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Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:

'I found Him in the shining of the stars,

I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields,

But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful?
Or else as if the world were wholly fair,
But that these eyes of men are dense and
dim,

Farewell there is an isle of rest for thee. And I am blown along a wandering wind, And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.' And fainter onward, like wild birds that change

Their season in the night and wail their way

From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream

Shrill'd; but in going mingled with dim cries

Far in the moonlit haze among the hills, As of some lonely city sack'd by night, When all is lost, and wife and child with

wail

Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and call'd,

'Who spake? A dream. O light upon the wind,

Thine, Gawain, was the voice-are these dim cries

Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild

Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?'

This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and

spake :

'O me, my King, let pass whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the

field;

But in their stead thy name and glory cling To all high places like a golden cloud For ever but as yet thou shalt not pass. Light was Gawain in life, and light in

death

Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou for dreams from him,

but rise

I hear the steps of Modred in the west, And with him many of thy people, and knights

Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but

grosser grown