Idylls of the King and a New Selection of Poems
Page 23
Shape to their fancy’s eye from broken rocks
On some cliff-side, appall’d them, and they said:
“He is enchanted, cannot speak—and she,
Look how she sleeps—the Fairy Queen, so fair!
Yea, but how pale! what are they? flesh and blood?
Or come to take the King to Fairyland?
For some do hold our Arthur cannot die,
But that he passes into Fairyland.”
While thus they babbled of the King, the King
Came girt with knights. Then turn’d the tongueless
man
From the half-face to the full eye, and rose
And pointed to the damsel and the doors.
So Arthur bade the meek Sir Percivale
And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid;
And reverently they bore her into hall.
Then came the fine Gawain and wonder’d at her.
And Lancelot later came and mused at her,
And last the Queen herself, and pitied her;
But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,
Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all:
“Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,
I, sometimes call’d the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.
I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.
And therefore to our Lady Guinevere,
And to all other ladies, I make moan:
Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless.”
Thus he read;
And ever in the reading lords and dames
Wept, looking often from his face who read
To hers which lay so silent, and at times,
So touch’d were they, half-thinking that her lips
Who had devised the letter moved again.
Then freely spoke Sir Lancelot to them all:
“My lord liege Arthur, and all ye that hear,
Know that for this most gentle maiden’s death
Right heavy am I; for good she was and true,
But loved me with a love beyond all love
In women, whomsoever I have known.
Yet to be loved makes not to love again;
Not at my years, however it hold in youth.
I swear by truth and knighthood that I gave
No cause, not willingly, for such a love.
To this I call my friends in testimony,
Her brethren, and her father, who himself
Besought me to be plain and blunt, and use,
To break her passion, some discourtesy
Against my nature; what I could, I did.
I left her and I bade her no farewell;
Tho’, had I dreamt the damsel would have died,
I might have put my wits to some rough use,
And help’d her from herself.”
Then said the Queen—
Sea was her wrath, yet working after storm:
“Ye might at least have done her so much grace,
Fair lord, as would have help’d her from her death.”
He raised his head, their eyes met and hers fell,
He adding: “Queen, she would not be content
Save that I wedded her, which could not be.
Then might she follow me thro’ the world, she ask’d;
It could not be. I told her that her love
Was but the flash of youth, would darken down,
To rise hereafter in a stiller flame
Toward one more worthy of her—then would I,
More specially were he she wedded poor,
Estate them with large land and territory
In mine own realm beyond the narrow seas,
To keep them in all joyance. More than this
I could not; this she would not, and she died.”
He pausing, Arthur answer’d: “O my knight,
It will be to thy worship, as my knight,
And mine, as head of all our Table Round,
To see that she be buried worshipfully.”
So toward that shrine which then in all the realm
Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went
The marshall’d Order of their Table Round,
And Lancelot sad beyond his wont, to see
The maiden buried, not as one unknown,
Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies,
And mass, and rolling music, like a queen.
And when the knights had laid her comely head
Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings,
Then Arthur spake among them: “Let her tomb
Be costly, and her image thereupon,
And let the shield of Lancelot at her feet
Be carven, and her lily in her hand.
And let the story of her dolorous voyage
For all true hearts be blazon’d on her tomb
In letters gold and azure!” which was wrought
Thereafter; but when now the lords and dames
And people, from the high door streaming, brake
Disorderly, as homeward each, the Queen,
Who mark’d Sir Lancelot where he moved apart,
Drew near, and sigh’d in passing, “Lancelot,
Forgive me; mine was jealousy in love.”
He answer’d with his eyes upon the ground,
“That is love’s curse; pass on, my Queen, forgiven.”
But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows,
Approach’d him, and with full affection said:
“Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have
Most joy and most affiance, for I know
What thou hast been in battle by my side,
And many a time have watch’d thee at the tilt
Strike down the lusty and long practised knight
And let the younger and unskill’d go by
To win his honor and to make his name,
And loved thy courtesies and thee, a man
Made to be loved; but now I would to God,
Seeing the homeless trouble in thine eyes,
Thou couldst have loved this maiden, shaped, it seems,
By God for thee alone, and from her face,
If one may judge the living by the dead,
Delicately pure and marvellously fair,
Who might have brought thee, now a lonely man
Wifeless and heirless, noble issue, sons
Born to the glory of thy name and fame,
My knight, the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake.”
Then answer’d Lancelot: “Fair she was, my King,
Pure, as you ever wish your knights to be.
To doubt her fairness were to want an eye,
To doubt her pureness were to want a heart—
Yea, to be loved, if what is worthy love
Could bind him, but free love will not be bound.”
“Free love, so bound, were freest,” said the King.
“Let love be free; free love is for the best.
And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
What should be best, if not so pure a love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
She fail’d to bind, tho’ being, as I think,
Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know.”
And Lancelot answer’d nothing, but he went,
And at the inrunning of a little brook
Sat by the river in a cove, and watch’d
The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes
And saw the barge that brought her moving down,
Far-off, a blot upon the stream, and said
Low in himself: “Ah, simple heart and sweet,
Ye loved me, damsel, surely with a love
Far tenderer than my Queen’s. Pray for thy soul?
A
y, that will I. Farewell too—now at last—
Farewell, fair lily. ‘Jealousy in love’?
Not rather dead love’s harsh heir, jealous pride?
Queen, if I grant the jealousy as of love,
May not your crescent fear for name and fame
Speak, as it waxes, of a love that wanes?
Why did the King dwell on my name to me?
Mine own name shames me, seeming a reproach,
Lancelot, whom the Lady of the Lake
Caught from his mother’s arms—the wondrous one
Who passes thro’ the vision of the night—
She chanted snatches of mysterious hymns
Heard on the winding waters, eve and morn
She kiss’d me, saying, ‘Thou art fair, my child,
As a king’s son,’ and often in her arms
She bare me, pacing on the dusky mere.
