The defence of Guenevere and other poems;

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THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE

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THE DEFENCE OF
GUENEVERE AND
OTHER POEMS BY
WILLIAM MORRIS
EDITED BY ROBERT
STEELE

PHILADELPHIA

GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.
PUBLISHERS

". . . . THE SAME THAT OFT-TIMES HATH
CHARMED MAGIC CASEMENTS OPENING 0*ER THE FOAM,
OF PERILOUS SEAS IN FAERY LANDS FORLORN."

95^5

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1^0

INTRODUCTION

The Romantic Revival. Ossian.— The

beginnings of the Romantic Revival in England
stand out in marked contrast to the works which
represent to us the triumphs of the eighteenth
century. At a time when Goldsmith, Churchill,
Young, Blair and Thomson, Falconer and Gray were
the acknowledged exponents of English poetry the
first notes of revolt against formal, classic, and con-
ventional expression were sounded through Western
Europe by an obscure Scottish clergyman. In Ossian,
poor in ideas and limited in range as it was, the
eighteenth century found something of the mystery
lying round and underneath Nature, of the heroes
of dim legend and the spirits of the mist and the
wind, and from its revolt of unfettered lyricism, the
Romantic reaction may be said to date its inception.
The immediate and widespread success of Ossia?t is
almost as inexplicable to those who have read it as to

ivi664578

INTRODUCTION

the rest of the world of to-day. Beneath its unfamiliar
form and the glorification of an unknown mythology
of bards and heroes there was little of solid value to
be found in it, and its acceptance shows how ripe
was time and opportunity for change. It was trans-
lated into nearly every European language, it in-
fluenced every great writer of the time, it was a
favourite book of Napoleon, of Walter Scott, of
Goethe, it produced Blake. But with ardent admirers
it found bitter enemies. That Macpherson claimed
to have made literal translations of existing Gaelic
texts was made the pretext for an attack, not only on
the authenticity of Ossian, but on its intrinsic worth ;
a new battle of the moderns and the ancients was
fought over it, and the resulting controversy was long
and bitter. In the midst of it appeared a second
book destined to have an equal and more permanent
influence on the literature of the nineteenth century.

The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

— Thomas Percy, an English clergyman, was already
known as a writer of merit, who had translated from
the Icelandic and other languages, when stimulated
by the success of Macpherson, he published in 1765
his three small volumes of selections of English ballad
poetry. The fortunate discovery some years earlier

INTRODUCTION

in a cupboard of an old house at ShifFnal of a manu-
script collection of ballads made before the Civil
War, which was being used for fire-lighting, was
the basis of his work, and on the publication of his
proposals he had received much encouragement and
assistance. Thomas Warton, one of the most learned
English scholars of the eighteenth century, examined
for him Pepys' collection at Cambridge, other scholars
and poets gave him ballads taken from the lips of
peasants. He altered and corrected the poems, it is true,
to meet the taste of the century : yet, infelicitous as are
his emendations, nothing can take from his work the
commanding place it holds in the history of English
poetry. As Wordsworth once said, there was not an
able writer of his time who would not acknowledge,
as he himself did, his obligations to the Reltques.
Miss Mitford, in her Literary Recollections^ says, " to
that book ... we owe the revival of the taste
for romantic and lyrical poetry, which had lain dor-
mant since the days of the Commonwealth." Scott
put the Reltques beside Ossian and Spenser : " above
all I then first became acquainted with Percy. . . .
The first time I could scrape a few shillings together I
bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes ;
nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or

INTRODUCTION

with half the enthusiasm." One of the most important
of the results of Percy's publication was the attention
it directed to the old ballads — the most typical and
distinctive form of English poetry.

Ballad Poetry. — No better description of it
can be found than in some lines written by William
Morris himself in 1887, when dealing with the
poetry of feudal times. " Alongside of it (Chaucer's
poetry) existed yet the ballad poetry of the people,
wholly untouched by courtly elegance and classical
pedantry ; rude in art, but never coarse, true to the
back-bone ; instinct with indignation against wrong,
and thereby expressing the hope that was in it ; a
protest of the poor against the rich, especially in
those songs of the Foresters, which have been called
the Medieval epic of revolt ; no more gloomy than
the gentleman's poetry, yet cheerful from courage,
and not content. Half-a-dozen stanzas of it are
worth a cart-load of the whining introspective lyrics
of to-day ; and he who, when he has mastered the
slight differences of language from our own daily
speech, is not moved by it, does not understand what
true poetry means nor what its aim is." But there
is another side to these poems. Simple and natural
as they are, treating of . . .

INTRODUCTION

" Old, forgotten far-oft' things
And battles long ago,"

they preserve, too, an essential element of the
mental attitude of the Middle Age to its surround-
ings— the spirit of wonder. For these ballads
are not only an epic of revolt and of sport and
a popular history of the events which struck the
popular imagination and were transformed by it, but
they preserve the last handlings of medieval romance.
In them we have the ultimate form in which
Arthurian Romance appeared before the romantic
revival, the popular rendering of the Norman-French
fabliaux, and the popular fairy mythology of our
English ancestors. Round the authorship of these
ballads a long controversy has raged, principally due,
it must be said, to the forgetfulness of the contro-
versialists of medieval conditions. On the one side
was the view that they were the work of the people
themselves. On the other it has been said that " so
far from its being a spontaneous product of popular
imagination, it was a minstrels' adaptation from the
romances of the educated classes. Everything in the
ballad — matter, form and composition — is the work
of the minstrel ; all that the people do is to remem-
ber and repeat it." But this view assumes the
xvii

INTRODUCTION

immense intellectual difference e.g. between Tenny-
son and his middle-class audience, as existing in
medieval times, as does the remark about " educated
classes." As a matter of fact the " educated classes "
of the Middle Age were not that public for whom
romances were composed or recited, which was com-
posed of the governing class, which was intellectually
on the same footing as its inferiors. Moreover we
have absolutely no evidence that the minstrels of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were authors in
any sense, whereas there is universal evidence of the
spontaneous outburst of songs of occasion, which, if
they last, naturally attach themselves to ballad cycles.
An exception to this might be taken in the case of
Blind Harry the Minstrel who collected and recited
the popular traditions about Wallace, and gained
food and clothing thereby, but apart from the fact
that he was a poet before his blindness, which caused
him to become a minstrel, his remains are hardly
ballads in the strict sense as regards form, being in
the heroic couplet. Yet in matter they breathe the
full spirit of the Middle Age — legend and fact
inextricably mingled — heroism and wonder.

The Middle Age and Romance.— The

spirit of wonder and of mystery lies deep in the very

INTRODUCTION

being of the Middle Age. Whatever lay outside the
narrow circle of every-day experience was strange and
possible, and the limits of the known were so strait
that no man dare discriminate between the possible
and the probable, between the more or the less likely.
Once past the boundaries of the native manor, a
wanderer was in a foreign land, one's neighbour had
seen the Wandering Jew at Micklegarth while on a
pilgrimage to the Hallows, the cinnamon bought at
St. James' Fair was, it was known, shot from the
nest of the phoenix with leaden arrows, the silk of
my lady's robe owed its crimson to a dragon's life-
blood. And as the metes of the natural and the
unnatural were not defined, so also was there no
division of the natural and the supernatural. The
life of this world and that which is to come were to
medieval folk as continuous as the round w^orld, and
though death was among them the gateway from life
to life, yet other lands might well have other laws,
and folk dwell in some Secret Isle fearless of any
change. The medieval non-reverence which so many
take for irreverence is an expression of this sentiment.
God and All Hallows were as near and as far as the
King — sometimes terrible and inexplicable — sometimes
gentle and debonair — but never inaccessible to those

INTRODUCTION

who should seek them rightly. With all this too
was a certain kind of symmetry of notion — a
republic of Emperor, subjects, and rebel Kings and
subjects, — God and His angels, the Devil and his
Friends, and the spirits neither good nor bad who
found a vague existence between them. Outside
every man, then, in the Middle Age lay a mysterious
Universe, on which his manly heart looked out with
na'fve wonder. It is this spirit in a new form, and
on a different plane of knowledge and sentiment, that
revived at the end of the eighteenth century.

The Rowley Poems of Chatterton. — Chat-

terton is almost the only predecessor of Scott in the
Romantic movement of whom we have not yet traced
the influence. An appreciation of his work should
be left to a poet ; Coleridge has written it in the
Monody on his death, and Keats in the dedication of
Endymion. The lines of Wordsworth,

" The marvellous boy.
The sleepless soul, that perished in his pride,"

describe his character to the core. His productions,
said Campbell, recall those of an ungrown giant —
incomplete, with the touch of an untaught master
hand ; the promise of a splendid maturity, side by
side with commonplace imitations of magazine verse.

INTRODUCTION

His true inspiration was not the verse of older poets
but the remains of antiquity about him. St. Mary
Redcliffe spoke to his inmost being from every stone
and window, and created for him again the dead
souls who had built it and filled it. The Rozvley
Poems were not unworthy to be edited by Thomas
Tyrwhitt, and will go down to posterity as one of
the landmarks of English Poetry, while even in the
verse written on the accepted models of his day, the
origins of some of the finest lines in " Kubla Khan "
may be not obscurely discerned. He is one of the
fathers of English Poetry, however, not alone because
of his influence on poets greater than himself, but in
right of the beauty and originality of his own pro-
duction. " In one of the last and finest of his
poems, the * Ballad of Charitie,' he anticipates the
peculiar manner and sensuous beauty of Keats, before
Keats is even born. And more than this, Chatterton
anticipates, by nearly a century, that phase of our
more recent verse which Mr. Pater has designated
* the Esthetic School of Poetry.' The charm of
the Rowley Poems lies here ; it is a charm of manner
refined on manner ; of a sensuous poetical tempera-
ment finding expression in its reveries of some
poetical mode or figure, far removed by time, and

INTRODUCTION

dimmed by the glamour of antique circumstance."
His influence on his time was, too, important as an
impulse to antiquarian research. The controversy
round their genuineness, which in our days would
not have lasted ten minutes, inspired inquiry into
realms of literature utterly unknown even to pro-
fessed students, and his tragic death ensured an
audience for its results.

The history of English Poetry between Chatterton
and Coleridge contains some great names, but none
that have created a school or deeply influenced their
successors. Among them are Cowper, Campbell,
Blake, and Burns. But the consideration of these
belongs to a general history of literature, and we
must content ourselves with recalling that while they
promise the sunrise, they are but the first glories of
the dawn.

Lyrical Ballads (1798). Coleridge and

Wordsworth. — The publication of this little
work marks the beginning of the Romantic Revival.
Like many other important books its publication
attracted little attention, and the 500 copies sold
resulted in a loss to the publisher, but a volume
whose first piece is the " Ancient Mariner " and
whose last is " Tintern Abbey " could hardly fail to

INTRODUCTION

exert its influence on any mind open to change. It
was the result of a friendship between two intensely
original and creative intelligences at the critical point
of their development. Both had written respectable
verse, but during the years of constant association
(1797-8) in the Quantocks, their enthusiasm was
blown to a white heat, and " Christabel " and
" Kubla Khan " were produced then as well as the
pieces published in the Lyrical Ballads. The principles
actuating the authors may be studied at length in
the (1800) preface to the second edition — they
underlie the whole romantic movement. The poets
are curiously alike yet different. Each is master of
the perfect phrase — yet the distinction made between
the charm of Wordsworth and the magic of Coleridge
is not merely verbal. " The Ancient Mariner " and
" Genevieve " are among the most popular repre-
sentatives of romantic poetry, and deservedly so. On
the latter the poet has lavished all the graces of
chivalry at its ideal exaltation, in the former he has
touched the limits of invention and belief. He stands
alone between Spenser and Rossetti.

Byron and Keats. — Before leaving this period
a word must be said of the other great poets of the
day — Keats, Shelley, and Byron. Byron, instinct

INTRODUCTION

with the matter of poetry, hardly ever attained its
form in any measure of perfection, and it is to this
that he owes the Continental reputation he enjoys,
and the partial oblivion in England he suffers, for
this can never be translated, while of that he is
amongst the richest in our literature. Shelley has
had no successor till after the days when our study
ends, and Keats, though in some immortal poems
he has touched the very heart of romance, experi-
mented in so many forms that it is difficult to
foresee in what direction his muse would have
ultimately tended. Southey, an early companion of
Coleridge and his friends, rendered inestimable service
to the progress of the movement by his edition
of Malory's Morte d^ Arthur — a compendium of
Arthurian romance whose sources are not as yet fully
known, but which superseded in popular favour not
only the ancient romances from which it was drawn,
but the later ballad epic which was its rival.

Walter Scott. — We are in some danger, in
these days, of under-estimating the place which Walter
Scott will fill in the history, not only of our own, but
of European literature. His influence on England
any reader of ordinary cultivation may estimate if he
will reflect for a few seconds, — but to quote the words

INTRODUCTION

of a recent writer — " what is infinitely more startling
— what gives us more impressively the measure of a
genius as transcendent as it was unobtrusive — is the
authority it almost simultaneously asserted over the
thought and methods of the foreign schools of
romance." Hugo and Balzac, de Vigny, Merimee,
and Dumas were his imitators, Goethe and Chateau-
briand his panegyrists ; Quentin Durward made Ranke
a historian, and inspired the Annales des Condes. His
works were translated into French and German as they
appeared, and were received with passionate approval.
We have already spoken of Ossian and Percy as
early influences on Scott's development. He owed
little to the writers of his time. His first book was a
translation from Burger and his second from Goethe.
His first original work was published in conjunction
with Lewis (who deserves mention here for the
excellence of the ballads in his fantastic " Monk ")
in the Tales of Wonder, to which Scott contributed
" William and Ellen," " The Eve of St. John," and
some other pieces. The collaboration is thus com-
memorated by Byron (1809) just after the publication
of " Marmion " : —

** All hail, M.P. ! from whose infernal brain
Thin sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train ;

INTRODUCTION

At whose command * grim women ' throng in crowds,
And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,
With * small gray men,' * wild yagers ' and what not.
To crown with honour thee, and Walter Scott."

Scott's personal preparations for his work lay rather
in his enormous historical reading, and his eagerness
as a student. " He was as pleased with the capture
of some fag-end of a song as his freebooting ancestors
when they lifted cattle in Cumberland," said an old
friend, and it was this determination to gather up all
fragments of his heritage of song that marks him out
as the heir in succession of the native and noble
line of Romantic Poets. His Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border (1802) is an inexhaustible storehouse of these
remains, and one of the most potent influences in
bringing about the success of the revival. Yet his
preparation would have, one feels somehow, stopped
short of achievement, if it had not been for the happy
accident of a friend endowed with a memory Eastern
in its retentiveness, who had heard the first part of
" Christabel " read by Coleridge, and repeated it to
him. He sat down under that inspiration and wrote
" The Lay of the Last Minstrel," to the success of
which we owe, implicitly, the whole of Scott's later
work. His verse falls short of his inspiration by this,
that he lacked something of the artistic conscience ;

INTRODUCTION

as Mr. Watts-Dunton says, " the distinctive quality of
Scott is that he seems to be greater than his work — as
much greater indeed, as a towering oak seems greater
than the leaves it sheds."

The Romantic Movement in Germany
and France. Carlyle. — It is no part of our

scheme to give anything like an account of the
growth of the movement in these countries. The
Romantic School in France especially has had com-
paratively little influence on the development of our
own literature. The political situation — the enmity
between England and France in Napoleonic times,
followed by the long years of the Restoration
Monarchy — may account for this, but the fact
remains that German Literature during the whole of
that period was the most potent foreign influence on
our own. We may quote from a somewhat unfriendly
critic a characterisation of their work. "They intro-
duce a new tone into German poetry, give their
works a new colour, and in addition to this, revive
both the spirit and the substance of the old fairy-
tale, Volkslied, and legend. . . . Research in the
domains of history, ethnography and jurisprudence,
the study of German antiquity, Indian and Graeco-
Latin philology, and the systems and dreams of the

INTRODUCTION

Natur-philosophie, all received their first impulse from
Romanticism. They widened the emotional range of
German poetry, though the emotions to which they
gave expression were more frequently morbid than
healthy. As critics, they originally, and with success,
aimed at enlarging the spiritual horizon . . . and
vowed undying hatred to all dead conventionality in
the relations between the sexes. The best among
them in their youth laboured ardently for the intensi-
fication of that spiritual life which is based upon a
belief in the supernatural " (Brandes, Main Currents).
Starting from Herder and Goethe, the German
Romanticists who have exercised most influence in
English literature are Burger, the Schlegels, Tieck,
Musaeus, Richter, Fouque, Arnim and Brentano,
Hoffman, and the brothers Grimm.

