back, and slay them where they lie.’
And so went back, and seeing them yet in sleep
Said, ‘Ye, that so dishallow the holy sleep,
Your sleep is death,’ and drew the sword, and thought,
‘What! slay a sleeping knight? the King hath bound
440 And sworn me to this brotherhood;’ again,
‘Alas that ever a knight should be so false.’
Then turn’d, and so return’d, and groaning laid
The naked sword athwart their naked throats,
There left it, and them sleeping; and she lay,
445 The circlet of the tourney round her brows,
And the sword of the tourney across her throat.
And forth he past, and mounting on his horse
Stared at her towers that, larger than themselves
In their own darkness, throng’d into the moon.
450 Then crush’d the saddle with his thighs, and clench’d
His hands, and madden’d with himself and moan’d:
‘Would they have risen against me in their blood
At the last day? I might have answer’d them
Even before high God. O towers so strong,
455 Huge, solid, would that even while I gaze
The crack of earthquake shivering to your base
Split you, and Hell burst up your harlot roofs
Bellowing, and charr’d you thro’ and thro’ within,
Black as the harlot’s heart – hollow as a skull!
460 Let the fierce east scream thro’ your eyelet-holes,
And whirl the dust of harlots round and round
In dung and nettles! hiss, snake – I saw him there –
Let the fox bark, let the wolf yell.
Who yells Here in the still sweet summer night, but I –
465 I, the poor Pelleas whom she call’d her fool?
Fool, beast –he, she, or I? myself most fool;
Beast too, as lacking human wit – disgraced,
Dishonour’d all for trial of true love–
Love? –we be all alike: only the King
470 Hath made us fools and liars. O noble vows!
O great and sane and simple race of brutes
That own no lust because they have no law!
For why should I have loved her to my shame?
I loathe her, as I loved her to my shame.
475 I never loved her, I but lusted for her–
Away –’
He dash’d the rowel into his horse,
And bounded forth and vanish’d thro’ the night.
Then she, that felt the cold touch on her throat,
Awaking knew the sword, and turn’d herself
480 To Gawain: ‘Liar, for thou hast not slain
This Pelleas! here he stood, and might have slain
Me and thyself.’ And he that tells the tale
Says that her ever-veering fancy turn’d
To Pelleas, as the one true knight on earth,
485 And only lover; and thro’ her love her life
Wasted and pined, desiring him in vain.
But he by wild and way, for half the night,
And over hard and soft, striking the sod
From out the soft, the spark from off the hard,
490 Rode till the star above the wakening sun,
Beside that tower where Percivale was cowl’d,
Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn.
For so the words were flash’d into his heart
He knew not whence or wherefore: ‘O sweet star,
495 Pure on die virgin forehead of the dawn!’
And there he would have wept, but felt his eyes
Harder and drier than a fountain bed
In summer: thither came the village girls
And linger’d talking, and they come no more
500 Till the sweet heavens have fill’d it from the heights
Again with living waters in the change
Of seasons: hard his eyes; harder his heart
Seem’d; but so weary were his limbs, that he,
Gasping, ‘Of Arthur’s hall am I, but here,
505 Here let me rest and die,’ cast himself down,
And gulf’d his griefs in inmost sleep; so lay,
Till shaken by a dream, that Gawain fired
The hall of Merlin, and the morning star
Reel’d in the smoke, brake into flame, and fell.
510 He woke, and being ware of some one nigh,
Sent hands upon him, as to tear him, crying,
‘False! and I held thee pure as Guinevere.’
But Percivale stood near him and replied,
‘Am I but false as Guinevere is pure?
515 Or art thou mazed with dreams? or being one
Of our free-spoken Table hast not heard
That Lancelot’ – there he check’d himself and
Then fared it with
Sir Pelleas as with one
Who gets a wound in battle, and the sword
520 That made it plunges thro’ the wound again,
And pricks it deeper: and he shrank and wail’d,
‘Is the Queen false?’ and Percivale was mute.
‘Have any of our Round Table held their vows?’
And Percivale made answer not a word.
525 ‘Is the King true?’ ‘The King!’ said Percivale.
‘Why then let men couple at once with wolves.
What! art thou mad?’
But Pelleas, leaping up,
Ran thro’ the doors and vaulted on his horse
And fled: small pity upon his horse had he,
530 Or on himself, or any, and when he met
A cripple, one that held a hand for alms –
Hunch’d as he was, and like an old dwarf-elm
That turns its back on the salt blast, the boy
Paused not, but overrode him, shouting, ‘False,
535 And false with Gawain!’ and so left him bruised
And batter’d, and fled on, and hill and wood
Went ever streaming by him till the gloom,
That follows on the turning of the world,
Darken’d the common path: he twitch’d the reins,
540 And made his beast that better knew it, swerve
Now off it and now on; but when he saw
High up in heaven the hall that Merlin built,
Blackening against the dead-green stripes of even,
‘Black nest of rats,’ he groan’d, ‘ye build too high.’
545 Not long thereafter from the city gates
Issued Sir Lancelot riding airily,
Warm with a gracious parting from the Queen,
Peace at his heart, and gazing at a star
And marvelling what it was: on whom the boy,
550 Across the silent seeded meadow-grass
Borne, clash’d: and Lancelot, saying, ‘What name hast thou
That ridest here so blindly and so hard?’
‘No name, no name,’ he shouted, ‘a scourge am I
To lash the treasons of the Table Round.’
