SUN comes, moon comes,
Time slips away.
Sun sets, moon sets,
Love, fix a day.
"A year hence, a year hence." "We shall both be gray."
"A month hence, a month hence." "Far, far away."
"A week hence, a week hence." "Ah, the long delay." "Wait a little, wait a little, You shall fix a day."
"To-morrow, love, to-morrow, And that's an age away." Blaze upon her window, sun, And honour all the day.
MARRIAGE MORNING.
LIGHT, 80 low upon earth, You send a flash to the sun. Here is the golden close of love, All my wooing is done.
O the woods and the meadows, Woods where we hid from the wet, Stiles where we stay'd to be kind, Meadows in which we met! Light, so low in the vale,
You flash and lighten afar:
For this is the golden morning of love, And you are his morning star. Flash, I am coming, I come,
By meadow and stile and wood: O lighten into my eyes and my heart, Into my heart and my blood! Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love? I have heard of thorns and briers. Over the thorns and briers,
Over the meadows and stiles, Over the world to the end of it Flash for a million miles.
"Danced like a wither'd leaf before the Hall."
DAGONET, the fool, whom Gawain in his moods 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. 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,
To whom the King, "Peace to thine eagle-borne Dead nestling, and this honor after death, Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn, And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear."
"Would rather ye had let them fall," she cried, "Plunge and be lost-ill-fated as they were, A bitterness to me!-ye look amazed, Not knowing they were lost as soon as givenSlid from my hands, when I was leaning out Above the river-that unhappy child
Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that they came Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,
But the sweet body of a maiden babe.
Perchance-who knows?-the purest of thy knights May win them for the purest of my maids."
She ended, and the cry of a great jousts With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways From Camelot in among the faded fields
To furthest towers; and everywhere the knights Arm'd for a day of glory before the King.
But on the hither side of that loud morn 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, 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 ?"
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
Came Tristram, saying, "Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?" Some hold he was a table-knight of thine
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 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, 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 And named it Nestling; so forgot herself A moment, and her cares; till that young life Being smitten in mid-heaven with mortal cold Past from her; and in time the carcanet Vext her with plaintive memories of the child: So she, delivering it to Arthur, said, "Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence, And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize."
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, 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 My knights have sworn the counter to it-and say My tower is full of harlots, like his court, But mine are worthier, seeing they profess To be none other than themselves and say My knights are all adulterers like his own, But mine are truer, seeing they profess To be none other; and say his hour is come, The heathen are upon him, his long lance Broken, and his Excalibur a straw.'"
Then Arthur turn'd to Kay the seneschal, "Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously Like a king's heir, till all his hurts be whole. The heathen-but that ever-climbing wave,
This poem forms one of the "Idyls of the King." Its place is Hurl'd back again so often in empty foam,
between "Pelleas and Ettarre" and "Guinevere."
Hath lain for years at rest-and renegades,
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 Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds, Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved, The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore. But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place Enchair'd to-morrow, arbitrate the field;
And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole, Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight, But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest, And armor'd all in forest green, whereon There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, With ever-scattering berries, and on the shield A spear, a harp, a bugle-Tristram-late
For wherefore shouldst thou care to mingle with it, From overseas in Brittany return'd,
Only to yield my Queen her own again? Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it well ?"
Thereto Sir Lancelot answer'd, "It is well: Yet better if the King abide, and leave The leading of his younger knights to me. Else, for the King has will'd it, it is well."
Then Arthur rose, and Lancelot follow'd him, And while they stood without the doors, the King Turn'd to him saying, "Is it then so well? Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he Of whom was written, 'a sound is in his ears' The foot that loiters, bidden go,-the glance That only seems half-loyal to command,— A manner somewhat fall'n from reverence- Or have I dream'd the bearing of our knights Less manful and less gentle than when of old We swept the heathen from the Roman wall? Or whence the fear lest this my realm, uprear'd, By noble deeds at one with noble vows, From flat confusion and brute violences, Reel back into the beast, and be no more ?"
He spoke, and taking all his younger knights, Down the slope city rode, and sharply turn'd North by the gate. In her high bower the Queen, Working a tapestry, lifted up her head, Watch'd her lord pass, and knew not that she sigh'd.
Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme Of by-gone Merlin, "Where is he who knows? From the great deep to the great deep he goes."
But when the morning of a tournament, By these in earnest those in mockery call'd The Tournament of the Dead Innocence, Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot,
And marriage with a princess of that realm, Isolt the White-Sir Tristram of the Woods- Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain His own against him, and now yearn'd to shake The burthen off his heart in one full shock With Tristram ev'n to death: his strong hands gript And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, Until he groan'd for wrath-so many knights That ware their ladies' colors on the casque, Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, And there with gibes and flickering mockeries Stood, while he mutter'd, "Craven crests! O shame! What faith have these in whom they sware to love? The glory of our Round Table is no more."
So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems, Not speaking other word than "Hast thou won? Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand Wherewith thou takest this, is red!" to whom Tristram -half plagued by Lancelot's languorous
Made answer, "Ay, but wherefore toss me this Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound? Let be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength of heart And might of limb, but mainly use and skill, Are winners in this pastime of our King. My hand-belike the lance hath dript upon it- No blood of mine, I trow; but O, chief knight, Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield, Great brother, thou nor I have made the world; Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine."
And Tristram round the gallery made his horse Caracole; then bow'd his homage, bluntly saying, "Fair damsels, each to him who worships each Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold This day my Queen of Beauty is not here." Then most of these were mute, some anger'd, one
Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey, Murmuring "All courtesy is dead," and one,
The words of Arthur flying shriek'd, arose,
And down a streetway hung with folds of pure White samite, and by fountains running wine, Where children sat in white with cups of gold, Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps Ascending, fill'd his double-dragon'd chair.
He glanced and saw the stately galleries, Dame, damsel, each thro' worship of their Queen White-robed in honor of the stainless child, And some with scatter'd jewels, like a bank Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of fire. He lookt but once, and veil'd his eyes again.
The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began: And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, When all the goodlier guests are past away, Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists. He saw the laws that ruled the tournament Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down Before his throne of arbitration cursed The dead babe and the follies of the King: And once the laces of a helmet crack'd,
"The glory of our Round Table is no more."
Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,
And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness: But under her black brows a swarthy dame Laught shrilly, crying "Praise the patient saints, Our one white day of Innocence hath past, Tho' somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it. The snowdrop only, flow'ring thro' the year, Would make the world as blank as Wintertide. Come-let us comfort their sad eyes, our Queen's And Lancelot's, at this night's solemnity With all the kindlier colors of the field."
So dame and damsel glitter'd at the feast Variously gay: for he that tells the tale Liken'd them, saying as when an hour of cold Falls on the mountain in midsummer snows, And all the purple slopes of mountain flowers Pass under white, till the warm hour returns With veer of wind, and all are flowers again; So dame and damsel cast the simple white, And glowing in all colors, the live grass, Rose-campion, bluebell, kingcup, poppy, glanced About the revels, and with mirth so lond Beyond all use, that, half-amazed, the Queen,
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