Coleridge and Wordsworth had visited Germany
after the publication of the Lyrical Ballads, but
their work shows little trace of any effect of the
contemporary but independent movement of the
German Romanticists.

The influence of this school was exercised most
directly on Campbell, Scott and Carlyle. In Campbell
it is apparent in his ballads, while the earliest literary
work of the others was based on the writings of this

INTRODUCTION

school, Carlyle in especial being deeply indebted to it.
His life of Schiller was praised by Goethe, and his
translations of Wilhelm Meister in 1824 and his
specimens of German Romance (1827) show the
direction in which his mind was at work, and the
influences which formed his character. His later
work carried him into other fields and his Romantic
Puritanism became one of the primary forces of the
Middle Victorian Era.

Tennyson. — With Shelley and Keats the produc-
tion of fine poetry ceased till Tennyson came to his
own with the publication of two volumes of his Poems
in 1 842. Here he is at the high-water mark of inspira-
tion. The music of his verse, the homely simplicity and
tenderness of his language, the nobility and aloofness
of his themes produced an extraordinary effect on his
time, deprived for years of the stimulus of great
poetry. " The Princess " and " In Memoriam "
served to mark the turning-point of his career, and
"Maud" in 1855 was the last work of Tennyson's
that mattered. Then came the transition into the
" Idylls of the King," where romance was definitely
abandoned for the presentment in verse of the ideal
Englishman of the sixties. Such masterpieces as " The
Lotos Eaters," " The Lady of Shalott," the " Morte

INTRODUCTION ^

d'Arthur," " Sir Galahad," " Oriana," were not easily
repeated. Canon Dixon gives a vivid account of the
influence of Tennyson on the youth of his time, and
more especially of Morris's attitude towards him, one
of " defiant admiration." " We all had the feeling
that after Tennyson no farther development was
possible, we were at the end of all things in poetry."
Ruskin. — The other great force of the early fifties
was John Ruskin. Scott had attracted him to the
Middle Age — but almost exclusively on the side of
the arts, with architecture as their crowning embodi-
ment. Carlyle was his teacher, and his first work of
importance, M<?^^r« Painters, appeared in 1843, the
year of Carlyle's Past and Present. The second
volume (1846) was devoted to medieval art, and in
1848 appeared The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Three
years later the first volume of his greatest work The
Stones of Venice was published, follov/ed in 1853 by
the second and third. He then returned to the
completion of Modern Painters, the third and
fourth volumes appearing in 1856. His influence on
his time is well described by Mr. Mackail. "As
The Stones of Venice is Ruskin's greatest work, so one
chapter in it, the sixth of the second volume, entitled
* On the Nature of Gothic,' is the central point of

INTRODUCTION

his whole teaching. With the twentieth chapter of
Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, it is a confession of faith
and a call to the higher life which may be called the
most momentous utterance of their half-century of
continuous utterance. In both cases the appeal is not
to despair, but to labour and hope ; in both cases the
voice of God speaking through the man was greater
than the man himself, and the works of later years
took on them the sombre splendour of a great tragedy,
when the prophets outlived faith in their own
prophecies." But this time was not in sight when
Morris and his friends were in the first enthusiasm of
youthful discipleship.

Rossetti, — Of the more immediate personal in-
fluence on the early poetry of William Morris, Rossetti
is the most important. Not that Morris copied him,
or even that the verse of the two poets is comparable,
but that certain elements in the elder powerfully
strengthened and confirmed the bent of the younger
man. Rossetti was born in 1828, and in 1850 his
first poems appeared, though written three years
earlier. His youth had been spent in an atmosphere
of mysticism, his father being a searcher after esoteric
interpretations of Dante and the romances of chivalry :
one of his father's friends and disciples going so far as
xxxi

INTRODUCTION

to see in the epic of Charlemagne a history of the
Aibigensian Church Synods, in the knights pastors, in
the heroines church meetings, and in the impassioned
love-lyrics of the troubadours, sermons disguised to pass
current in a hostile world ! Their folly had this of
good, that Dante Gabriel Rossetti was familiar from
his earliest youth with the romantic literature of the
Middle Age, and that the mysticism of his father
took with him a saner and deeper expression. " An
original and subtile beauty of execution expresses a
deep mysticism of thought both great in degree and
passionate in kind. Nor in him has it any tendency
to lose itself amid allegory or abstractions ; indeed,
instead of turning human life into symbols of things
vague and not understood, it rather gives to the very
symbols the personal life and variety of mankind.
None of his poems is without the circle of this
realizing mysticism, which deals wonderingly with all
real things that can have poetic life given them by
passion, and refuses to have to do with any invisible
things that in the wide scope of its imagination
cannot be made perfectly distinct and poetically real.
In no poems is the spontaneous and habitual interpre-
tation of matter and manner, which is the essence of
poetry, more complete than in Rossetti's."

INTRODUCTION

William Morris. — William Morris was born
at Walthamstow, March 24, 1834. -^^ ^ child his
taste for reading developed early. He was deep in
the Waverley Novels at four years old, and he never
lost the habit of rapid reading he formed in his first
boyhood. Mr. Mackail's Life gives a full account of
his surroundings in youth and early manhood which
may be consulted with profit. He was an omnivor-
ous reader, revelling in wonder-stories and tales of
adventure. I remember his disappointment one day
in the later years of his life when he bought The Three
Midshipmen on a railway journey and found it a sort
of religious tract. But with this he was an ardent
lover of nature ; every bird, beast, and plant had a
name for him. He never forgot what he had once seen
or read, and fifty years later he described from memory
a church he had visited only once when he was eight
years old. When at fourteen he went to Marlborough
the discipline of the school sat lightly on him ; his
holidays were spent in exploring the country round,
and his working days in devouring the school library,
rich in archaeology and architecture. After leaving
school, over a year was spent in the study of literature,
classic and modern, before going up to Oxford in
January 1852.

INTRODUCTION

At Oxford, 1853. — Morris appears in the pupil-
book of the tutor at Exeter College as " a rather
rough and unpolished youth, who exhibited no special
literary tastes or capacity, but had no difficulty in
mastering the usual subjects of examination." Among
his fellows he was regarded at first, simply as a very
pleasant boy who was fond of talking. But his mental
qualities soon came to the front. " I observed," says
Canon Dixon, " how decisive he was, how accurate
without any effort or formality : what an extraordin-
ary power of observation lay at the base of many of
his casual or incidental remarks, and how many things
he knew that were quite out of the way." The day
he entered he made the acquaintance of Burne-Jones,
his life-long friend, and, when they came up, Burne-
Jones introduced him to a small circle of Birmingham
men at Pembroke, in whose society he spent most of
his leisure. Tennyson and Ruskin — the Ruskin of
Modern Painters — were the gods of his idolatry, till in
that year the second volume of The Stones of Venice
appeared, and set the seal on his devotion. With
his friend he read through Neale, Milman, the Acta
Sanctorum^ and masses of medieval chronicles and Latin
hymns, while Carlyle'sP^// and Present stood for absolute
and inspired truth. Burne-Jones introduced him to

INTRODUCTION

Thorpe's Northern Mythology^ where he first met
the saga-tales he was to love so well. The Bodleian
gave him the opportunity of studying form and colour
in the glowing illuminations of the Middle Age,
notably in a splendid Apocalypse of the thirteenth
century.

At Oxford, 1854-5. — We owe to Canon Dixon a
description of the attitude of Morris to Tennyson just
then : " It was one of defiant admiration. He per-
ceived his limitations, as I think, in a remarkable
manner for a man of twenty or so. He said once,

* Tennyson's Sir Galahad is rather a mild youth ! ' Of

* Locksley Hall ' he said, apostrophising the hero, * My
dear fellow, if you are going to make that row, get out
of the room, that's all ! ' He perceived a certain rowdy
or bullying element that runs through much of
Tennyson's work : runs through * The Princess,' * Lady
Clara Vere de Vere,' and * Amphion.' On the other
hand he understood Tennyson's greatness in a manner
that we could not share. He understood it as if the
poems represented substantial things that were to be
considered out of the poems as well as in them. Of the
worlds that Tennyson opened in his fragments he
selected one, as I think the finest and most epical, for
special admiration, namely, * Oriana.' " In the Long

XXXV c

INTRODUCTION

Vacation of 1 854 he first went abroad, visiting Belgium
and Northern France. Here he first saw Van Eyck
and Memmling, Amiens, Beauvais and Chartres. In
Paris he saw the Cluny Museum and the Louvre.
His description of Rouen has been quoted elsewhere.
The romanticism of Fouque in Sinntram and his other
works gave a more definite body and form to his
thoughts. The publication of Ruskin's Edinburgh
Lectures taught the little circle of friends of the exist-
ence of Rossetti, but they knew nothing of his work.
That winter Morris wrote his first poem. It was
called " The Willow and the Red Cliff," and was
destroyed in 1858.

First Poems. — The description of these must be
read at length in Mr. Mackail's Life, Canon Dixon,
no mean poet himself, says of the first : " As he read
it, I felt that it was something the like of which had
never been heard before . . . perfectly original, what-
ever its value, and sounding truly striking and beauti-
ful, extremely decisive and powerful in action. . . ,
He reached his perfection at once, and in my judg-
ment he can scarcely be said to have much exceeded it
afterwards. ... I remember his remark, * Well, if
this is poetry, it is very easy to write !' From that
time onward, for a term or two, he came to my
xxxvi

INTRODUCTION

rooms almost every day with a new poem " (p. 52).
Specimens of these poems are given by Mr. Mackail.
In the summer of 1855 Morris began to write prose,
as remarkable as his early poetry, and as beautiful. But
other influences were crowding on the little group of
friends. A copy of the " Germ " came into their
hands, and " The Blessed Damozel " and " Hand and
Soul " made them on the instant ardent worshippers
of Rossetti. At the same time Morris read Chaucer
for the first time with Burne-Jones. After a summer
tour in France, the friends returned to Oxford eager
to join in the movement at the head of which stood
Carlyle, Ruskin and Tennyson, and with a plan for
a new magazine, which appeared during 1856, at
Morris's expense. In September Morris paid a visit
to Burne-Jones, and there in Cornish's bookshop he
was shown Malory's Morte d" Arthur^ which he immedi-
ately fastened on. " It at once became for both one
of their most precious treasures ; so precious that even
among their intimates there was some shyness over it,
till a year later they heard Rossetti speak of it and the
Bible as the two greatest books of the world, and
their tongues were unloosed by the sanction of his
authority" {Life^ p. 81).

The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,

INTRODUCTION

J856. — Only twelve numbers of this magazine ap-
peared, and to all but one Morris was a contributor.
Four poems afterwards included in " The Defence of
Guenevere " appear among them, but the most note-
worthy of his contributions are some prose tales, and
his descriptions of Amiens. In these tales some
exquisite fragments of lyrics are imbedded.

<* Christ keep the Hollow Land
All the summer-tide ;
Still we cannot understand
Where the waters glide ;

Only dimly seeing them

Coldly slipping through
Many green-lipp'd cavern-mouths,

Where the hills are blue."

But while the magazine was running its course, im-
portant changes had been brought about. Burne-
Jones had seen and been welcomed by Rossetti.
Morris had signed articles as an architect with Street,
meeting there Philip Webb, to whom the revolution
in domestic architecture throughout England is, more
than to any other, due. After Easter, when Burne-
Jones was in London, Morris used to spend the week-
ends with him, and as much as possible in the com-
pany of Rossetti, till, in August, Street came up to
London, and Morris with him. At the end of the
year he left architecture to study painting. The next

INTRODUCTION

year was spent in almost daily contact with Rossetti,
till in the autumn of 1857 he returned to Oxford,
where he stayed for the greater part of 1858. His
favourite reading at the time was Froissart and Mon-
strelet in Johnes' edition of Berners' translation.

The Defence of Guenevere. — It was during

the closing months of 1857 that some of the finest
poems in the book were written, under the combined
influence of all the feelings which could exalt a young
poet. ** King Arthur's Tomb" was first read on October
30, 1857, and the "Praise of my Lady " dates from
the same period. The Froissart group were written a
little later. Early in 1858 the volume appeared, a
little octavo of about 250 pages, which seemed to
drop still-born from the press. Some few copies were
disposed of, but the edition was not exhausted till
thirteen years later. But if no popular appreciation
welcomed it, yet that select circle of judges whose
voices are the ultimate court of final appeal in litera-
ture felt that the new-comer had made good his claim
to be heard — his work bore the hall-mark of beauty
and romance. Swinburne some years later thus
summed up the criticism it met with ; " Here and
there it met with eager recognition and earnest ap-
plause ; nowhere, if I err not, with just praise or
xxxix

INTRODUCTION

blame worth heeding. It seems to have been now
lauded and now decried as the result and expression of
a school rather than a man, of a theory or tradition
rather than a poet or student. Those who so judged
were blind guides. Such things as were in this book
are taught and learnt in no school but that of instinct.
Upon no piece of work in the world was the impress
of native character ever more distinctly stamped, more
deeply branded." One phrase of an unfriendly critic
lives in the memory — " things seen in an atmosphere of
Brocken mist blended with incense smoke."

Pater, Swinburne, Watts. — Pater's essay in
the Westminster Review^ reprinted in his Studies,
is familiar to every student of modern literature. Its
justness is tempered by personal preferences, and it
presents Morris too much as one of a school. Swin-
burne's essay in the Fortnightly, as befits a fellow-
craftsman, goes to the root of the matter. He is
most attracted by the Arthurian poems, and in them
he finds the faults of inexperience, but the excellences
of genius. Guenevere he describes as a figure of
noble female passion, half senseless and half personal,
half mad and half sane. Of "King Arthur's Tomb "
he writes : " There is scarcely connection here, and
scarcely composition. There is hardly a trace of
xl

INTRODUCTION

narrative power or mechanical arrangement. There
is a perceptible want of tact and practice, which leaves
the poem in parts indecorous and chaotic. But where
among other and older poets of his time and country-
is one comparable for perception and experience of
tragic truth, of subtle and noble, terrible and piteous
things, where a touch of passion at once so broad
and so sure ? " Going on to compare the work with
Tennyson's later poems, he adds : " Little beyond
dexterity, a rare eloquence, and a laborious patience
of hand has been given the one, or denied the other."
Mr. Morris's muse may be roughly clad, " but it is
better to want clothes than limbs."

Influence of other Poets. — The direct influ-
ence of four poets may be readily traced in this
volume — Tennyson, Rossetti, and the two Brownings.
While it is difficult to say of any one poem in the
book, ** this is Tennyson," yet one feels that he made
it possible. For two years Tennyson's Poems had been
almost the daily companion of the circle of friends
at Oxford. " Galahad " was their text-book, and the
traces of that time are visible throughout the work,
though Morris's poems are fresher and less conscious
than Tennyson's. The influence of Rossetti appears
in the choice of subjects, e.g. "The Blue Closet," "The
xll

INTRODUCTION

Tune of Seven Towers," etc., and in a sort of intensity
of diction common to both, but beyond this there is
little in common ; the two minds were essentially
unlike. Some of the poems in the book were sug-
gested indeed by Rossetti's water colours. Our
frontispiece was the source of " King Arthur's
Tomb," and other poems had a similar origin.
The two Brownings were perhaps, as regards
poetic method, those who exercised most influence
upon him. At the end of 1855 Men and Women
had appeared, and much of Morris's volume might
have been printed as a supplement to it : " Shameful
Death," " The Judgment of God," and "Old Love "
are striking examples of this. Mrs. Browning's is an
influence less obvious, but at first, stronger. When
Morris began to write poetry she was at her best, and
her faults were precisely those to which he was most
lenient. We can trace her spirit in the title-poem of
the book, and, with her husband's, in others such as
'* The Haystack in the Floods." But with all this
Swinburne's criticism remains : " It needs no excep-
tional acuteness of ear or eye to see or hear that this
poet held of none, stole from none, clung to none, as
tenant, or as beggar, or as thief. Not yet a master,
he was assuredly not a pupil."
xlii

INTRODUCTION
The Sources of the Poems: Malory. —

The whole atmosphere of the volume is medieval,
some of them are definitely Arthurian, some are of
the age of Froissart — the end of the fourteenth
century, and some of an age of romance more in-
definite even than that of Arthur, w^hich for the
purposes of illustration might well be placed in the
early twelfth century, when the story took shape.
The Arthurian poems owe their being to Malory's
Morte d^ Arthur, a fifteenth-century compilation and
abridgment of the great cycle of the Graal. The
history of this legend is still very obscure. It seems
to have taken its rise from two independent sources,
the story of Arthur and Merlin, and the legend of
Joseph of Arimathea, the reputed founder of Glaston-
bury, who preserved the sacred vessel in which Jesus
Christ consecrated the Last Supper. The two
legends touched each other by the parallel between
the supernatural origin of Merlin, devil-born, with
the Incarnation, and a third story naturally grew
up to complete the cycle, that of the Redeemer of
the Graal, Perceval, or Parsifal. Gauwaine, King
Arthur's nephew, represented the adventurous knight
of romance in this version. But this first cycle seems
not to have attained wide popularity till, early in the
xiiii

INTRODUCTION

reign of Henry II., Walter Map invented the story
of Lancelot and wrote his adventures, making him
the lover of the queen and the very perfect knight —
a manly and more constant Tristan. No piece of
literary work has had greater success. Within a few
years the most famous singer of the time was able to
take an incident of the story, and in a poem which
depends for its success on the fact that the audience
knew of Lancelot's identity while the characters of
the story were ignorant of it, wrote thousands of lines
without mentioning his name, till at the critical point
the prowess of the hero brings the crowd to the cry
of " It is Lancelot ! " The story penetrated even
to Germany, where some distorted memory of it
mingled with Eastern folk-tales in the Lanzelet of
Ulrich.