555 ‘Yea, but thy name?’ ‘I have many names,’ he cried:
‘I am wrath and shame and hate and evil fame,
And like a poisonous wind I pass to blast
And blaze the crime of Lancelot and the Queen.’
‘First over me,’ said Lancelot, ‘shah thou pass.’
560 ‘Fight therefore,’ yell’d the youth, and either knight
Drew back a space, and when they closed, at once
The weary steed of Pelleas floundering flung
His rider, who call’d out from the dark field,
‘Thou art false as Hell: slay me: I have no sword.’
565 Then Lancelot, ‘Yea, between thy lips – and sharp;
But here will I disedge it by thy death.’
‘Slay then,’ he shriek’d, ‘my will is to be slain,’
And Lancelot, with his heel upon the fall’n,
Rolling his eyes, a moment stood, then spake:
570 ‘Rise, weakling; I am Lancelot; say thy say.’
And Lancelot slowly rode his warhorse back
To Camelot, and Sir Pelleas in brief while
Caught his unbroken limbs from the dark field,
And follow’d to the city. It chanced that both
575 Brake into hall together, worn and pale.
There with her knights and dames was Guinevere.
Full wonderingly she gazed on Lancelot
So soon return’d, and then on Pelleas, him
Who had not greeted her, but cast himself
580 Down on a bench, hard-breathing. ‘Have ye fought?’
She ask’d of Lancelot. ‘Ay, my Queen,’ he said.
‘And thou hast overthrown him?’ ’Ay, my Queen.’
Then she, turning to Pelleas, ‘O young knight,
Hath the great heart of knighthood in thee fail’d
585 So far thou canst not bide, unfrowardly,
A fall from him?’ Then, for he answer’d not,
‘Or hast thou other griefs? If I, the Queen,
May help them, loose thy tongue, and let me know.’
But Pelleas lifted up an eye so fierce
590 She quail’d; and he, hissing ‘I have no sword,’
Sprang from the door into the dark. The Queen
Look’d hard upon her lover, he on her;
And each foresaw the dolorous day to be:
And all talk died, as in a grove all song
595 Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey;
Then a long silence came upon the hall,
And Modred thought, ‘The time is hard at hand.’
The Last Tournament
Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood
Had made mock-knight of Arthur’s Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
Danced like a wither’d leaf before the hall.
5 And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand,
And from the crown thereof a carcanet
of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,
Came Tristram, saying, ‘Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?’
10 For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
Far down beneath a winding wall of rock
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead,
From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,
Clutch’d at the crag, and started thro’ mid air
15 Bearing an eagle’s nest: and thro’ the tree
Rush’d ever a rainy wind and thro’ the wind
Pierced ever a child’s cry: and crag and tree
Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,
This ruby necklace thrice around her neck,
20 And all unscarr’d from beak or talon, brought
A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took,
Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen
But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms
Received, and after loved it tenderly,
25 And named it Nestling; so forgot herself
A moment, and her cares; till that young life
Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold
Past from her; and in time the carcanet
Vext her with plaintive memories of the child:
30 So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,
‘Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence,
And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize.’
To whom the King, ‘Peace to thine eagle-borne
Dead nestling, and this honour after death,
35 Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse
Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone
Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear.’
‘Would rather you had let them fall,’ she cried,
40 ‘Plunge and be lost – ill-fated as they were,
A bitterness to me! – ye look amazed,
Not knowing they were lost as soon as given –
Slid from my hands, when I was leaning out
Above the river – that unhappy child
45 Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that they came
Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,
But the sweet body of a maiden babe.
Perchance – who knows? – the purest of thy knights
50 May win them for the purest of my maids.’
She ended, and the cry of a great jousts
With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways
From Camelot in among the faded fields
To furthest towers; and everywhere the knights
55 Arm’d for a day of glory before the King.
But on the hither side of that loud morn
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Into the hall stagger’d, his visage ribb’d
From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his nose
Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one hand off,
60 And one with shatter’d fingers dangling lame,
A churl, to whom indignantly the King,
‘My churl, for whom Christ died, what evil beast
Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face? or fiend?
Man was it who marr’d heaven’s image in thee thus?’
65 Then, sputtering thro’ the hedge of splinter’d teeth,
Yet strangers to the tongue, and with blunt stump
Pitch-blacken’d sawing the air, said the maim’d churl,
‘He took them and he drave them to his tower –
Some hold he was a table-knight of thine –
70 A hundred goodly ones – the Red Knight, he –
Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight
Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower;
And when I call’d upon thy name as one
That doest right by gentle and by churl,
75 Maim’d me and maul’d, and would outright have slain,
Save that he sware me to a message, saying,
“Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I
Have founded my Round Table in the North,
And whatsoever his own knights have sworn
80 My knights have sworn the counter to it – and say
My tower is full of harlots, like his court,
But mine are worthier, seeing they profess
To be none other than themselves – and say
My knights are all adulterers like his own,
85 But mine are truer, seeing they profess
To be none other; and say his hour is come,
The heathen are upon him, his long lance
Broken, and his Excalibur a straw.” ’
Then Arthur turn’d to Kay the seneschal,
90 ’Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously
Like a king’s heir, till all his hurts be whole.
The heathen – but that ever-climbing wave,
Hurl’d back again so often in empty foam,
Hath lain for years at rest – and renegades,
95 Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom
The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere,
Friends, thro’ your manhood and your fealty, – now
Make their last head like Satan in the North.
My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower
100 Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds,
Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved,
The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore.