Seven days I drove along the dreary deep,
And with me drove the moon and all the stars;
And the wind fell, and on the seventh night
I heard the shingle grinding in the surge,
And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up,
Behold, the enchanted towers of Carbonek,
A castle like a rock upon a rock,
With chasm-like portals open to the sea,
And steps that met the breaker! There was none
Stood near it but a lion on each side
That kept the entry, and the moon was full.
Then from the boat I leapt, and up the stairs,
There drew my sword. With sudden-flaring manes
Those two great beasts rose upright like a man,
Each gript a shoulder, and I stood between,
And, when I would have smitten them, heard a
voice,
“Doubt not, go forward; if thou doubt, the beasts
Will tear thee piecemeal.” Then with violence
The sword was dash’d from out my hand, and fell.
And up into the sounding hall I past;
But nothing in the sounding hall I saw,
No bench nor table, painting on the wall
Or shield of knight, only the rounded moon
Thro’ the tall oriel on the rolling sea.
But always in the quiet house I heard,
Clear as a lark, high o’er me as a lark,
A sweet voice singing in the topmost tower
To the eastward. Up I climb’d a thousand steps
With pain; as in a dream I seem’d to climb
For ever; at the last I reach’d a door,
A light was in the crannies, and I heard,
“Glory and joy and honor to our Lord
And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail!”
Then in my madness I essay’d the door;
It gave, and thro’ a stormy glare, a heat
As from a seven-times-heated furnace, I,
Blasted and burnt, and blinded as I was,
With such a fierceness that I swoon’d away—
O, yet methought I saw the Holy Grail,
All pall’d in crimson samite, and around
Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes!
And but for all my madness and my sin,
And then my swooning, I had sworn I saw
That which I saw; but what I saw was veil’d
And cover’d, and this quest was not for me.’
“So speaking, and here ceasing, Lancelot left
The hall long silent, till Sir Gawain—nay,
Brother, I need not tell thee foolish words,—
A reckless and irreverent knight was he,
Now bolden’d by the silence of his King,—
Well, I will tell thee: ‘O King, my liege,’ he said,
‘Hath Gawain fail’d in any quest of thine?
When have I stinted stroke in foughten field?
But as for thine, my good friend Percivale,
Thy holy nun and thou have driven men mad,
Yea, made our mightiest madder than our least.
But by mine eyes and by mine ears swear,
I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat,
And thrice as blind as any noonday owl,
To holy virgins in their ecstasies,
Henceforward.’
“ ‘Deafer,’ said the blameless King,
‘Gawain, and blinder unto holy things,
Hope not to make thyself by idle vows,
Being too blind to have desire to see.
But if indeed there came a sign from heaven,
Blessed are Bors, Lancelot, and Percivale,
For these have seen according to their sight.
For every fiery prophet in old times,
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music thro’ them, could but speak
His music by the framework and the chord;
And as ye saw it ye have spoken truth.
“ ‘Nay—but thou errest, Lancelot; never yet
Could all of true and noble in knight and man
Twine round one sin, whatever it might be,
With such a closeness but apart there grew,
Save that he were the swine thou spakest of,
Some root of knighthood and pure nobleness;
Whereto see thou, that it may bear its flower.
“ ‘And spake I not too truly, O my knights?
Was I too dark a prophet when I said
To those who went upon the Holy Quest,
That most of them would follow wandering fires,
Lost in the quagmire?—lost to me and gone,
And left me gazing at a barren board,
And a lean Order—scarce return’d a tithe—
And out of those to whom the vision came
My greatest hardly will believe he saw.
Another hath beheld it afar off,
And, leaving human wrongs to right themselves,
Cares but to pass into the silent life.
And one hath had the vision face to face,
And now his chair desires him here in vain,
However they may crown him otherwhere.
“ ‘And some among you held that if the King
Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow.
Not easily, seeing that the King must guard
That which he rules, and is but as the hind
To whom a space of land is given to plow,
Who may not wander from the allotted field
Before his work be done, but, being done,
Let visions of the night or of the day
Come as they will; and many a time they come,
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,
This air that smites his forehead is not air
But vision—yea, his very hand and foot—
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again. Ye have seen what ye have seen.’
“So spake the King; I knew not all he meant.”
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE
KING ARTHUR made new knights to fill the gap
Left by the Holy Quest; and as he sat
In hall at old Caerleon, the high doors
Were softly sunder’d, and thro’ these a youth,
Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields
Past, and the sunshine came along with him.
“Make me thy knight, because I know, Sir King,
All that belongs to knighthood, and I love.”
Such was his cry; for having heard the King
Had let proclaim a tournament—the prize
A golden circlet and a knightly sword,
Full fain had Pelleas for his lady won
The golden circlet, for himself the sword.
And there were those who knew him near the King,
And promised for him; and Arthur made him knight.
And this new knight, Sir Pelleas of the Isles—
But lately come to his inheritance,
And lord of many a barren isle was he—
Riding at noon, a day or twain before,
Across the forest call’d of Dean, to find
Caerleon and the King, had felt the sun
Beat like a strong knight on his helm and reel’d
Almost to falling from his horse, but saw
Near him a mound of even-sloping side
Whereon a hundred stately beeches grew,
And here and there great hollies under them;
But for a mile all round was open space
And fern and heath. And slowly Pelleas drew
To that dim day, then, binding his good horse
To a tree, cast himself down; and as he lay
; At random looking over the brown earth
Thro’ that green-glooming twilight of the grove,
It seem’d to Pelleas that the fern without
Burnt as a living fire of emeralds,
So that his eyes were dazzled looking at it.
Then o’er it crost the dimness of a cloud
Floating, and once the shadow of a bird
Flying, and then a fawn; and his eyes closed.
And since he loved all maidens, but no maid
In special, half-awake he whisper’d: “Where?
O, where? I love thee, tho’ I know thee not.
For fair thou art and pure as Guinevere,
And I will make thee with my spear and sword
As famous—O my Queen, my Guinevere,
For I will be thine Arthur when we meet.”
Suddenly waken’d with a sound of talk
And laughter at the limit of the wood,
And glancing thro’ the hoary boles, he saw,
Strange as to some old prophet might have seem’d
A vision hovering on a sea of fire,
Damsels in divers colors like the cloud
Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them
On horses, and the horses richly trapt
Breast-high in that bright line of bracken stood;
And all the damsels talk’d confusedly,
And one was pointing this way and one that,
Because the way was lost.
And Pelleas rose,
And loosed his horse, and led him to the light.
There she that seem’d the chief among them said:
“In happy time behold our pilot-star!
Youth, we are damsels-errant, and we ride,
Arm’d as ye see, to tilt against the knights
There at Caerleon, but have lost our way.
To right? to left? straight forward? back again?
Which? tell us quickly.”
Pelleas gazing thought,
“Is Guinevere herself so beautiful?”
For large her violet eyes look’d, and her bloom
A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens,
And round her limbs, mature in womanhood;
And slender was her hand and small her shape;
And but for those large eyes, the haunts of scorn,
She might have seem’d a toy to trifle with,
And pass and care no more. But while he gazed
The beauty of her flesh abash’d the boy,
As tho’ it were the beauty of her soul;
For as the base man, judging of the good,
Puts his own baseness in him by default
Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend
All the young beauty of his own soul to hers,
Believing her, and when she spake to him
Stammer’d, and could not make a reply.
For out of the waste islands had he come,
Where saving his own sisters he had known
Scarce any but the women of his isles,
Rough wives, that laugh’d and scream’d against
the gulls,
Makers of nets, and living from the sea.
Then with a slow smile turn’d the lady round
And look’d upon her people; and, as when
A stone is flung into some sleeping tarn
The circle widens till it lip the marge,
Spread the slow smile thro’ all her company.
Three knights were thereamong, and they too
smiled,
Scorning him; for the lady was Ettarre,
And she was a great lady in her land.
Again she said: “O wild and of the woods,
Knowest thou not the fashion of our speech?
Or have the Heavens but given thee a fair face,
Lacking a tongue?”
“O damsel,” answer’d he,
“I woke from dreams, and coming out of gloom
Was dazzled by the sudden light, and crave
Pardon; but will ye to Caerleon? I
Go likewise; shall I lead you to the King?”
“Lead then,” she said; and thro’ the woods they
went.
And while they rode, the meaning in his eyes,
His tenderness of manner, and chaste awe,
His broken utterances and bashfulness,
Were all a burthen to her, and in her heart
She mutter’d, “I have lighted on a fool,
Raw, yet so stale!” But since her mind was bent
On hearing, after trumpet blown, her name
And title, “Queen of Beauty,” in the lists
Cried—and beholding him so strong she thought
That peradventure he will fight for me,
And win the circlet—therefore flatter’d him,
Being so gracious that he wellnigh deem’d
His wish by hers was echo’d; and her knights
And all her damsels too were gracious to him,
For she was a great lady.
And when they reach’d
Caerleon, ere they past to lodging, she,
Taking his hand, “O the strong hand,” she said,
“See! look at mine! but wilt thou fight for me,
And win me this fine circlet, Pelleas,
That I may love thee?”
Then his helpless heart
Leapt, and he cried, “Ay! wilt thou if I win?”
“Ay, that will I,” she answer’d, and she laugh’d,
And straitly nipt the hand, and flung it from her;
Then glanced askew at those three knights of hers,
Till all her ladies laugh’d along with her.
“O happy world,” thought Pelleas, “all, meseems,
Are happy; I the happiest of them all!”
Nor slept that night for pleasure in his blood,
And green wood-ways, and eyes among the leaves;
Then being on the morrow knighted, sware
To love one only. And as he came away,
The men who met him rounded on their heels
And wonder’d after him, because his face
Shone like the countenance of a priest of old
Against the flame about a sacrifice
Kindled by fire from heaven; so glad was he.
Then Arthur made vast banquets, and strange
knights
From the four winds came in; and each one sat,
Tho’ served with choice from air, land, stream, and
sea,
Oft in mid-banquet measuring with his eyes
His neighbor’s make and might; and Pelleas look’d
Noble among the noble, for he dream’d
His lady loved him, and he knew himself
Loved of the King; and him his new-made knight
Worshipt, whose lightest whisper moved him more
Than all the ranged reasons of the world.
Then blush’d and brake the morning of the jousts,
And this was call’d “The Tournament of Youth;”
For Arthur, loving his young knight, withheld
His older and his mightier from the lists,
That Pelleas might obtain his lady’s love,
According to her promise, and remain
Lord of the tourney. And Arthur had the jousts
Down in the flat field by the shore of Usk
Holden; the gilded parapets were crown’d
With faces, and the great tower fill’d with eyes
Up to the summit, and the trumpets blew.
There all day long Sir Pelleas kept the field
With honor; so by that strong hand of his
The sword and golden circlet were achieved.
Then rang the shout his lady loved; the heat
Of pride and glory fired her face, her eye
Sparkled; she caught the circlet from his lance,
And there before the people crown’d herself.
So for the last time she was graciou
s to him.
Then at Caerleon for a space—her look
Bright for all others, cloudier on her knight—
Linger’d Ettarre; and, seeing Pelleas droop
Said Guinevere, “We marvel at thee much,
O damsel, wearing this unsunny face
To him who won thee glory!” And she said,
“Had ye not held your Lancelot in your bower,
My Queen, he had not won.” Whereat the Queen,
As one whose foot is bitten by an ant,
Glanced down upon her, turn’d and went her way.
But after, when her damsels, and herself,
And those three knights all set their faces home,
Sir Pelleas follow’d. She that saw him cried:
“Damsels—and yet I should be shamed to say it—
I cannot bide Sir Baby. Keep him back
Among yourselves. Would rather that we had
Some rough old knight who knew the worldly way,
Albeit grizzlier than a bear, to ride
And jest with! Take him to you, keep him off,
And pamper him with papmeat, if ye will,
Old milky fables of the wolf and sheep,
Such as the wholesome mothers tell their boys.
Nay, should ye try him with a merry one
To find his mettle, good; and if he fly us,
Small matter! let him.” This her damsels heard,
And, mindful of her small and cruel hand,
They, closing round him thro’ the journey home,
Acted her hest, and always from her side
Restrain’d him with all manner of device,
So that he could not come to speech with her.
And when she gain’d her castle, upsprang the bridge,
Down rang the grate of iron thro’ the groove,
And he was left alone in open field.
“These be the ways of ladies,” Pelleas thought,
“To those who love them, trials of our faith.
Yea, let her prove me to the uttermost,
For loyal to the uttermost am I.”
So made his moan, and, darkness falling, sought
A priory not far off, there lodged, but rose
With morning every day, and, moist or dry,
Full-arm’d upon his charger all day long
Idylls of the King and a New Selection of Poems Page 26