The vogue of Lancelot led to the formation of
a new version of the cycle. Merlin disappears from
the tale, and the story of Vivien (to use Tennyson's
name for her) was incorporated in it to account
for him. Lancelot's valour seemed to point him out
as the knight of the Graal, but his sins disqualified him
for its service, hence the birth of Galahad, the pre-
destined Graal-knight, whose mother was a daughter
of the Guardian of the Graal. Later on, the legends of
xliv

INTRODUCTION

Percival and Galahad were worked over, and two
additional romances, the Morte Artur and the Queste
Sangreal, were written. The cycle was now, at the
end of the thirteenth century, complete. Malory's
work is founded on it, and on later English versions
and incidental poems. He died in 1471, and his
work was printed by Caxton in 1485. William
Morris at the time of writing these poems often con-
sciously and deliberately set on one side Malory. The
bringing of Guenevere as a bride by Lancelot to Arthur
is his invention, the degradation of the character of
Gauwaine is founded on late ballad poetry, Gauwaine
appearing in Malory as a defender of Lancelot and
the Queen and a counsellor of patience, while other
Arthurian characters lend their names to the poems
without entering deeply into them. Galahad owes
nearly as much to Tennyson as to Malory, but with
a strongly-marked personal note, accentuated in
" The Chapel in Lyoness."

Froissart. — Jean Froissart was born at Valen-
ciennes in 1338 and died about 14 10. His first
appearance in public was to serve as a clerk to Queen
Philippa in London, where he was one of the court
poets. He was already a student of history, learning
here and there how events were shaped from the
xlv

INTRODUCTION

mouths of persons who had taken part in the deeds
of their time. At Berkeley he questions an " ancien
^cuyer" on the death of Edward II., in Scotland
he learns of the Bruce, he studies in Brittany the
true story of the wars there. On the death of
Philippa he returned to Hainault, where he remained
for some ten or a dozen years writing the first book
of his History, and arriving at the preferment of
Canon of Chimay. A second edition of this book
was written later under French influence, embodying
the stories of the prisoners at London with King
John. Before 1388 his second book was written,
and then he set out to learn from eye-witnesses the
history of the war in the south of France. Every
one he met furnished him with anecdotes, whether
it be " Messire Espaing de Lyon," who for eight
days together loaded him with stories which he wrote
down in the evening, or Gaston Phoebus, or the
English adventurers at his inn, who told him of the
life of the freebooters. At last, after visiting Avignon,
Lyon, and Paris, he returned to Chimay, having
spent on his travels the equivalent of ^^2000, and
finishing his third book, began the fourth (to which
he never put the concluding strokes), while again
recasting the first book.

xlvi

INTRODUCTION

Froissart's faults lie on the surface — he describes
his period but does not understand it — but they can
never destroy the pleasure felt by any reader of
imagination when turning his pages. The impres-
sion of literal truth, even to the words used, pro-
duced by his narrative, testifies to a high degree
of art, worthy to be named in a breath with that
of Shakespeare, — witness Chandos provoking the
Breton, or Aymerigot Marches regretting the good
old times, — while his matter has for us the attraction
of an English epic — the epic of Cre9y and Poitiers.
Morris's opinion of Froissart, written in later years,
may be read in our notes (p. 247).

No writer has ever realised so completely as
William Morris in this volume the ideal of chivalry
which lay unconsciously in Froissart's mind when
writing. The courage, the fidelity, the courtesy,
are all there, and if one hesitates to put the Frois-
sartian poems first in one's estimation, it is because
of the doubt whether their special excellence may
not be due to an element of analysis foreign to the
medieval mind. Yet this applies only to the longer
poems, " Sir Peter Harpdon," " Geffray Teste Noire,"
etc.; the shorter ones are simple and strong, lacking
no quality of the old ballad poetry,
xlvii

INTRODUCTION

Poems of Fantasy. — It would be useless to
seek for origins to the poems which make up this
third division of the book. A phrase, a situation,
a picture, a verse of a song germinated in the poet's
mind, and we have the result. The discovery of
a more or less exact analogue in the world's literature
would carry us no further in our enjoyment of such
a masterpiece as " The Wind," " Spell-bound," or
"Golden Wings." Some of them show traces of
a reading of Grimm, but in the greater part we
recognise only the rare power of invention of a true
poet — a maker. " The Blue Closet " was suggested
by a water-colour of Rossetti's, as well as " King
Arthur's Tomb."

Later Poems. — The next poem of William
Morris was marked by a strange contrast of method
and treatment, " The Life and Death of Jason "
(1867). The poet had abandoned all the character-
istics of his earlier volume and had taken a longer
and deeper plunge into medieval life and literature.
Unlike the " Guenevere " volume, its success was
immediate and permanent. It was followed by
"The Earthly Paradise" (1868-72), and "Love
is Enough," a most lovely and delicate poem.
"Sigurd the Volsung" (1876), the epic of the
xlviii

INTRODUCTION

North, was his own favourite among his poems. His
last volume of verse, "Poems by the Way" (1891),
contains some very noble poems, returning, in a
certain sense, to the spirit of his first volume, but
with marked difference.

Prose Works. — Apart from his translations
and some juvenile work, his first original work in
prose was " The Dream of John Ball " (1886). One
knows not whether the magically effective scheme
of this book, or its beautiful simplicity of treatment
and language are the more to be admired. The
scene in the church when the scholar of the nineteenth
century tells an intelligible tale to the priest of the
fourteenth is quite incomparable to anything of the
kind ever written. A later Utopia, " News from
Nowhere" (1891), the making of bricks for a new
world with nineteenth-century midden, charms even
the unconvinced. A series of prose romances dealing
with Mr. Morris's favourite world of Northern
antiquity follow, from ** The House of the Wolfings "
(1889) to "The Sundering Flood" (1896), of which
the finest are "The Roots of the Mountains" (1890)
and "The Well at the World's End" (1895).
They are quite unlike anything that has ever been
written, "a form of literary art so new that new
xiix

INTRODUCTION

canons of criticism have to be formulated and applied
to it." Their style has been bitterly attacked, "a
theatrical prose which seems to derive from nowhere,"
or from "Wardour Street." But it was deliberate
and well-chosen. His first necessity was to create his
atmosphere, to prepare the mind for strange happen-
ings and unaccustomed surroundings, and for this the
use of archaic words and old-world phrases was the
readiest means.

His life, 1861-96. — The main facts of William
Morris's life lie on the surface. In 1861 the
famous firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Co.
came into existence, which has revolutionised the
whole domestic decoration of England. Philip
Webb, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, and
Rossetti were the other partners. In connection
with this firm, and when it dissolved in 1875, with
its successor, his life-work was done. His visits to
Iceland (1871 and 1873) lie at the root of much
of his later literary work. In 1877 he founded
the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings,
still happily vigorous, and in 1883 he joined the
Socialist movement. The foundation of the
Kelmscott Press in 1891 was the last work of his
life, and when he died in October 1896, its most
1

INTRODUCTION

magnificent production, The Kelmscott Chaucer, had
just appeared.

The Progress of the Romantic Revival—

Ossian ..... 1762

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry . 1765

Chatter ton (Rowley Poems) . . ^777

Lyrical Ballads . . . . 1798

Scott : Lay of the Last Mi^istrel . 1805

Tennyson : Poems . . . 1842

Carlyle : Past and Present . . 1843

Rossetti : Germ . . . . 1850

Knskin : Stones of Fenice . . 185 1-3

Defence of Guenevere . . . 1858

The life of William Morris has been written by
Mr. Mackail, 2 vols., 1899, and the history of the
Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century has
been traced at length by Mr. Watts-Dunton in
Chambers' Encyclopedia of English Literature^ Vol. III.

TO MY FRIEND DANTE
GABRIEL ROSSETTI PAINTER
I DEDICATE THESE POEMS

liii

rUE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE .

KING ARTHURS TOMB

SIR GALAHADy A CHRISTMAS MTSTERT

THE CHAPEL IN LTONESS ,

SIR PETER HARPDON'S END

RAPUNZEL ....

CONCERNING GEFFRAT TESTE NOIRE

A GOOD KNIGHT IN PRISON.

OLD LOVE ....

THE GILLIFLOWER OF GOLD

SHAMEFUL DEATH.

THE EVE OF CRECT . . ^

THE JUDGMENT OF GOD .

THE LITTLE TOWER .

THE SAILING OF THE SWORD .

SPELL-BOUND ....

THE WIND ....

THE BLUE CLOSET

Iv

19

41

55

63

109

133

H3

150

154
157
160
163
167
171
175
180
186

PAGE

THE TUNE OF SEVEN TOfTERS . . .191

GOLDEN PTINGS , . . . .194

THE HATSTACK IN THE FLOODS . . 206

TJVO RED ROSES ACROSS THE MOON . 214

WELL AND RIVER . . . . .216

RIDING TOGETHER . . . . 221

FATHER JOHN'S fVAR-SONG . . .224

SIR GILES' WAR-SONG. . . . 227

NEAR AVALON 229

PRAISE OF MT LADT
SUMMER DAWN .

NOTES

230
235

IN PRISON ..... 236

239

INDEX 253

Ivi

THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE

THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE

BUT, knowing now that they would have her speak,
She threw her wet hair backward from her brow
Her hand close to her mouth touching her cheek,

As though she had had there a shameful blow,
And feeling it shameful to feel ought but shame
All through her heart, yet felt her cheek burned so.

She must a little touch it ; like one lame

She walked away from Gauwaine, with her head

Still lifted up ; and on her cheek of flame

The tears dried quick ; she stopped at last and said :
" O knights and lords, it seems but little skill
To talk of well-known things past now and dead.

" God wot I ought to say, I have done ill,

And pray you all forgiveness heartily !

Because you must be right — such great lords — still

" Listen, suppose your tilne were come to die,
And you were quite alone and very weak ;
Yea, laid a dying while very mightily

" The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak
Of river through your broad lands running well :
Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak

" * One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell.
Now choose one cloth for ever, which they be,
I will not tell you, you must somehow tell

" * Of your own strength and mightiness ; here, see ! '
Yea, yea, my lord, and you to ope your eyes.
At foot of your familiar bed to see

** A great God's angel standing, with such dyes.
Not known on earth, on his great wings, and hands.
Held out two ways, light from the inner skies

" Showing him well, and making his commands
Seem to be God's commands, moreover, too.
Holding within his hands the cloths on wands ;

" And one of these strange choosing cloths was blue.
Wavy and long, and one cut short and red ;
No man could tell the better of the two.

" After a shivering half-hour you said,

* God help ! heaven's colour, the blue ; ' and he said, * hell.'
Perhaps you then would roll upon your bed,

" And cry to all good men that loved you well,

* Ah Christ ! if only I had known, known, known ; '
Launcelot went away, then I could tell,

" Like wisest man how all things would be, moan.
And roll and hurt myself, and long to die.
And yet fear much to die for what was sown.

" Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie.
Whatever may have happened through these years,
God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie."

Her voice was low at first, being full of tears.
But as it cleared, it grew full loud and shrill.
Growing a windy shriek in all men's ears,

A ringing in their startled brains, until

She said that Gauwaine lied, then her voice sunk,

And her great eyes began again to fill.

Though still she stood right up, and never shrunk,
But spoke on bravely, glorious lady fair !
Whatever tears her full lips may have drunk,
3

She stood, and seemed to think, and wrung her hair,
Spoke out at last with no more trace of shame.
With passionate twisting of her body there :

" It chanced upon a day that Launcelot came
To dwell at Arthur's court : at Christmas-time
This happened ; when the heralds sung his name,

" * Son of King Ban of Benwick,' seemed to chime
Along with all the bells that rang that day.
O'er the white roofs, with little change of rhyme.

** Christmas and whitened winter passed away,
And over me the April sunshine came.
Made very awful with black hail-clouds, yea

" And in the Summer I grew white with flame.
And bowed my head down — Autumn, and the sick
Sure knowledge things would never be the same,

" However often Spring might be most thick
Of blossoms and buds, smote on me, and I grew
Careless of most things, let the clock tick, tick,

" To my unhappy pulse, that beat right through
My eager body ; while I laughed out loud.
And let my lips curl up at false or true,
4

" Seemed cold and shallow without any cloud.
Behold, my judges, then the cloths were brought :
While I was dizzied thus, old thoughts would crowd,

" Belonging to the time ere I was bought
By Arthur's great name and his little love.
Must I give up for ever then, I thought,

" That which I deemed would ever round me move
Glorifying all things ; for a little word.
Scarce ever meant at all, must I now prove

" Stone-cold for ever ? Pray you, does the Lord
Will that all folks should be quite happy and good?
I love God now a little, if this cord

" Were broken, once for all what striving could
Make me love anything in earth or heaven.
So day by day it grew, as if one should

" Slip slowly down some path worn smooth and even,

Down to a cool sea on a summer day ;

Yet still in slipping was there some small leaven

" Of stretched hands catching small stones by the way.
Until one surely reached the sea at last.
And felt strange new joy as the worn head lay
5

" Back, with the hair like sea- weed ; yea all past
Sweat of the forehead, dryness of the lips.
Washed utterly out by the dear waves o'ercast

" In the lone sea, far off from any ships !
Do I not know now of a day in Spring ?
No minute of that wild day ever slips

" From out my memory ; I hear thrushes sing,
And wheresoever I may be, straightway
Thoughts of it all come up with most fresh sting ;

" I was half mad with beauty on that day.

And went without my ladies all alone.

In a quiet garden walled round every way ;

" I was right joyful of that wall of stone.
That shut the flowers and trees up with the sky.
And trebled all the beauty : to the bone,

" Yea right through to my heart, grown very shy
With weary thoughts, it pierced, and made me glad ;
Exceedingly glad, and I knew verily,

" A little thing just then had made me mad ;
I dared not think, as I was wont to do,
Sometimes, upon my beauty ; if I had
6

** Held out my long hand up against the blue,
And, looking on the tenderly darken'd fingers.
Thought that by rights one ought to see quite through,

" There, see you, where the soft still light yet lingers.
Round by the edges ; what should I have done.
If this had joined with yellow spotted singers,

" And startling green drawn upward by the sun ?
But shouting, loosed out, see now ! all my hair,
And trancedly stood watching the west wind run

" With faintest half-heard breathing sound — why there
I lose my head e'en now in doing this ;
But shortly listen — In that garden fair

" Came Launcelot walking ; this is true, the kiss
Wherewith we kissed in meeting that spring day,
I scarce dare talk of the remember'd bliss,

" When both our mouths went wandering in one way,
And aching sorely, met among the leaves ;
Our hands being left behind strained far away.

" Never within a yard of my bright sleeves
Had Launcelot come before — and now, so nigh !
After that day why is it Guenevere grieves ?
7

" Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, He,
Whatever happened on through all those years,
God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie.

" Being such a lady could I weep these tears
If this were true ? A great queen such as I
Having sinn'd this way, straight her conscience sears ;

" And afterwards she liveth hatefully.
Slaying and poisoning, certes never weeps, —
Gauwaine, be friends now, speak me lovingly.

