GUINEVERE.

QUEEN GUINEVERE had fled the court, and sat There in the holy house at Almesbury

Weeping, none with her save a little maid,

A novice one low light betwixt them burn'd Blurr'd by the creeping mist, for all abroad, Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,

The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face, Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still.

For hither had she fled, her cause of flight

Sir Modred; he the nearest to the King,
His nephew, ever like a subtle beast

Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne,
Ready to spring, waiting a chance for this,

Q

He chill'd the popular praises of the King

With silent smiles of slow disparagement;

And tamper'd with the Lords of the White Horse,
Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought
To make disruption in the Table Round

Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds
Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims
Were sharpen'd by strong hate for Lancelot.

For thus it chanced one morn when all the court, Green-suited, but with plumes that mock'd the may, Had been, their wont, a-maying and return'd, That Modred still in green, all ear and eye, Climb'd to the high top of the garden-wall

To spy some secret scandal if he might,

And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best

Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court

The wiliest and the worst; and more than this

He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by

Spied where he couch'd, and as the gardener's hand

Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar,

So from the high wall and the flowering grove

Of grasses Lancelot pluck'd him by the heel,

And cast him as a worm upon the way;

But when he knew the Prince tho' marr'd with dust,
He, reverencing king's blood in a bad man,
Made such excuses as he might, and these

Full knightly without scorn; for in those days
No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in scorn;
But, if a man were halt or hunch'd, in him

By those whom God had made full-limb'd and tall,
Scorn was allow'd as part of his defect,

And he was answer'd softly by the King

And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp

To raise the Prince who rising, twice or thrice

Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled, and went :

But, ever after, the small violence done

Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart,

As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long

A little bitter pool about a stone

On the bare coast.

But when Sir Lancelot told

This matter to the Queen, at first she laugh'd
Lightly, to think of Modred's dusty fall,
Then shudder'd, as the village wife who cries
'I shudder, some one steps across my grave;'
Then laugh'd again, but faintlier, for indeed
She half-foresaw that he, the subtle beast,
Would track her guilt until he found, and hers
Would be for evermore a name of scorn.

Henceforward rarely could she front in Hall,
Or elsewhere, Modred's narrow foxy face,

Heart-hiding smile, and gray persistent eye :

Henceforward too, the Powers that tend the soul,

To help it from the death that cannot die,

And save it even in extremes, began

To vex and plague her. Many a time for hours,

Beside the placid breathings of the King,

In the dead night, grim faces came and went

Before her, or a vague spiritual fear—

Like to some doubtful noise of creaking doors,
Heard by the watcher in a haunted house,
That keeps the rust of murder on the walls-
Held her awake or if she slept, she dream'd
An awful dream; for then she seem'd to stand
On some vast plain before a setting sun,

And from the sun there swiftly made at her
A ghastly something, and its shadow flew
Before it, till it touch'd her, and she turn'd-

When lo! her own, that broadening from her feet,
And blackening, swallow'd all the land, and in it
Far cities burnt, and with a cry she woke.
And all this trouble did not pass but grew;
Till ev'n the clear face of the guileless King,
And trustful courtesies of household life,

Became her bane; and at the last she said,

'O Lancelot, get thee hence to thine own land,

For if thou tarry we shall meet again,

And if we meet again, some evil chance

Will make the smouldering scandal break and blaze