Would she had drown’d me in it, where’er it be!
For what am I? what profits me my name
Of greatest knight? I fought for it, and have it.
Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain;
Now grown a part of me; but what use in it?
To make men worse by making my sin known?
Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great?
Alas for Arthur’s greatest knight, a man
Not after Arthur’s heart! I needs must break
These bonds that so defame me. Not without
She wills it—would I, if she will’d it? nay,
Who knows? but if I would not, then may God,
I pray him, send a sudden angel down
To seize me by the hair and bear me far,
1415 And fling me deep in that forgotten mere,
Among the tumbled fragments of the hills.”
So groan’d Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain,
Not knowing he should die a holy man.
THE HOLY GRAIL
FROM noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale
Whom Arthur and his knighthood call’d the Pure,
Had past into the silent life of prayer,
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl
The helmet in an abbey far away
From Camelot, there, and not long after, died.
And one, a fellow-monk among the rest,
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest,
And honor’d him, and wrought into his heart
A way by love that waken’d love within,
To answer that which came; and as they sat
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn
That puff’d the swaying branches into smoke
Above them, ere the summer when he died,
The monk Ambrosius question’d Percivale:
“O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke,
Spring after spring, for half a hundred years;
For never have I known the world without,
Nor ever stray’d beyond the pale. But thee,
When first thou camest—such a courtesy
Spake thro’ the limbs and in the voice—I knew
For one of those who eat in Arthur’s hall;
For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,
Some true, some light, but every one of you
Stamp’d with the image of the King; and now
Tell me, what drove thee from the Table Round,
My brother? was it earthly passion crost?”
“Nay,” said the knight; “for no such passion mine.
But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out
Among us in the jousts, while women watch
Who wins, who falls, and waste the spiritual strength
Within us, better offer’d up to heaven.”
To whom the monk: “The Holy Grail!—I trust
We are green in Heaven’s eyes; but here too much
We moulder—as to things without I mean—
Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours,
Told us of this in our refectory,
But spake with such a sadness and so low
We heard not half of what he said. What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?”
“Nay, monk! what phantom?” answer’d Percivale.
“The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with his own.
This, from the blessed land of Aromat—
After the day of darkness, when the dead
Went wandering o’er Moriah—the good saint
Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.
And there a while it bode; and if a man
Could touch or see it, he was heal’d at once,
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to heaven, and disappear’d.”
To whom the monk: “From our old books I know
That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury,
And there the heathen Prince, Arviragus,
Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build;
And there he built with wattles from the marsh
A little lonely church in days of yore,
For so they say, these books of ours, but seem
Mute of this miracle, far as I have read.
But who first saw the holy thing to-day?”
“A woman,” answer’d Percivale, “a nun,
And one no further off in blood from me
Than sister; and if ever holy maid
With knees of adoration wore the stone,
A holy maid; tho’ never maiden glow’d,
But that was in her earlier maidenhood,
With such a fervent flame of human love,
Which, being rudely blunted, glanced and shot
Only to holy things; to prayer and praise
She gave herself, to fast and alms. And yet,
Nun as she was, the scandal of the Court,
Sin against Arthur and the Table Round,
And the strange sound of an adulterous race,
Across the iron grating of her cell
Beat, and she pray’d and fasted all the more.
“And he to whom she told her sins, or what
Her all but utter whiteness held for sin,
A man wellnigh a hundred winters old,
Spake often with her of the Holy Grail,
A legend handed down thro’ five or six,
And each of these a hundred winters old,
From our Lord’s time. And when King Arthur made
His Table Round, and all men’s hearts became
Clean for a season, surely he had thought
That now the Holy Grail would come again;
But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come,
And heal the world of all their wickedness!
‘O Father!’ ask’d the maiden, ‘might it come
To me by prayer and fasting?’ ‘Nay,’ said he,
‘I know not, for thy heart is pure as snow.’
And so she pray’d and fasted, till the sun
Shone, and the wind blew, thro’ her, and I thought
She might have risen and floated when I saw her.
“For on a day she sent to speak with me.
And when she came to speak, behold her eyes
Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful.
Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful,
Beautiful in the light of holiness!
And ‘O my brother Percivale,’ she said,
‘Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail;
For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound
As of a silve
r horn from o’er the hills
Blown, and I thought, “It is not Arthur’s use
To hunt by moonlight.” And the slender sound
As from a distance beyond distance grew
Coming upon me—O never harp nor horn,
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,
Was like that music as it came; and then
Stream’d thro’ my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colors leaping on the wall;
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Past, and the beam decay’d, and from the walls
The rosy quiverings died into the night.
So now the Holy Thing is here again
Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,
And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be heal’d.’
“Then leaving the pale nun, I spake of this To all men; and myself fasted and pray’d Always, and many among us many a week Fasted and pray’d even to the uttermost, Expectant of the wonder that would be.
“And one there was among us, ever moved Among us in white armor, Galahad.
‘God make thee good as thou art beautiful!’
Said Arthur, when he dubb’d him knight, and none
In so young youth was ever made a knight
Till Galahad; and this Galahad, when he heard
My sister’s vision, fill’d me with amaze;
His eyes became so like her own, they seem’d
Hers, and himself her brother more than I.
“Sister or brother none had he; but some
Call’d him a son of Lancelot, and some said
Begotten by enchantment—chatterers they,
Like birds of passage piping up and down,
That gape for flies—we know not whence they
come;
For when was Lancelot wanderingly lewd?
“But she, the wan sweet maiden, shore away
Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair
Which made a silken mat-work for her feet;