" Do I not see how God's dear pity creeps

All through your frame, and trembles in your mouth ?

Remember in what grave your mother sleeps,

" Buried in some place far down in the south.
Men are forgetting as I speak to you ;
By her head sever'd in that awful drouth

** Of pity that drew Agravaine's fell blow,
I pray your pity ! let me not scream out
For ever after, when the shrill winds blow

" Through half your castle-locks ! let me not shout
For ever after in the winter night
When you ride out alone ! in battle-rout
8

** Let not my rusting tears make your sword light !
Ah ! God of mercy how he turns away !
So, ever must I dress me to the fight,

" So — let God's justice work ! Gauwaine, I say,
See me hew down your proofs : yea all men know
Even as you said how Mellyagraunce one day,

"One bitter day in la Fausse Garde, for so

All good knights held it after, saw —

Yea, sirs, by cursed unknightly outrage ; though

" You, Gauwaine, held his word without a flaw.
This Mellyagraunce saw blood upon my bed —
Whose blood then pray you ? is there any law

" To make a queen say why some spots of red

Lie on her coverlet ? or will you say,

* Your hands are white, lady, as when you wed,

"* Where did you bleed?' and must I stammer out — 'Nay,

I blush indeed, fair lord, only to rend

My sleeve up to my shoulder, where there lay

" ' A knife-point last night : ' so must I defend
The honour of the lady Guenevere ?
Not so, fair lords, even if the world should end
9

" This very day, and you were judges here
Instead of God. Did you see Mellyagraunce
When Launcelot stood by him ? what white fear

" Curdled his blood, and how his teeth did dance,
His side sink in ? as my knight cried and said,
* Slayer of unarm'd men, here is a chance !

" * Setter of traps, I pray you guard your head,
By God I am so glad to fight with you.
Stripper of ladies, that my hand feels lead

" * For driving weight ; hurrah now ! draw and do.
For all my wounds are moving in my beast,
And I am getting mad with waiting so.'

" He struck his hands together o'er the beast.
Who fell down fiat, and grovell'd at his feet.
And groan'd at being slain so young — ' at least.'

" My knight said, * Rise you, sir, who are so fieet
At catching ladies, half-arm'd will I fight.
My left side all uncovered ! ' then I weet,

" Up sprang Sir Mellyagraunce with great delight
Upon his knave's face ; not until just then
Did I quite hate him, as I saw my knight

" Along the lists look to my stake and pen
With such a joyous smile, it made me sigh
From agony beneath my waist- chain, when

" The fight began, and to me they drew nigh ;
Ever Sir Launcelot kept him on the right,
And traversed warily, and ever high

" And fast leapt caitiff's sword, until my knight
Sudden threw up his sword to his left hand,
Caught it, and swung it ; that was all the fight.

** Except a spout of blood on the hot land ;

For it was hottest summer ; and I know

I wonder'd how the fire, while I should stand,

" And burn, against the heat, would quiver so.
Yards above my head ; thus these matters went ;
Which things were only warnings of the woe

" That fell on me. Yet Mellyagraunce was shent.
For Mellyagraunce had fought against the Lord ;
Therefore, my lords, take heed lest you be blent

" With all this wickedness ; say no rash word
Against me, being so beautiful ; my eyes.
Wept all away to grey, may bring some sword

" To drown you in your blood ; see my breast rise,
Like waves of purple sea, as here I stand ;
And how my arms are moved in wonderful wise,

" Yea also at my full heart's strong command.
See through my long throat how the words go up
In ripples to my mouth ; how in my hand

" The shadow lies like wine within a cup
Of marvellously coloured gold ; yea now
This little wind is rising, look you up,

" And wonder how the light is falling so
Within my moving tresses : will you dare.
When you have looked a little on my brow,

" To say this thing is vile ? or will you care
For any plausible lies of cunning woof.
When you can see my face with no lie there

" For ever ? am I not a gracious proof —

* But in your chamber Launcelot was found ' —
Is there a good knight then would stand aloof,

" When a queen says with gentle queenly sound :

* O true as steel come now and talk with me,
I love to see your step upon the ground

** * Unwavering, also well I love to see

That gracious smile light up your face, and hear

Your wonderful words, that all mean verily

" * The thing they seem to mean : good friend, so dear

To me in everything, come here to-night.

Or else the hours will pass most dull and drear ;

** * If you come not, I fear this time I might
Get thinking over much of times gone by,
When I was young, and green hope was in sight ;

** * For no man cares now to know why I sigh ;
And no man comes to sing me pleasant songs,
Nor any brings me the sweet flowers that lie

" * So thick in the gardens ; therefore one so longs
To see you, Launcelot ; that we may be
Like children once again, free from all wrongs

" * Just for one night.' Did he not come to me ?
What thing could keep true Launcelot away
If I said * come ' ? there was one less than three

" In my quiet room that night, and we were gay ;
Till sudden I rose up, weak, pale, and sick.
Because a bawling broke our dream up, yea
13

" I looked at Launcelot's face and could not speak,
For he looked helpless too, for a little while ;
Then I remember how I tried to shriek,

" And could not, but fell down ; from tile to tile
The stones they threw up rattled o'er my head.
And made me dizzier ; till within a while

" My maids were all about me, and my head
On Launcelot's breast was being soothed away
From its white chattering, until Launcelot said —

" By God ! I will not tell you more to-day.
Judge any way you will — what matters it ?
You know quite well the story of that fray,

" How Launcelot stilFd their bawling, the mad fit

That caught up Gauwaine — all, all, verily.

But just that which would save me ; these things flit.

** Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie.
Whatever may have happened these long years,
God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie !

" All I have said is truth, by Christ's dear tears."
She would not speak another word, but stood
Turn'd sideways ; listening, like a man who hears
M

His brother's trumpet sounding through the wood

Of his foes' lances. She lean'd eagerly,

And gave a slight spring sometimes, as she could

At last hear something really ; joyfully

Her cheek grew crimson, as the headlong speed

Of the roan charger drew all men to see,

The knight who came was Launcelot at good need.

15

KING ARTHUR'S TOMB

17

KING ARTHUR^S TOMB

HOT August noon — already on that day
Since sunrise through the Wiltshire downs, most
sad
Of mouth and eye, he had gone leagues of way ;
Ay and by night, till whether good or bad

He was, he knew not, though he knew perchance
That he was Launcelot, the bravest knight

Of all who since the world was, have borne lance,
Or swung their swords in wrong cause or in right.

Nay, he knew nothing now, except that where

The Glastonbury gilded towers shine,
A lady dwelt, whose name was Guenevere ;

This he knew also ; that some fingers twine.

Not only in a man's hair, even his heart,

(Making him good or bad I mean,) but in his life,
19

kies, earth, men's looks and deeds, all that has part.
Not being ourselves, in that half-sleep, half-strife,

( Strange sleep, strange strife,) that men call living ; so
Was Launcelot most glad when the moon rose.

Because it brought new memories of her — " Lo,
Between the trees a large moon, the wind lows

" Not loud, but as a cow begins to low.

Wishing for strength to make the herdsman hear :

The ripe corn gathereth dew ; yea, long ago.
In the old garden life, my Guenevere

" Loved to sit still among the flowers, till night
Had quite come on, hair loosen'd, for she said.

Smiling like heaven, that its fairness might
Draw up the wind sooner to cool her head.

" Now while I ride how quick the moon gets small,

As it did then — I tell myself a tale
That will not last beyond the whitewashed wall.

Thoughts of some joust must help me through the vale,

" Keep this till after — How Sir Gareth ran

A good course that day under my Queen's eyes.

And how she sway'd laughing at Dinadan —
No — back again, the other thoughts will rise.

" And yet I think so fast 'twill end right soon —

Verily then I think, that Guenevere,
Made sad by dew and wind, and tree-barred moon,

Did love me more than ever, was more dear

** To me than ever, she would let me lie

And kiss her feet, or, if I sat behind,
Would drop her hand and arm most tenderly.

And touch my mouth. And she would let me wind

" Her hair around my neck, so that it fell
Upon my red robe, strange in the twilight

With many unnamed colours, till the bell
Of her mouth on my cheek sent a delight

** Through all my ways of being ; like the stroke
Wherewith God threw all men upon the face

When he took Enoch, and when Enoch woke
With a changed body in the happy place.

" Once, I remember, as I sat beside,

She turn'd a little, and laid back her head.

And slept upon my breast : I almost died

In those night-watches with my love and dread.

*' There lily-like she bow'd her head and slept.
And I breathed low, and did not dare to move.

But sat and quiver'd inwardly, thoughts crept,
And frightened me with pulses of my Love.

" The stars shone out above the doubtful green
Of her boddice, in the green sky overhead ;

Pale in the green sky were the stars I ween.
Because the moon shone like a star she shed

" When she dwelt up in heaven a while ago.

And ruled all things but God : the night went on.

The wind grew cold, and the white moon grew low.
One hand had fallen down, and now lay on

" My cold stiff palm ; there were no colours then

For near an hour, and I fell asleep
In spite of all my striving, even when

I held her whose name-letters make me leap.

** I did not sleep long, feeling that in sleep
I did some loved one wrong, so that the sun

Had only just arisen from the deep

Still land of colours, when before me one

" Stood whom I knew, but scarcely dared to touch,
She seemed to have changed so in the night ;

Moreover she held scarlet lilies, such

As Maiden Margaret bears upon the light

"Of the great church walls, natheless did I walk
Through the fresh wet woods, and the wheat that morn,

Touching her hair and hand and mouth, and talk
Of love we held, nigh hid among the corn.

" Back to the palace, ere the sun grew high,
We went, and in a cool green room all day

I gazed upon the arras giddily,

Where the wind set the silken kings a-sway.

" I could not hold her hand, or see her face ;

For which may God forgive me ! but I think.
Howsoever, that she was not in that place."

These memories Launcelot was quick to drink ;

And when these fell, some paces past the wall,
There rose yet others, but they wearied more,

And tasted not so sweet ; they did not fall

So soon, but vaguely wrenched his strained heart sore

In shadowy slipping from his grasp ; these gone,
A longing followed ; if he might but touch

That Guenevere at once ! Still night, the lone
Grey horse's head before him vex'd him much,

In steady nodding over the grey road —

Still night, and night, and night, and emptied heart
^3.

Of any stories ; what a dismal load

Time grew at last, yea, when the night did part,

And let the sun flame over all, still there

The horse's grey ears turn'd this way and that,

And still he watch'd them twitching in the glare
Of the morning sun, behind them still he sat,

Quite wearied out with all the wretched night,

Until about the dustiest of the day.
On the last down's brow he drew his rein in sight

Of the Glastonbury roofs that choke the way.

And he was now quite giddy as before.

When she slept by him, tired out and her hair

Was mingled with the rushes on the floor.
And he, being tired too, was scarce aware

Of her presence ; yet as he sat and gazed,
A shiver ran throughout him, and his breath

Came slower, he seem'd suddenly amazed.

As though he had not heard of Arthur's death.

This for a moment only, presently

He rode on giddy still, until he reach'd

A place of apple-trees, by the thorn-tree

Wherefrom St. Joseph in the days past preached.

24

Dazed there he laid his head upon a tomb,
Not knowing it was Arthur's, at which sight

One of her maidens told her, " he is come,"
And she went forth to meet him ; yet a blight

Had settled on her, all her robes were black.
With a long white veil only ; she went slow,

As one walks to be slain, her eyes did lack
Half her old glory, yea, alas ! the glow

Had left her face and hands ; this was because
As she lay last night on her purple bed.

Wishing for morning, grudging every pause

Of the palace clocks, until that Launcelot's head

Should lie on her breast, with all her golden hair
Each side — when suddenly the thing grew drear.

In morning twilight, when the grey downs bare
Grew into lumps of sin to Guenevere.

At first she said no word, but lay quite still.
Only her mouth was open, and her eyes

Gazed wretchedly about from hill to hill ;

As though she asked, not with so much surprise

As tired disgust, what made them stand up there
So cold and grey. After, a spasm took
25

Her face, and all her frame, she caught her hair,
All her hair, in both hands, terribly she shook.

And rose till she was sitting in the bed.

Set her teeth hard, and shut her eyes and seem'd

As though she would have torn it from her head,
Natheless she dropp'd it, lay down, as she deem'd

It mattered not whatever she might do —
O Lord Christ ! pity on her ghastly face !

Those dismal hours while the cloudless blue
Drew the sun higher — He did give her grace ;

Because at last she rose up from her bed.
And put her raiment on, and knelt before

The blessed rood, and with her dry lips said.
Muttering the words against the marble floor :

"Unless you pardon, v/hat shall I do, Lord,
But go to hell ? and there see day by day

Foul deed on deed, hear foulest word on word,
For ever and ever, such as on the way

" To Camelot I heard once from a churl,
That curled me up upon my jennet's neck

With bitter shame ; how then. Lord, should I curl
For ages and for ages ? dost Thou reck
z6

" That I am beautiful, Lord, even as You
And Your dear Mother ? why did I forget

You were so beautiful, and good, and true,
That You loved me so, Guenevere ? O yet

" If even I go hell, I cannot choose

But love You, Christ, yea, though I cannot keep
From loving Launcelot ; O Christ ! must I lose

My own heart's love ? see, though I cannot weep,

" Yet am I very sorry for my sin ;

Moreover, Christ, I cannot bear that hell,
I am most fain to love You, and to win

A place in heaven some time — I cannot tell —

" Speak to me, Christ ! I kiss, kiss, kiss Your feet ;

Ah ! now I weep ! " — The maid said, "By the tomb
He waiteth for you, lady," coming fleet.

Not knowing what woe filled up all the room.

So Guenevere rose and went to meet him there.

He did not hear her coming, as he lay
On Arthur's head, till some of her long hair

Brush'd on the new-cut stone — " Well done ! to pray

" For Arthur, my dear lord, the greatest king
That ever lived." " Guenevere ! Guenevere !
»7

Do you not know me, are you gone mad ? fling
Your arms and hair about me, lest I fear

'* You are not Guenevere, but some other thing."
** Pray you forgive me, fair lord Launcelot !

I am not mad, but I am sick ; they cling,
God's curses, unto such as I am ; not

"Ever again shall we twine arms and lips."
" Yea, she is mad : Thy heavy law, O Lord,

Is very tight about her now, and grips
Her poor heart, so that no right word

" Can reach her mouth ; so. Lord, forgive her now.
That she not knowing what she does, being mad.

Kills me in this way — Guenevere, bend low

And kiss me once ! for God's love kiss me ! sad

*< Though your face is, you look much kinder now ;

Yea once, once for the last time kiss me, lest I die."
" Christ ! my hot lips are very near his brow,

Help me to save his soul ! — Yea, verily,

"Across my husband's head, fair Launcelot !

Fair serpent mark'd with V upon the head !
This thing we did while yet he was alive.

Why not, O twisting knight, now he is dead ?
28

" Yea, shake ! shake now and shiver ! if you can

Remember anything for agony,
Pray you remember how when the wind ran

One cool spring evening through fair aspen-tree,

" And elm and oak about the palace there,
The king came back from battle, and I stood

To meet him, with my ladies, on the stair,

My face made beautiful with my young blood."

"Will she lie now. Lord God ? " " Remember too,
Wrung heart, how first before the knights there came

A royal bier, hung round with green and blue.
About shone great tapers with sick flame.

"And thereupon Lucius, the Emperor,

Lay royal-robed, but stone-cold now and dead.

Not able to hold sword or sceptre more.

But not quite grim ; because his cloven head

" Bore no marks now of Launcelot's bitter sword,
Being by embalmers deftly solder'd up ;

So still it seem'd the face of a great lord.
Being mended as a craftsman mends a cup.

** Also the heralds sung rejoicingly

To their long trumpets ; < Fallen under shield,

29

Here lieth Lucius, King of Italy,

Slain by Lord Launcelot in open field/

" Thereat the people shouted * Launcelot ! *

And through the spears I saw you drawing nigh.

You and Lord Arthur — nay, I saw you not,
But rather Arthur, God would not let die,

" I hoped, these many years, he should grow great,
And in his great arms still encircle me.

Kissing my face, half blinded with the heat
Of king's love for the queen I used to be.

" Launcelot, Launcelot, why did he take your hand.
When he had kissed me in his kingly way ?

Saying, * This is the knight whom all the land
Calls Arthur's banner, sword, and shield to-day ;

" * Cherish him, love.' Why did your long lips cleave
In such strange way unto my fingers then ?

