To whom Isolt, 'Ah then, false hunter and false harper, thou He answer'd, 'O my soul, be comforted! Crown'd warrant had we for the crowning sin And, saddening on the sudden, spake Isolt, 'I had forgotten all in my strong joy To see thee-yearnings?—ay! for, hour by hour, O sweeter than all memories of thee, Deeper than any yearnings after thee Seem'd those far-rolling, westward-smiling seas, Watch'd from this tower. Isolt of Britain dash'd Before Isolt of Brittany on the strand, Would that have chill'd her bride-kiss? Wedded her? Fought in her father's battles? wounded there? Than having known thee? her too hast thou left And Tristram, fondling her light hands, replied, The night was dark; the true star set. Isolt! And Isolt answer'd, 'Yea, and why not I? In fuming sulphur blue and green, a fiend— Mark's way to steal behind one in the dark— For there was Mark: "He has wedded her," he said, Not said, but hiss'd it: then this crown of towers So shook to such a roar of all the sky, That here in utter dark I swoon'd away, And woke again in utter dark, and cried, Then Tristram, ever dallying with her hand, 'May God be with thee, sweet, when old and gray, And past desire!' a saying that anger'd her. ""May God be with thee, sweet, when thou art old, And sweet no more to me!" I need Him now. For when had Lancelot utter'd aught so gross Ev'n to the swineherd's malkin in the mast? The greater man, the greater courtesy. Far other was the Tristram, Arthur's knight! But thou, thro' ever harrying thy wild beastsSave that to touch a harp, tilt with a lance Becomes thee well-art grown wild beast thyself. How darest thou, if lover, push me even In fancy from thy side, and set me far In the gray distance, half a life away, Broken with Mark and hate and solitude, Thy marriage and mine own, that I should suck Then Tristram, pacing moodily up and down, 'Vows! did you keep the vow you made to Mark More than I mine? Lied, say ye? Nay, but learnt, The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself— My knighthood taught me this-ay, being snaptWe run more counter to the soul' thereof Than had we never sworn. I swear no more. I swore to the great King, and am forsworn. For once-ev'n to the height-I honour'd him. "Man, is he man at all?" methought, when first I rode from our rough Lyonnesse, and beheld That victor of the Pagan throned in hall— His hair, a sun that ray'd from off a brow Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes, The golden beard that clothed his lips with light Moreover, that weird legend of his birth, And every follower eyed him as a God; Till he, being lifted up beyond himself, Did mightier deeds than elsewise he had done, And so the realm was made; but then their vowsFirst mainly thro' that sullying of our QueenBegan to gall the knighthood, asking whence Had Arthur right to bind them to himself? Dropt down from heaven? wash'd up from out the deep? They fail'd to trace him thro' the flesh and blood Of our old kings: whence then? a doubtful lord To bind them by inviolable vows, Which flesh and blood perforce would violate: |