So eagerly glad to kiss, so loath to leave

When you rose up ? Why among helmed men

*' Could I always tell you by your long strong arms.
And sway like an angel's in your saddle there ?

Why sicken'd I so often with alarms

Over the tilt-yard ? Why were you more fair

30

" Than aspens in the autumn at their best ?

Why did you fill all lands with your great fame,
So that Breuse even, as he rode, fear'd lest

At turning of the way your shield should flame ?

" Was it nought then, my agony and strife ?

When as day passed by day, year after year,
I found I could not live a righteous life ?

Didst ever think that queens held their truth dear ?

" O, but your lips say, * Yea, but she was cold
Sometimes, always uncertain as the spring ;

When I was sad she would be overbold.

Longing for kisses ; ' when war-bells did ring,

" The back-toll'd bells of noisy Camelot " —
" Now, Lord God, listen ! listen, Guenevere,

Though I am weak just now, I think there's not
A man who dares to say, * You hated her,

" * And left her moaning while you fought your fill
In the daisied meadows ; ' lo you her thin hand.

That on the carven stone can not keep still.
Because she loves me against God's command,

" Has often been quite wet with tear on tear.
Tears Launcelot keeps somewhere, surely not
31

In his own heart, perhaps in Heaven, where
He will not be these ages " — " Launcelot !

" Loud lips, wrung heart ! I say, when the bells rang,
The noisy back-toird bells of Camelot,

There were two spots on earth, the thrushes sang
In the lonely gardens where my love was not,

" Where I was almost weeping ; I dared not

Weep quite in those days, lest one maid should say.

In tittering whispers ; * Where is Launcelot

To wipe with some kerchief those tears away ? '

" Another answer sharply with brows knit.
And warning hand up, scarcely lower though,

' You speak too loud, see you, she heareth it.
This tigress fair has claws, as I well know,

" * As Launcelot knows too, the poor knight ! well-a-day !

Why met he not with Iseult from the West,
Or, better still, Iseult of Brittany ?

Perchance indeed quite ladyless were best.'

" Alas, my maids, you loved not overmuch
Queen Guenevere, uncertain as sunshine

In March ; forgive me ! for my sin being such.
About my whole life, all my deeds did twine,
3*

" Made me quite wicked ; as I found out then,
I think ; in the lonely palace, where each morn

We went, my maids and I, to say prayers when
They sang mass in the chapel on the lawn.

"And every morn I scarce could pray at all,
For Launcelot's red-golden hair would play.

Instead of sunlight, on the painted wall,

Mingled with dreams of what the priest did say ;

** Grim curses out of Peter and of Paul ;

Judging of strange sins in Leviticus ;
Another sort of writing on the wall.

Scored deep across the painted heads of us.

<* Christ sitting with the woman at the well,

And Mary Magdalen repenting there,
Her dimmed eyes scorch'd and red at sight of hell

So hardly scaped, no gold light on her hair.

" And if the priest said anything that seem'd
To touch upon the sin they said we did, —

(This in their teeth) they look'd as if they deem'd
That I was spying what thoughts might be hid

*' Under green-cover'd bosoms, heaving quick

Beneath quick thoughts ; while they grew red with
shame,

33 ^

And gazed down at their feet — while I felt sick,
And almost shriek'd if one should call my name.

" The thrushes sang in the lone garden there —

But where you were the birds were scared I trow —

Clanging of arms about pavilions fair,

Mixed with the knights' laughs; there, as I well know,

" Rode Launcelot, the king of all the band.
And scowling Gauwaine, like the night in day.

And handsome Gareth, with his great white hand
Curl'd round the helm-crest, ere he join'd the fray ;

** And merry Dinadan with sharp dark face.
All true knights loved to see ; and in the fight

Great Tristram, and though helmed you could trace
In all his bearing the frank noble knight ;

" And by him Palomydes, helmet off.
He fought, his face brush'd by his hair.

Red heavy swinging hair ; he fear'd a scoff

So overmuch, though what true knight would dare

" To mock that face, fretted with useless care.

And bitter useless striving after love ?
O Palomydes, with much honour bear

Beast Glatysaunt upon your shield, above
34

" Your helm that hides the swinging of your hair,
And think of Iseult, as your sword drives through

Much mail and plate — O God, let me be there
A little time, as I was long ago !

" Because stout Gareth lets his spear fall low,
Gauwaine, and Launcelot, and Dinadan

Are helm'd and waiting ; let the trumpets go !
Bend over, ladies, to see all you can !

"Clench teeth, dames, yea, clasp hands, for Gareth's
spear

Throws Kay from out his saddle, like a stone
From a castle- window when the foe draws near —

< Iseult ! ' — Sir Dinadan rolleth overthrown.

" * Iseult ' — again — the pieces of each spear
Fly fathoms up, and both the great steeds reel ;

' Tristram for Iseult ! ' < Iseult ' and * Guenevere,'
The ladies' names bite verily like steel.

" They bite — bite me. Lord God ! — I shall go mad,
Or else die kissing him, he is so pale.

He thinks me mad already, O bad ! bad !
Let me lie down a little while and wail."

1.^ " No longer so, rise up, I pray you, love,
^m And slay me really, then we shall be heaPd,
I

Perchance, in the aftertime by God above."
" Banner of Arthur — with black-bended shield

" Sinister-wise across the fair gold ground !

Here let me tell you what a knight you are,
O sword and shield of Arthur ! you are found

A crooked sword, I think, that leaves a scar

" On the bearer's arm, so be he thinks it straight,
Twisted Malay's crease beautiful blue-grey,

Poison'd with sweet fruit ; as he found too late.
My husband Arthur, on some bitter day !

** O sickle cutting hemlock the day long !

That the husbandman across his shoulder hangs,
And, going homeward about evensong.

Dies the next morning, struck through by the fangs !

" Banner, and sword, and shield, you dare not pray to die.
Lest you meet Arthur in the other world,

And, knowing who you are, he pass you by.

Taking short turns that he may watch you curl'd.

" Body and face and limbs in agony.

Lest he weep presently and go away.
Saying, < I loved him once,' with a sad sigh —

Now I have slain him. Lord, let me go too, I pray.

[Launcelot falls.
36

" Alas ! alas ! I know not what to do,

If I run fast it is perchance that I
May fall and stun myself, much better so,

Never, never again ! not even when I die."

Launcelot, on awaking.

" I stretch'd my hands towards her and fell down.
How long I lay in swoon I cannot tell :

My head and hands were bleeding from the stone,
When I rose up, also I heard a bell."

SIR GALAHAD, A CHRISTMAS
MYSTERY

S9

SIR GALAHAD, A CHRISTMAS
MYSTERY

IT is the longest night in all the year,
Near on the day when the Lord Christ was born ;
Six hours ago I came and sat down here,
And ponder'd sadly, wearied and forlorn.

The winter wind that pass'd the chapel-door.
Sang out a moody tune, that went right well

With mine own thoughts : I look'd down on the floor.
Between my feet, until I heard a bell

Sound a long way off through the forest deep,

And toll on steadily ; a drowsiness
Came on me, so that I fell half asleep.

As I sat there not moving : less and less

I saw the melted snow that hung in beads
Upon my steel-shoes ; less and less I saw
41

Between the tiles the bunches of small weeds :
Heartless and stupid, with no touch of awe

Upon me, half- shut eyes upon the ground,
I thought ; O ! Galahad, the days go by.

Stop and cast up now that which you have found,
So sorely you have wrought and painfully.

Night after night your horse treads down alone
The sere damp fern, night after night you sit

Holding the bridle like a man of stone.

Dismal, unfriended, what thing comes of it.

And what if Palomydes also ride.

And over many a mountain and bare heath

Follow the questing beast with none beside ?
Is he not able still to hold his breath

With thoughts of Iseult ? doth he not grow pale
With weary striving, to seem best of all

To her, " as she is best," he saith ? to fail
Is nothing to him, he can never fall.

For unto such a man love-sorrow is

So dear a thing unto his constant heart,

That even if he never win one kiss,

Or touch from Iseult, it will never part.

42

And he will never know her to be worse

Than in his happiest dreams he thinks she is :

Good knight, and faithful, you have 'scaped the curse
In wonderful-wise ; you have great store of bliss.

Yea, what if Father Launcelot ride out,

Can he not think of Guenevere's arms, round.

Warm and lithe, about his neck, and shout

Till all the place grows joyful with the sound ?

And when he lists can often see her face.

And think, " Next month I kiss you, or next week.

And still you think of me : " therefore the place
Grows very pleasant, whatsoever he seek.

But me, who ride alone, some carle shall find
Dead in my arms in the half-melted snow,

When all unkindly with the shifting wind.
The thaw comes on at Candlemas : I know

Indeed that they will say : " This Galahad
If he had lived had been a right good knight ;

Ah ! poor chaste body ! " but they will be glad,
Not most alone, but all, when in their sight

That very evening in their scarlet sleeves

The gay-dress'd minstrels sing ; no maid will talk
43

Of sitting on my tomb, until the leaves,
Grown big upon the bushes of the walk,

East of the Palace-pleasaunce, make it hard
To see the minster therefrom : well-a-day !

Before the trees by autumn were well bared,
I saw a damozel with gentle play,

Within that very walk say last farewell
To her dear knight, just riding out to find

(Why should I choke to say it ?) the Sangreal,
And their last kisses sunk into my mind,

Yea, for she stood lean'd forward on his breast.
Rather, scarce stood ; the back of one dear hand.

That it might well be kiss'd, she held and press'd
Against his lips ; long time they stood there, fann'd

By gentle gusts of quiet frosty wind.

Till Mador de la porte a-going by.
And my own horsehoofs roused them ; they untwined,

And parted like a dream. In this way I,

With sleepy face bent to the chapel floor.

Kept musing half asleep, till suddenly
A sharp bell rang from close beside the door.

And I leapt up when something pass'd me by,
44

Shrill ringing going with it, still half blind

I staggerM after, a great sense of awe
At every step kept gathering on my mind.

Thereat I have no marvel, for I saw

One sitting on the altar as a throne.

Whose face no man could say he did not know.
And though the bell still rang, He sat alone.

With raiment half blood-red, half white as snow.

Right so I fell upon the floor and knelt,

Not as one kneels in church when mass is said.

But in a heap, quite nerveless, for I felt

The first time what a thing was perfect dread.

But mightily the gentle voice came down :
" Rise up, and look and listen, Galahad,

Good knight of God, for you will see no frown
Upon My face ; I come to make you glad.

"For that you say that you are all alone,
I will be with you always, and fear not

You are uncared for, though no maiden moan
Above your empty tomb ; for Launcelot,

" He in good time shall be My servant too.

Meantime, take note whose sword first made him
knight,

45

And who has loved him alway, yea, and who
Still trusts him alway, though in all men's sight,

" He is just what you know, O Galahad.

This love is happy even as you say.
But would you for a little time be glad,

To make Me sorry long day after day ?

" Her warm arms round his neck half throttle Me,
The hot love-tears burn deep like spots of lead.

Yea, and the years pass quick : right dismally
Will Launcelot at one time hang his head ;

" Yea, old and shrivelled he shall win My love.

Poor Palomydes fretting out his soul !
Not always is he able, son, to move

His love, and do it honour : needs must roll

" The proudest destrier sometimes in the dust.
And then 'tis weary work ; he strives beside

Seem better than he is, so that his trust
Is always on what chances may betide ;

" And so he wears away. My servant, too.

When all these things are gone, and wretchedly

He sits and longs to moan for Iseult, who
Is no care now to Palomydes : see,

46

*^ O good son Galahad, upon this day,

Now even, all these things are on your side,

But these you fight not for ; look up, I say.
And see how I can love you, for no pride

** Closes your eyes, no vain lust keeps them down.

See now you have Me always ; following
That holy vision, Galahad, go on.

Until at last you come to Me to sing

" In Heaven always, and to walk around

The garden where I am : " He ceased, my face

And wretched body fell upon the ground ;
And when I look'd again, the holy place

Was empty ; but right so the bell again
Came to the chapel-door, there entered

Two angels first, in white, without a stain.
And scarlet wings, then after them a bed

Four ladies bore, and set it down beneath
The very altar-step, and while for fear

I scarcely dared to move or draw my breath.
Those holy ladies gently came a-near.

And quite unarm'd me, saying : " Galahad,

Rest here awhile and sleep, and take no thought
47

Of any other thing than being glad ;

Hither the Sangreal will be shortly brought,

" Yet must you sleep the while it stayeth here."
Right so they went away, and I, being weary.

Slept long and dream'd of Heaven : the bell comes near,
I doubt it grows to morning. Miserere !

Enter Two Angels in white ^ with scarlet wings ; also
Four Ladies in gowns of red and green; also an
Angel^ hearing in his hands a surcoat of white^
with a red cross.

An Angel.

O servant of the high God, Galahad !

Rise and be arm'd, the Sangreal is gone forth
Through the great forest, and you must be had

Unto the sea that lieth on the north :

There shall you find the wondrous ship wherein
The spindles of King Solomon are laid.

And the sword that no man draweth without sin.
But if he be most pure : and there is stay'd.

Hard by. Sir Launcelot, whom you will meet
In some short space upon that ship : first, though,
48

Will come here presently that lady sweet,
Sister of Percival, whom you well know,

And with her Bors and Percival : stand now.
These ladies will to arm you.

First Lady, putting on the hauler ke^
Galahad,
That I may stand so close beneath your brow,
I, Margaret of Antioch, am glad.

Second Lady, girding him with the sword.
That I may stand and touch you with my hand,
O Galahad, I, Cecily, am glad.

Third Lady, buckling on the spurs.
That I may kneel while up above you stand.

And gaze at me, O holy Galahad,
I, Lucy, am most glad.

Fourth Lady, putting on the basnet,
O gentle knight,
That you bow down to us in reverence.
We are most glad, I, Katherine, with delight
Must needs fall trembling.

Angel, putting on the crossed surcoat,

Galahad, we go hence,
49 E

For here, amid the straying of the snow,
Come Percival's sister, Bors, and Percival.

[The Four Ladies carry out the hedy
and all go but Galahad.

Galahad.

How still and quiet everything seems now :

They come, too, for I hear the horsehoofs fall.

Enter Sir Bors, Sir Percival, and his Sister.

Fair friends and gentle lady, God you save !

A many marvels have been here to-night ;
Tell me what news of Launcelot you have.

And has God's body ever been in sight ?

Sir Bors.

Why, as for seeing that same holy thing,
As we were riding slowly side by side.

An hour ago, we heard a sweet voice sing.

And through the bare twigs saw a great light glide,

With many-colour'd raiment, but far off.

And so passed quickly — from the court nought good ;
Poor merry Dinadan, that with jape and scoff

Kept us all merry, in a little wood
50

Was found all hack'd and dead : Sir Lionel

And Gauwalne have come back from the great quest,

Just merely shamed ; and Lauvaine, who loved well
Your father Launcelot, at the king's behest

Went out to seek him, but was almost slain.

Perhaps is dead now ; everywhere
The knights come foil'd from the great quest, in vain ;

In vain they struggle for the vision fair.

5"

THE CHAPEL IN LYONESS

S3

THE CHAPEL IN LYONESS

Sir Ozana le cure Hardy. Sir Galahad.
Sir Bors de Ganys.

Sir Ozana.

ALL day long and every day,
From Christmas- Eve to Whit-Sunday,
Within that Chapel-aisle I lay.
And no man came a-near.

Naked to the waist was I,
And deep within my breast did lie,
Though no man any blood could spy,
The truncheon of a spear.

No meat did ever pass my lips.
Those days — (Alas ! the sunlight slips
From off the gilded parclose, dips.
And night comes on apace.)
55

My arms lay back behind my head ;
Over my raised-up knees was spread
A samite cloth of white and red ;
A rose lay on my face.

Many a time I tried to shout ;
But as in dream of battle-rout,
My frozen speech would not well out ;
I could not even weep.

With inward sigh I see the sun
Fade off the pillars one by one,
My heart faints when the day is done.
Because I cannot sleep.

Sometimes strange thoughts pass through my head ;
Not like a tomb is this my bed, '
Yet oft I think that I am dead ;
That round my tomb is writ,

** Ozana of the hardy heart.
Knight of the Table Round,
Pray for his soul, lords, of your part ;
A true knight he was found."

Ah ! me, I cannot fathom it. [_He sleeps,

56

Sir Galahad.

All day long and every day,
Till his madness pass'd away,
I watch'd Ozana as he lay
Within the gilded screen.

All my singing moved him not ;
As I sung my heart grew hot,
With the thought of Launcelot
Far away, I ween.

So I went a little space
From out the chapel, bathed my face
In the stream that runs apace
By the churchyard wall.

There I pluck'd a faint wild rose.
Hard by where the linden grows.
Sighing over silver rows
Of the lilies tall.

I laid the flower across his mouth ;
The sparkling drops seem'd good for drouth ;
He smiled, turn'd round toward the south.
Held up a golden tress.
57

The light smote on it from the west :
He drew the covering from his breast,
Against his heart that hair he prest ;
Death him soon will bless.

Sir Bors.
I enter'd by the western door ;

I saw a knight's helm lying there :
I raised my eyes from off the floor,

And caught the gleaming of his hair.

I stept full softly up to him ;

I laid my chin upon his head ;
I felt him smile ; my eyes did swim,

I was so glad he was not dead.

I heard Ozana murmur low,

" There comes no sleep nor any love."
But Galahad stoop'd and kiss'd his brow :

He shiver'd ; I saw his pale lips move.

Sir Ozana.
There comes no sleep nor any love ;

Ah me ! I shiver with delight.
I am so weak I cannot move ;

God move me to thee, dear, to-night !
58

Christ help ! I have but little wit :
My life went wrong ; I see it writ,

" Ozana of the hardy heart,

Knight of the Table Round,
Pray for his soul, lords, on your part ;

A good knight he was found/'

Now I begin to fathom it. \_He dies.

Sir Bors.
Galahad sits dreamily :
What strange things may his eyes see.
Great blue eyes fix'd full on me ?
On his soul, Lord, have mercy.

Sir Galahad.
Ozana, shall I pray for thee ?

Her cheek is laid to thine ;
No long time hence, also I see

Thy wasted fingers twine

Within the tresses of her hair

That shineth gloriously.
Thinly outspread in the clear air

Against the jasper sea.
59

SIR PETER HARPDON'S END

6i

SIR PETER HARPDON'S END

In an English castle in Poictou.

Sir Peter Harpdon, a Gascon knight in the English
service^ and John Curzon, his lieutenant,

John Curzon.

OF those three prisoners, that before you came
We took down at St. John's hard by the mill,
Two are good masons ; we have tools enough,
And you have skill to set them working.

Sir Peter.

So—
What are their names ?

John Cur5lon.

Why, Jacques Aquadent,
And Peter Plombiere, but —
63

Sir Peter.

What coloured hair
Has Peter now ? has Jacques got bow legs ?

John Curzon.

Why, sir, you jest — what matters Jacques' hair,
Or Peter's legs to us ?

Sir Peter.

O ! John, John, John !
Throw all your mason's tools down the deep well,
Hang Peter up and Jacques ; they're no good.
We shall not build, man.

John Curzon [j[omg'2.

Shall I call the guard
To hang them, sir ? and yet, sir, for the tools.
We'd better keep them still ; sir, fare you well.

[^Muttering as he goes.
What have I done that he should jape at me ?
And why not build ? the walls are weak enough.
And we've two masons and a heap of tools.

[_GoeSy still muttering,

64

Sir Peter.

To think a man should have a lump like that

For his lieutenant ! I must call him back,

Or else, as surely as St. George is dead,

He'll hang our friends the masons — here, John ! John !

John Curzon.
At your good service, sir.

Sir Peter.

Come now, and talk
This weighty matter out ; there — we've no stone
To mend our walls with, — neither brick nor stone.

John Curzon.
There is a quarry, sir, some ten miles ofF.

Sir Peter.

We are not strong enough to send ten men
Ten miles to fetch us stone enough to build.
In three hours' time they would be taken or slain,
The cursed Frenchmen ride abroad so thick.

John Curzon.

But we can send some villaynes to get stone.

65 F

Sir Peter.

Alas ! John, that we cannot bring them back,

They would go off to Clisson or Sanxere,

And tell them we were weak in walls and men,

Then down go we ; for, look you, times are changed,

And now no longer does the country shake

At sound of English names ; our captains fade

From off our muster-rolls. At Lusac bridge

I daresay you may even yet see the hole

That Chandos beat in dying ; far in Spain

Pembroke is prisoner ; Phelton prisoner here ;

Manny lies buried in the Charterhouse ;

Oliver Clisson turn'd these years agone ; -

The Captal died in prison ; and, over all,

Edward the prince lies underneath the ground,

Edward the king is dead, at Westminster

The carvers smooth the curls of his long beard.

Everything goes to rack — eh ! and we too.

Now, Curzon, listen ; if they come, these French,

Whom have I got to lean on here, but you ?

A man can die but once, will you die then.

Your brave sword in your hand, thoughts in your heart

Of all the deeds we have done here in France —

And yet may do ? So God will have your soul,

Whoever has your body.

66

John Curzon.

Why, sir, I
Will fight till the last moment, until then
Will do whate'er you tell me. Now I see
We must e'en leave the walls ; well, well, perhaps
They're stronger than I think for ; pity, though !
For some few tons of stone, if Guesclin comes.

Sir Peter.

Farewell, John, pray you watch the Gascons well,
I doubt them.

John Curzon.
Truly, sir, I will watch well. \^Goes.

Sir Peter.

Farewell, good lump ! and yet, when all is said,

'Tis a good lump. Why then, if Guesclin comes ;

Some dozen stones from his petrariae.

And, under shelter of his crossbows, just

An hour's steady work with pickaxes.

Then a great noise — some dozen swords and glaives

A-playing on my basnet all at once,

And little more cross purposes on earth

For me.

67

Now this is hard : a month ago,
And a few minutes' talk had set things right
'Twixt me and Alice ; — if she had a doubt,
As (may Heaven bless her 1) I scarce think she had,
'Twas but their hammer, hammer in her ears.
Of « how Sir Peter fail'd at Lusac bridge : "
And " how he was grown moody of late days ; "
And "how Sir Lambert," (think now!) "his dear

friend.
His sweet, dear cousin, could not but confess
That Peter's talk tended towards the French,
Which he '' (for instance Lambert) " was glad of.
Being " (Lambert, you see) " on the French side."

Well,
If I could but have seen her on that day,
Then, when they sent me off !

I like to think.
Although it hurts me, makes my head twist, what.
If I had seen her, what I should have said,
What she, my darling, would have said and done.
As thus perchance —

To find her sitting there.
In the window-seat, not looking well at all.
Crying perhaps, and I say quietly ;
" Alice 1 " she looks up, chokes a sob, looks grave,
68

Changes from pale to red, but, ere she speaks,
Straightway I kneel down there on both my knees,
And say : ** O lady, have I sinn'd, your knight ?
That still you ever let me walk alone
In the rose garden, that you sing no songs
When I am by, that ever in the dance
You quietly walk away when I come near ?
Now that I have you, will you go, think you : "

Ere she could answer I would speak again.
Still kneeling there.

" What ! they have frighted you,
By hanging burs, and clumsily carven puppets.
Round my good name ; but afterwards, my love,
I will say what this means ; this moment, see !
Do I kneel here, and can you doubt me ? Yea,"
(For she would put her hands upon my face,)
<* Yea, that is best, yea feel, love, am I changed ? "
And she would say : " Good knight, come, kiss my

lips ! "
And afterwards as I sat there would say ;

" Please a poor silly girl by telling me
What all those things they talk of really were,
For it is true you did not help Chandos,
69

And true, poor love ! you could not come to me
When I was in such peril."

I should say :
" I am like Balen, all things turn to blame —
I did not come to you ? At Bergerath
The constable had held us close shut up,
If from the barriers I had made three steps,
I should have been but slain ; at Lusac, too,
We struggled in a marish half the day,
And came too late at last : you know, my love.
How heavy men and horses are all arm'd.
All that Sir Lambert said was pure, unmix'd.
Quite groundless lies ; as you can think, sweet love."

She, holding tight my hand as we sat there.

Started a little at Sir Lambert's name.

But otherwise she listenM scarce at all

To what I said. Then with moist, weeping eyes.

And quivering lips, that scarcely let her speak,

She said, " I love you."

Other words were few.
The remnant of that hour ; her hand smoothed down
My foolish head ; she kiss'd me all about
My face, and through the tangles of my beard
Her little fingers crept.

70

O ! God, my Alice,
Not this good way : my lord but sent and said
That Lambert's sayings were taken at their worth,
Therefore that day I was to start, and keep
This hold against the French ; and I am here, —

\JLoohs out of the window,
A sprawling lonely gard with rotten wails.
And no one to bring aid if Guesclin comes,
Or any other.

There's a pennon now !
At last.

But not the constables's — whose arms,
I wonder, does it bear ? Three golden rings
On a red ground ; my cousin's by the rood !
Well, I should like to kill him, certainly.
But to be kill'd by him — \_A trumpet sounds.

That's for a herald ;
I doubt this does not mean assaulting yet.

Enter John Curzon.
What says the herald of our cousin, sir ?

John Curzon.
So please you, sir, concerning your estate.
He has good will to talk with you,
71

Sir Peter.

Outside,
I'll talk with him, close by the gate St. Ives.
Is he unarm'd ?

John Curzon.
Yea, sir, in a long gown.

Sir Peter.

Then bid them bring me hither my furr'd gown

With the long sleeves, and under it I'll wear,

By Lambert's leave, a secret coat of mail;

And will you lend me, John, your little axe ?

I mean the one with Paul wrought on the blade ?

And I will carry it inside my sleeve,

Good to be ready always — you, John, go

And bid them set up many suits of arms.

Bows, archgays, lances, in the base- court, and

Yourself, from the south postern setting out,

With twenty men, be ready to break through

Their unguarded rear when I cry out " St. George ! "

John Curzon.
How, sir ! will you attack him unawares.
And slay him unarm'd ?

7^

Sir Peter.

Trust me, John, I know
The reason why he comes here with sleeved gown,
Fit to hide axes up. So, let us go. [^^hey go»

73

Outside the castle by the great gate ; Sir Lambert and
Sir Peter seated ; guards attending eachy the rest of
Sir Lambert's men drawn up about a furlong off".

A

Sir Peter.

ND if I choose to take the losing side
Still, does it hurt you ?

Sir Lambert.

O ! no hurt to me ;
I see you sneering, " Why take trouble then,
Seeing you love me not ? " look you, our house
(Which, taken altogether, I love much)
Had better be upon the right side now.
If, once for all, it wishes to bear rule
As such a house should : cousin, you're too wise
To feed your hope up fat, that this fair France
Will ever draw two ways again ; this side
The French, wrong-headed, all a- jar
74

With envious longings ; and the other side

The order'd English, orderly led on

By those two Edwards through all wrong and right,

And muddling right and wrong to a thick broth

With that long stick, their strength. This is all changed,

The true French win, on either side you have

Cool-headed men, good at a tilting-match.

And good at setting battles in array.

And good at squeezing taxes at due time ;

Therefore by nature we French being here

Upon our own big land —

[Sir Peter laughs aloud.
Well Peter ! well !
What makes you laugh ?

Sir Peter.

Hearing you sweat to prove
All this I know so well ; but you have read
The siege of Troy ?

Sir Lambert,
O ! yea, I know it well.

Sir Peter.

There ! they were wrong, as wrong as men could be ;
For, as I think, they found it such delight
75

To see fair Helen going through their town :
Yea, any little common thing she did
(As stooping to pick a flower) seem'd so strange,
So new in its great beauty, that they said ;
" Here we will keep her living in this town,
Till all burns up together." And so, fought.
In a mad whirl of knowing they were wrong ;
Yea, they fought well, and ever, like a man
That hangs, legs off the ground, by both his hands.
Over some great height, did they struggle sore,
Quite sure to slip at last ; wherefore, take note
How almost all men, reading that sad siege.
Hold for the Trojans ; as I did at least,
Thought Hector the best knight a long way ;

Now
Why should I not do this thing that I think ?
For even when I come to count the gains,
I have them my side : men will talk, you know,
(We talk of Hector, dead so long agone,)
When I am dead, of how this Peter clung
To what he thought the right ; of how he died,
Perchance, at last, doing some desperate deed
Few men would care do now, and this is gain
To me, as ease and money is to you.
Moreover, too, I like the straining game
76

Of striving well to hold up things that fall ;
So one becomes great ; see you ! in good times
All men live well together, and you, too.
Live dull and happy — happy ? not so quick,
Suppose sharp thoughts begin to burn you up.
Why then, but just to fight as I do now,
A halter round my neck, would be great bliss.

0 ! I am well off. IMde.

Talk, and talk, and talk,

1 know this man has come to murder me,
And yet I talk still.

Sir Lambert.

If your side were right.
You might be, though you lost ; but if I said,
" You are a traitor, being, as you are.
Born Frenchman." What are Edwards unto you.
Or Richards ?

Sir Peter.
Nay, hold there, my Lambert, hold !
For fear your zeal should bring you to some harm,
Don't call me traitor.

Sir Lambert.

Furthermore, my knight,
Men call you slippery on your losing side,

77

When at Bordeaux I was ambassador,

I heard them say so, and could scarce say " Nay."

[_He takes hold of something In
his sleeve J and rises.

Sir Peter, rising.
They lied — and you He, not for the first time.
What have you got there, fumbling up your sleeve,
A stolen purse ?

Sir Lambert.
Nay, liar in your teeth !
Dead liar too ; St. Dennis and St. Lambert !

\_Strikes at Sir Peter ivith a dagger.

Sir Peter, striking himjlatlings ivith his axe.
How thief! thief! thief! so there, fair thief, so there,
St. George Guienne ! glaives for the castellan !
You French, you are but dead, unless you lay
Your spears upon the earth. St. George Guienne !

Well done, John Curzon, how he has them now.

78

w

In the Castle,

John Curzon.
HAT shall we do with all these prisoners, sir ?

Sir Peter.
Why put them all to ransom, those that can
Pay anything, but not too light though, John,
Seeing we have them on the hip : for those
That have no money, that being certified.
Why turn them out of doors before they spy ;
But bring Sir Lambert guarded unto me.

John Curzon.
I will, fair sir. \_He goes.

Sir Peter.

I do not wish to kill him.
Although I think 1 ought ; he shall go mark'd.
By all the saints, though !

79

Enter Lambert guarded.

Now, Sir Lambert, now !
What sort of death do you expect to get.
Being taken this way ?

Sir Lambert.

Cousin ! cousin ! think !
I am your own blood ; may God pardon me !
I am not fit to die ; if you knew all.
All I have done since I was young and good.
O ! you would give me yet another chance.
As God would, that I might wash all clear out,
By serving you and Him. Let me go now !
And I will pay you down more golden crowns
Of ransom than the king would !

Sir Peter.

Well, stand back,
And do not touch me ! No, you shall not die.
Nor yet pay ransom. You, John Curzon, cause
Some carpenters to build a scaffold, high.
Outside the gate ; when it is built, sound out
To all good folks, " Come, see a traitor punish'd ! "
Take me my knight, and set him up thereon,
And let the hangman shave his head quite clean,
And cut his ears off close up to the head ;
80

And cause the minstrels all the while to play
Soft music, and good singing ; for this day-
Is my high day of triumph ; is it not,
Sir Lambert ?

Sir Lambert.

Ah ! on your own blood,
Own name, you heap this foul disgrace ? you dare.
With hands and fame thus sullied, to go back
And take the lady Alice —

Sir Peter.

Say her name
Again, and you are dead, slain here by me.
Why should I talk with you ? I'm master here.
And do not want your schooling ; is it not
My mercy that you are not dangling dead
There in the gateway with a broken neck ?

Sir Lambert.
Such mercy ! why not kill me then outright ?
To die is nothing ; but to live that all
May point their fingers ! yea, I'd rather die.

John Curzon.
Why, will it make you any uglier man
To lose your ears ? they're much too big for you,
You ugly Judas !

8l G

Sir Peter.
Hold, John! ITo Lambert.

That's your choice,
To die, mind ! Then you shall die — Lambert mine,
I thank you now for choosing this so well.
It saves me much perplexity and doubt ;
Perchance an ill deed too, for half I count
This sparing traitors is an ill deed.

Well,
Lambert, die bravely, and we're almost friends.

Sir Lambert, grovelling,

0 God ! this is a fiend and not a man ;

Will some one save me from him ? help, help, help !

1 will not die.

Sir Peter.

Why, what is this I see ?
A man who is a knight, and bandied words
So well just now with me, is lying down.
Gone mad for fear like this ! So, so, you thought
You knew the worst, and might say what you pleased.
I should have guess'd this from a man like you.
Eh ! righteous Job would give up skin for skin.
Yea, all a man can have for simple life,
82

And we talk fine, yea, even a hound like this,
Who needs must know that when he dies, deep hell
Will hold him fast for ever — so fine we talk,
" Would rather die " — all that. Now sir, get up !
And choose again : shall it be head sans ears,
Or trunk sans head ?

John Curzon, pull him up !
What, life then ? go and build the scaffold, John.

Lambert, 1 hope that never on this earth
We meet again ; that youMl turn out a monk.
And mend the life I give you, so, farewell,
I'm sorry you're a rascal. John, despatch.

83

In the French camp before the Castle,
Sir Fetev prisoner, Guesclin, Clisson, Sir Lambert.

Sir Peter.

SO now is come the ending of my life ;
If I could clear this sickening lump away
That sticks in my dry throat, and say a word,
Guesclin might listen.

Guesclin,

Tell me, fair sir knight,
If you have been clean liver before God,
And then you need not fear much ; as for me,
I cannot say I hate you, yet my oath,
And cousin Lambert's ears here clench the thing.

Sir Peter.
I knew you could not hate me, therefore I
Am bold to pray for life ; 'twill harm your cause
84

To hang knights of good name, harm here in France
I have small doubt, at any rate hereafter
Men will remember you another way
Than I should care to be remember'd, ah !
Although hot lead runs through me for my blood,
All this falls cold as though I said, ** Sweet lords,
Give back my falcon ! "

See how young I am.
Do you care altogether more than France,
Say rather one French faction, than for all
The state of Christendom ? a gallant knight.
As (yea, by God ! ) I have been, is more worth
Than many castles ; will you bring this death.
For a mere act of justice, on my head ?

Think how it ends all, death ! all other things
Can somehow be retrieved, yea, send me forth
Naked and maimed, rather than slay me here ;
Then somehow will I get me other clothes.
And somehow will I get me some poor horse.
And, somehow clad in poor old rusty arms.
Will ride and smite among the serried glaives.
Fear not death so ; for I can tilt right well.
Let me not say " I could ;" I know all tricks.
That sway the sharp sword cunningly ; ah you,
85

You, my Lord Clisson, in the other days
Have seen me learning these, yea, call to mind,
How in the trodden corn by Chartres town,
When you were nearly swooning from the back
Of your black horse, those three blades slid at once
From off my sword's edge ; pray for me, my lord !

Clisson.

Nay, this is pitiful, to see him die.

My Lord the Constable, I pray you note

That you are losing some few thousand crowns

By slaying this man ; also think ; his lands

Along the Garonne river lie for leagues,

And are right rich, a many mills he has,

Three abbeys of grey monks do hold of him.

Though wishing well for Clement, as we do ;

I know the next heir, his old uncle, well.

Who does not care two derniers for the knight

As things go now, but slay him, and then see.

How he will bristle up like any perch,

With curves of spears. What ! do not doubt, my lord.

You'll get the money, this man saved my life.

And I will buy him for two thousand crowns ;

Well, five then — eh ! what ! " No " again ? well then,

Ten thousand crowns ?

86

GUESCLIN.

My sweet lord, much I grieve
I cannot please you, yea, good sooth, I grieve
This knight must die, as verily he must ;
For I have sworn it ; so, men, take him out.
Use him not roughly.

Sir Lambert, coming forward.

Music, do you know,
Music will suit you well, I think, because
You look so mild, like Laurence being grilled ;
Or perhaps music soft and slow, because
This is high day of triumph unto me,
Is it not, Peter ?

You are frighten'd, though.
Eh ! you are pale, because this hurts you much,
Whose life was pleasant to you, not like mine.
You ruin'd wretch ! Men mock me in the streets,
Only in whispers loud, because I am
Friend of the constable ; will this please you,
Unhappy Peter ? once a-going home.
Without my servants, and a little drunk.
At midnight through the lone dim lamp-lit streets,
A whore came up and spat into my eyes,
(Rather to blind me than to make me see,)
87

But she was very drunk, and tottering back,
Even in the middle of her laughter, fell
And cut her head against the pointed stones.
While I lean'd on my staff, and look'd at her,
And cried, being drunk.

Girls would not spit at you.
You are so handsome, I think verily
Most ladies would be glad to kiss your eyes.
And yet you will be hung like a cur dog
Five minutes hence, and grow black in the face.
And curl your toes up. Therefore I am glad.

Guess why I stand and talk this nonsense now.
With Guesclin getting ready to play chess.
And Clisson doing something with his sword,
I can't see what, talking to Guesclin though,
I don't know what about, perhaps of you.
But, cousin Peter, while I stroke your beard.
Let me say this, I'd like to tell you now
That your life hung upon a game of chess.
That if, say, my squire Robert here should beat,
Why you should live, but hang if I beat him ;
Then guess, clever Peter, what I should do then ;
Well, give it up ? why, Peter, I should let
My squire Robert beat me, then you would think
88

That you were safe, you know ; Eh ? not at all,
But I should keep you three days in some hold,
Giving you salt to eat, which would be kind.
Considering the tax there is on salt ;
And afterwards should let you go, perhaps ?
No I should not, but I should hang you, sir.
With a red rope in lieu of mere grey rope.

But I forgot, you have not told me yet
If you can guess why I talk nonsense thus.
Instead of drinking wine while you are hang'd ?
You are not quick at guessing, give it up.
This is the reason ; here I hold your hand,
And watch you growing paler, see you writhe.
And this, my Peter, is a joy so dear,
I cannot by all striving tell you how
I love it, nor I think, good man, would you
Quite understand my great delight therein ;
You, when you had me underneath you once.
Spat as it were, and said, " Go take him out,"
(That they might do that thing to me whereat.
E'en now this long time off, I could well shriek,)
And then you tried forget I ever lived.
And sunk your hating into other things ;
While I — St. Dennis ! though, I think you'll faint,
89

Your lips are grey so ; yes, you will, unless
You let it out and weep like a hurt child ;
Hurrah ! you do now. Do not go just yet,
For I am Alice, am right like her now ;
Will you not kiss me on the lips, my love ? —

Clisson.
You filthy beast, stand back and let him go.
Or by God's eyes I'll choke you.

[^Knee/mg to Sir Peter.
Fair sir knight,
I kneel upon my knees and pray to you
That you would pardon me for this your death ;
God knows how much I wish you still alive.
Also how heartily I strove to save
Your life at this time ; yea, He knows quite well,
(I swear it, so forgive me !) how I would.
If it were possible, give up my life
Upon this grass for yours ; fair knight, although.
He knowing all things knows this thing too, well.
Yet when you see His face some short time hence.
Tell Him I tried to save you.

Sir Peter.

O ! my lord,
I cannot say this is as good as life,
90

But yet it makes me feel far happier now,
And if at all, after a thousand years,
I see God's face, I will speak loud and bold,
And tell Him you were kind, and like Himself ;
Sir, may God bless you !

Did you note how I
Fell weeping just now ? pray you, do not think
That Lambert's taunts did this, I hardly heard
The base things that he said, being deep in thought
Of all things that have happened since I was
A little child ; and so at last I thought
Of my true lady : truly, sir, it seem'd
No longer gone than yesterday, that this
Was the sole reason God let me be born
Twenty- five years ago, that I might love
Her, my sweet lady, and be loved by her ;
This seem'd so yesterday, to-day death comes.
And is so bitter strong, I cannot see
Why I was born.

But as a last request,
I pray you, O kind Clisson, send some man.
Some good man, mind you, to say how I died.
And take my last love to her : fare-you-well,
And may God keep you ; I must go now, lest
I grow too sick with thinking on these things ;
91

Likewise my feet are wearied of the earth,
From whence I shall be lifted up right soon.

[y^j- he goes.

Ah me ! shamed too, I wept at fear of death ;
And yet not so, I only wept because
There was no beautiful lady to kiss me
Before I died, and sweetly wish good speed
From her dear lips. O for some lady, though
I saw her ne'er before ; Alice, my love,
I do not ask for ; Clisson was right kind,
If he had been a woman, I should die
Without this sickness : but I am all wrong,
So wrong and hopelessly afraid to die.
There, I will go.

My God ! how sick I am.
If only she could come and kiss me now.

9^

The Hotel de la Barde, Bordeaux,

The Lady Alice de la Barde looking out of a
window into the street,

NO news yet ! surely, still he holds his own ;
That garde stands well ; T mind me passing it
Some months ago ; God grant the walls are strong !
I heard some knights say something yestereve,
I tried hard to forget : words far apart
Struck on my heart ; something like this ; one said,
" What eh ! a Gascon with an English name,
Harpdon ? " then nought, but afterwards, " Poictou.'*
As one who answers to a question ask'd ;
Then carelessly regretful came, ** No, no."
Whereto in answer loud and eagerly.
One said, " Impossible ? Christ, what foul play ! "
And went off angrily ; and while thenceforth
I hurried gaspingly afraid, I heard,
93

" Guesclin ; " ** Five thousand men-at-arms ; ''

" Clisson."
My heart misgives me it is all in vain
I send these succours ; and in good time there !
Their trumpet sounds, ah ! here they are ; good knights,
God up in Heaven keep you.

If they come
And find him prisoner — for I can't believe
Guesclin will slay him, even though they storm —
(The last horse turns the corner.)

God in Heaven !
What have I got to thinking of at last !
That thief I will not name is with Guesclin,
Who loves him for his lands. My love ! my love !
O, if I lose you after all the past,
What shall I do ?

I cannot bear the noise
And light street out there, with this thought alive.
Like any curling snake within my brain ;
Let me just hide my head within these soft
Deep cushions, there to try and think it out.

\_Ly'tng in the ivindow^seat.
I cannot hear much noise now, and I think
That I shall go to sleep : it all sounds dim
And faint, and I shall soon forget most things ;
94

Yea, almost that I am alive and here ;

It goes slow, comes slow, like a big mill-wheel

On some broad stream, with long green weeds a-sway,

And soft and slow it rises and it falls.

Still going onward.

Lying so, one kiss,
And I should be in Avalon asleep.
Among the poppies, and the yellow flowers :
And they should brush my cheek, my hair being spread
Far out among the stems ; soft mice and small
Eating and creeping all about my feet.
Red shod and tired ; and the flies should come
Creeping o'er my broad eyelids unafraid ;
And there should be a noise of water going,
Clear blue, fresh water breaking on the slates.
Likewise the flies should creep — God's eyes ! God help,
A trumpet ? I will run fast, leap adown
The slippery sea-stairs, where the crabs fight.

Ah!
I was half dreaming, but the trumpet's true,
He stops here at our house. The Clisson arms ?
Ah, now for news. But I must hold my heart.
And be quite gentle till he is gone out ;
And afterwards, — but he is still alive,
He must be still alive.

95

Enter a Squire o/* Clisson's.

Good day, fair sir,
I give you welcome, knowing whence you come.

Squire.
My Lady Alice de la Barde, I come
From Oliver Clisson, knight and mighty lord,^
Bringing you tidings ; I make bold to hope
You will not count me villain, even if
They wring your heart ; nor hold me still in hate.
For I am but a mouthpiece after all,
A mouthpiece, too, of one who wishes well
To you and your's.

Alice.
Can you talk faster, sir.
Get over all this quicker ? fix your eyes
On mine, I pray you, and whatever you see.
Still go on talking fast, unless I fall,
Or bid you stop.

Squire.
I pray your pardon then,
And, looking in your eyes, fair lady, say
I am unhappy that your knight is dead.
Take heart, and listen ! let me tell you all.
We were five thousand goodly men-at-arms,
96

And scant five hundred had he in that hold ;

His rotten sand-stone walls were wet with rain,

And fell in lumps wherever a stone hit ;

Yet for three days about the barrier there

The deadly glaives were gather' d, laid across,

And push'd and pull'd ; the fourth our engines came ;

But still amid the crash of falling walls,

And roar of lombards, rattle of hard bolts.

The steady bow-strings flash'd, and still streamed out

St. George's banner, and the seven swords.

And still they cried, " St. George Guienne," until

Their walls were flat as Jericho's of old.

And our rush came, and cut them from the keep.

Alice.
Stop, sir, and tell me if you slew him then,
And where he died, if you can really mean
That Peter Harpdon, the good knight, is dead ?

Squire.
Fair lady, in the base-court —

Alice.

What base-court ?
What do you talk of ? Nay, go on, go on ;
'Twas only something gone within my head :
Do you not know, one turns one's head round quick,
97 H

And something cracks there with sore pain ? go on,
And still look at my eyes.

Squire.

Almost alone,
There in the base-court fought he with his sword.
Using his left hand much, more than the wont
Of most knights now-a-days ; our men gave back.
For wheresoever he hit a downright blow.
Some one fell bleeding, for no plate could hold
Against the sway of body and great arm ;
Till he grew tired, and some man (no ! not I,
I swear not I, fair lady, as I live ! )
Thrust at him with a glaive between the knees.
And threw him ; down he fell, sword undermost ;
Many fell on him, crying out their cries.
Tore his sword from him, tore his helm off, and —

Alice.
Yea, slew him : I am much too young to live.
Fair God, so let me die.

You have done well.
Done all your message gently, pray you go.
Our knights will make you cheer ; moreover, take
This bag of franks for your expenses.

[The Squire kneels,

98

But
You do not go ; still looking at my face,
You kneel ! what, squire, do you mock me then ?
You need not tell me who has set you on.
But tell me only, 'tis a made-up tale.
You are some lover may-be, or his friend ;
Sir, if you loved me once, or your friend loved,
Think, is it not enough that I kneel down
And kiss your feet, your jest will be right good
If you give in now, carry it too far.
And 'twill be cruel ; not yet ? but you weep
Almost, as though you loved me ; love me then,
And go to Heaven by telling all your sport.
And I will kiss you, then with all my heart.
Upon the mouth ; O ! what can I do then
To move you ?

Squire.
Lady fair, forgive me still !
You know I am so sorry, but my tale
Is not yet finish' d :

So they bound his hands.
And brought him tall and pale to Guesclin's tent.
Who, seeing him, leant his head upon his hand,
And ponder'd somewhile, afterwards, looking up —
Fair dame, what shall I say ?
99

Alice.

Yea, I know now,
Good squire, you may go now with my thanks.

Squire.
Yet, lady, for your own sake I say this.
Yea, for my own sake, too, and Clisson's sake.
When Guesclin told him he must be hanged soon,
Within a while he lifted up his head
And spoke for his own life ; not crouching, though,
As abjectly afraid to die, nor yet
Sullenly brave as many a thief will die ;
Nor yet as one that plays at japes with God :
Few words he spoke ; not so much what he said
Moved us, I think, as saying it, there played
Strange tenderness from that big soldier there
About his pleading ; eagerness to live
Because folk loved him, and he loved them back.
And many gallant plans unfinish'd now
For ever. Clisson's heart, which may God bless !
Was moved to pray for him, but all in vain ;
Wherefore I bring this message :

That he waits.
Still loving you, within the little church
Whose windows, with the one eye of the light

Over the altar, every night behold

The great dim broken walls he strove to keep !

There my Lord Clisson did his burial well.
Now, lady, I will go ; God give you rest !

Alice.
Thank Clisson from me, squire, and farewell !
And now to keep myself from going mad.
Christ ! I have been a many times to church.
And, ever since my mother taught me prayers,
Have used them daily, but to day I wish
To pray another way ; come face to face,

0 Christ, that I may clasp Your knees and pray,

1 know not what, at any rate come now
From one of many places where You are ;
Either in Heaven amid thick angel wings.
Or sitting on the altar strange with gems,
Or high up in the dustiness of the apse ;
Let us go. You and I, a long way off,

To the little damp, dark, Poitevin church ;
While You sit on the coffin in the dark.
Will I lie down, my face on the bare stone
Between Your feet, and chatter anything
I have heard long ago, what matters it

So I may keep You there, Your solemn face
And long hair even-flowing on each side,
Until You love me well enough to speak.
And give me comfort ; yea, till o'er Your chin,
And cloven red beard the great tears roll down
In pity for my misery, and I die,
Kissed over by You.

Eh Guesclin ! if I were
Like Countess Mountfort now, that kiss'd the knight.
Across the salt sea come to fight for her ;
Ah ! just to go about with many knights.
Wherever you went, and somehow on one day,
In a thick wood to catch you off your guard.
Let you find, you and your some fifty friends.
Nothing but arrows wheresoever you turn'd.
Yea, and red crosses, great spears over them ;
And so, between a lane of my true men.
To walk up pale and stern and tall, and with
My arms on my surcoat, and his therewith.
And then to make you kneel, O knight Guesclin ;
And then — alas ! alas ! when all is said.
What could I do but let you go again.
Being pitiful woman ? I get no revenge.
Whatever happens ; and I get no comfort,
I am but weak, and cannot move my feet,

102

But as men bid me.

Strange I do not die.
Suppose this has not happened after all ?
I will lean out again and watch for news.

I wonder how long I can still feel thus,
As though I watch'd for news, feel as I did
Just half-an-hour ago, before this news.
How all the street is humming, some men sing,
And some men talk ; some look up at the house.
Then lay their heads together and look grave ;
Their laughter pains me sorely in the heart,
Their thoughtful talking makes my head turn round,
Yea, some men sing, what is it then they sing ?
Eh Launcelot, and love and fate and death ;
They ought to sing of him who was as wight
As Launcelot or Wade, and yet availed
Just nothing, but to fail and fail and fail,
And so at last to die and leave me here,
Alone and wretched ; yea, perhaps they will.
When many years are past, make songs of us ;
God help me, though, truly I never thought
That I should make a story in this way,
A story that his eyes can never see.
103

[One sings from outstde,'\

Therefore be it believed
Whatsoever he grieved^
Whan his horse was relievedy
This Launceloty

Beat down on his knee^
Right valiant was he,
God^s body to see.

Though he saw it not.

Right valiant to move.
But for his sad love
The high God above
Stinted his praise,

Tet so he was glad
That his son Lord Galahad
That high joy aunce had
All his life-days.

Sing we therefore then
Launcelofs praise again.
For he wan crownes ten.
If he wan not twelve,
X04

To his death from his birth
He was muckle of worthy
Lay him in the cold earthy

A long grave ye may delve,

Omnes homines henedicite /
This last fitte ye may see
All men pray for me.
Who made this history
Cunning and fairly.

105

RAPUNZEL

107

RAPUNZEL

The Prince, being In the wood near the tower^ in the
evening,

I COULD not even think
What made me weep that day,
When out of the council-hall
The courtiers pass*d away, —

The Witch.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair !

Rapunzel.

Is it not true that every day
She climbeth up the same strange way,
Her scarlet cloak spread broad and gay
Over my golden hair ?
109

The Prince.

And left me there alone,

To think on what they said ;

" Thou art a king's own son,

'Tis fit that thou should'st wed/'

The Witch.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair !

Rapunzel.

When I undo the knotted mass,
Fathoms below the shadows pass
Over my hair along the grass.
O my golden hair !

The Prince.

I put my armour on,

Thinking on what they said ;
" Thou art a king's own son,

'Tis fit that thou should'st wed."

The Witch.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair !

Rapunzel
See on the marble parapet
I lean my brow, strive to forget
That fathoms below my hair grows wet
With the dew, my golden hair.

The Prince.
1 rode throughout the town,

Men did not bow the head.
Though I was the king's own son ;

" He rides to dream," they said.

The Witch.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Wind up your hair !

Rapunzel.
See, on the marble parapet
The faint red stains with tears are wet ;
The long years pass, no help comes yet
To free my golden hair.

The Prince.
For leagues and leagues I rode,

Till hot my armour grew.
Till underneath the leaves

I felt the evening dew.

The Witch.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Weep through your hair !

Rapunzel.

And yet — but I am growing old,
For want of love my heart is cold,
Years pass, the while I loose and fold
The fathoms of my liair.

I

The Prince, in the morning.
HAVE heard tales of men, who in the night

Saw paths of stars let down to earth from heaven,
Who followM them until they reach'd the light
Wherein they dwell, whose sins are all forgiven ;

But who went backward when they saw the gate

Of diamond, nor dared to enter in ;
All their life long they were content to wait,

Purging them patiently of every sin.

I must have had a dream of some such thing.
And now am just awaking from that dream ;

For even in grey dawn those strange words ring
Through heart and brain, and still I see that gleam.

For in my dream at sunset- time I lay

Beneath these beeches, mail and helmet off.

Right full of joy that I had come away
From court ; for I was patient of the scoff

113 I

That met me always there from day to day,
From any knave or coward of them all ;

I was content to live that wretched way ;
For truly till I left the council-hall,

And rode forth arm'd beneath the burning sun.
My gleams of happiness were faint and few,

But then I saw my real life had begun,

And that I should be strong quite well I knew.

For I was riding out to look for love.

Therefore the birds within the thickets sung.

Even in hot noontide, as I pass'd, above

The elms o'ersway'd with longing towards me hung.

Now some few fathoms from the place where I
Lay in the beech- wood, was a tower fair.

The marble corners faint against the sky ;
And dreamily I wonder'd what lived there ;

Because it seem'd a dwelling for a queen.
No belfry for the swinging of great bells ;

No bolt or stone had ever crush'd the green
Shafts, amber and rose walls, no soot that tells

Of the Norse torches burning up the roofs.
On the flower-carven marble could [I] see ;
114

But rather on all sides I saw the proofs
Of a great loneliness that sicken'd me ;

Making me feel a doubt that was not fear,

Whether my whole life long had been a dream,

And I should wake up soon in some place, where
The piled-up arms of the fighting angels gleam ;

Not born as yet, but going to be born.

No naked baby as I was at first.
But an armed knight, whom fire, hate, and scorn

Could turn from nothing : my heart almost burst

Beneath the beeches, as I lay a-dreaming,
I tried so hard to read this riddle through,

To catch some golden cord that I saw gleaming
Like gossamer against the autumn blue.

But while I ponder'd these things, from the wood
There came a black-hair'd woman, tall and bold.

Who strode straight up to where this tower stood.
And cried out shrilly words, whereon behold —

The WircHy from the tower.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair ! •

115

The Prince.

Ah Christ ! it was no dream then, but there stood
(She comes again) a maiden passing fair,

Against the roof, with face turn'd to the wood,
Bearing within her arms waves of her yellow hair.

I read my riddle when I saw her stand,

Poor love ! her face quite pale against her hair,

Praying to all the leagues of empty land

To save her from the woe she suffer'd there.

To think ! they trod upon her golden hair
In the witches' sabbaths ; it was a delight

For these foul things, while she, with thin feet bare,
Stood on the roof upon the winter night,

To plait her dear hair into many plaits.

And then, while God's eye look'd upon the thing.
In the very likenesses of Devil's bats.

Upon the ends of her long hair to swing.

And now she stood above the parapet.

And, spreading out her arms, let her hair flow.

Beneath that veil her smooth white forehead set
Upon the marble, more I do not know ;
ii6

Because before my eyes a film of gold

Floated, as now it floats. O, unknown love,

Would that I could thy yellow stair behold,
If still thou standcst with lead roof above !

The Witch, as she passes.

Is there any who will dare
To climb up the yellow stair.
Glorious Rapunzel's golden hair ?

The Prince.

If it would please God make you sing again,
I think that I might very sweetly die,

My soul someliow reach heaven in joyous pain,
My heavy body on the beech-nuts lie.

Now I remember ; what a most strange year,
Most strange and awful, in the beechen wood

I have pass'd now ; I still have a faint fear
It is a kind of dream not understood.

I have seen no one in this wood except

The witch and her ; have heard no human tones.

But when the witches' revelry has crept
Between the very jointing of my bones.

117

Ah ! I know now ; I could not go away,

But needs must stop to hear her sing that song

She always sings at dawning of the day.
I am not happy here, for I am strong.

And every morning do I whet my sword.
Yet Rapunzel still weeps within the tower.

And still God ties me down to the green sward.
Because I cannot see the gold stair floating lower.

Rapunzel sings from the tower.

My mother taught me prayers
To say when I had need ;
I have so many cares.
That I can take no heed
Of many words in them ;
Christy bring me to Thy bliss.
Mary, maid ivithouten nvem^
Keep me I I am lone, I wis.
Yet besides I have made this
By myself; Give me a kiss,
Dear God, dwelling tip in heaven.
Also : Send me a true knight,
Lord Christ, with a steel sword, bright.
Broad, and trenchant; yea, and seven
iig

spans from hilt to pointy 0 Lord!
And let the handle of his sword
Be gold on silver^ Lord in heaven /
Such a sivord as I see gleam
Sometimes^ when they let me dream.

Yea, besides, I have made this :
Lordy give Mary a dear kiss^
And let gold Michael^ ivho looked downy
When I was there^ on Rouen town
From the spire^ bring me that kiss
On a lily ! Lordy do this !

These prayers on the dreadful nights.
When the witches plait my hair,
And the fearfullest of sights
On the earth and in the air.
Will not let me close my eyes,
I murmur often, mix'd with sighs,
That my weak heart will not hold
At some things that I behold.
Nay, not sighs, but quiet groans.
That swell out the little bones
Of my bosom ; till a trance
God sends in middle of that dance.
And I behold the countenance
119

Of Michael, and can feel no more
The bitter east wind biting sore
My naked feet ; can see no more
The crayfish on the leaden floor,
That mock with feeler and grim claw.

Yea, often in that happy trance.
Beside the blessed countenance
Of golden Michael, on the spire
Glowing all crimson in the fire
Of sunset, I behold a face.
Which some time, if God give me grace.
May kiss me in this very place.

Evening In the tower,

Rapunzel.

IT grows half-way between the dark and light ;
Love, we have been six hours here alone,
I fear that she will come before the night.
And if she finds us thus we are undone.

The Prince.
Nay, draw a little nearer, that your breath

May touch my lips, let my cheek feel your arm ;
Now tell me, did you ever see a death,,

Or ever see a man take mortal harm ?

Rapunzel.

Once came two knights and fought with swords below.
And while they fought I scarce could look at all.

My head swam so, after a moaning low

Drew my eyes down ; I saw against the wall

One knight lean dead, bleeding from head and breast,
Yet seem'd it like a line of poppies red

In the golden twilight, as he took his rest,
In the dusky time he scarcely seemed dead.

But the other, on his face six paces off.
Lay moaning, and the old familiar name

He mutter'd through the grass, seem'd like a scoff
Of some lost soul remembering his past fame.

His helm all dinted lay beside him there,

The visor-bars were twisted towards the face.

The crest, which was a lady very fair.

Wrought wonderfully, was shifted from its place.

The shower'd mail-rings on the speed-walk lay.
Perhaps my eyes were dazzled with the light

That blazed in the west, yet surely on that day

Some crimson thing had changed the grass from bright

Pure green I love so. But the knight who died
Lay there for days after the other went ;

Until one day I heard a voice that cried,

" Fair knight, I see Sir Robert we were sent

" To carry dead or living to the king."

So the knights came and bore him straight away

On their lance-truncheons, such a batter'd thing,
His mother had not known him on that day,

But for his helm-crest, a gold lady fair
Wrought wonderfully.

The Prince.
Ah, they were brothers then,
And often rode together, doubtless where

The swords were thickest, and were loyal men.

Until they fell in these same evil dreams.

Rapunzel.
Yea, love ; but shall we not depart from hence ?
The white moon groweth golden fast, and gleams
Between the aspen stems ; I fear — and yet a sense

Of fluttering victory comes over me,

That will not let me fear aright ; my heart —

Feel how it beats, love, strives to get to thee,
I breathe so fast that my lips needs must part ;

Your breath swims round my mouth, but let us go.

The Prince.

I, Sebald, also, pluck from off the staff
123

The crimson banner, let it lie below,
Above it in the wind let grasses laugh.

Now let us go, love, down the winding stair,
With fingers intertwined : ay, feel my sword !

I wrought it long ago, with golden hair
Flowing about the hilts, because a word,

Sung by a minstrel old, had set me dreaming
Of a sv/eet bow'd-down face with yellow hair.

Betwixt green leaves I used to see it gleaming,
A half- smile on the lips, though lines of care

Had sunk the cheeks, and made the great eyes hollow;

What other work in all the world had I,
But through all turns of fate that face to follow ?

But wars and business kept me there to die.

O child, I should have slain my brother, too.
My brother. Love, lain moaning in the grass,

Had I not ridden out to look for you.

When I had watch'd the gilded courtiers pass

From the golden hall. But it is strange your name
Is not the same the minstrel sang of yore ;

You caird it Rapunzel, 'tis not the name.

See, love, the stems shine through the open door.

124

o

Morntngy in the woods*

Rapunzel.
LOVE ! me and my unknown name you have
well won ;

The witch's name was Rapunzel ; eh! not so sweet?
No ! — but is this real grass, love, that I tread upon ?
What call they these blue flowers that lean across
my feet ?

The Prince.
Dip down your dear face in the dewy grass, O love !

And ever let the sweet slim harebells, tenderly hung,
Kiss both your parted lips ; and I will hang above.
And try to sing that song the dreamy harper sung.

He sings,
'Twixt the sunlight and the shade
Float up memories of my maid,
God, remember Guendolen !
"5

Gold or gems she did not wear,
But her yellow rippled hair,

Like a veil, hid Guendolen !

'Twixt the sunlight and the shade.
My rough hands so strangely made.
Folded Golden Guendolen ;

Hands used to grip the sword-hilt hard.
Framed her face, while on the sward
Tears fell down from Guendolen.

Guendolen now speaks no word.
Hands fold round about the sword.
Now no more of Guendolen.

Only 'twixt the light and shade
Floating memories of my maid

Make me pray for Guendolen.

Guendolen.

I kiss thee, new-found name ; but I will never go :
Your hands need never grip the hammer'd sword again.

But all my golden hair shall ever round you flow.
Between the light and shade from Golden Guendolen.

126

Afterwards^ in the Palace.

King Sebald.

I TO OK my armour off,
Put on king's robes of gold,
Over her kirtle green

The gold fell fold on fold.

The Witch, out of helL

Guendolen ! Guendolen /
One loch of hair I

Guendolen.

I am so glad, for every day
He kisses me much the same way
As in the tower ; under the sway
Of all my golden hair.

127

King Sebald.
We rode throughout the town,

A gold crown on my head,
Through all the gold-hung streets,

" Praise God ! " the people said.

The Witch.

Guendolen 1 Guendolen !
Lend me your hair !

Guendolen.

Verily, I seem like one
Who, when day is almost done,
Through a thick wood meets the sun
That blazes in her hair.

King Sebald.

Yea, at the palace gates,

" Praise God ! " the great knights said,
" For Sebald the high king.

And the lady's golden head."

The Witch.
Woe Is me / Guendolen
Sweeps back her hair,
iz8

GUENDOLEN.

Nothing wretched now, no screams !
I was unhappy once in dreams
And even now a harsh voice seems
To hang about my hair.

The Witch.

Woe ! that any man could dare
to climb up the yellow stair,
Glorious Guendolen's golden hair.

129

CONCERNING GEFFRAY TESTE
NOIRE

131

CONCERNING GEFFRAY TESTE
NOIRE

AND if you meet the Canon of Chimay,
As going to Ortaise you well may do,
Greet him from John of Castel Neuf, and say,
All that I tell you, for all this is true.

This GefFray Teste Noire was a Gascon thief,
Who, under shadow of the English name,

Pilled all such towns and countries as were lief

To King Charles and St. Dennis ; thought it blame

If anything escaped him ; so my lord,

The Duke of Berry, sent Sir John Bonne Lance,
And other knights, good players with the sword.

To check this thief, and give the land a chance.

Therefore we set our bastides round the tower
That GefFray held, the strong thief! like a king,
133

High perch'd upon the rock of Ventadour,

Hopelessly strong by Christ ! it was mid-spring,

When first I joined the little army there

With ten good spears ; Auvergne is hot, each day

We sweated armed before the barrier,

Good feats of arms were done there often — eh ?

Your brother was slain there ? I mind me now
A right good man-at-arms, God pardon him !

I think 'twas Geffray smote him on the brow

With some spiked axe, and while he totter'd, dim

About the eyes, the spear of Alleyne Roux

Slipped through his camaille and his throat ; well,
well!

Alleyne is paid now ; your name Alleyne too ?
Mary ! how strange — but this tale I would tell —

For spite of all our bastides, damned blackhead
Would ride abroad whene'er he chose to ride.

We could not stop him ; many a burgher bled
Dear gold all round his girdle ; far and wide

The villaynes dwelt in utter misery

'Twixt us and thief Sir Geffray ; hauled this way
134

By Sir Bonne Lance at one time, he gone by,
Down comes this Teste Noire on another day.

And therefore they dig up the stone, grind corn.
Hew wood, draw water, yea, they lived, in short,

As I said just now, utterly forlorn.

Till this our knave and blackhead was out-fought.

So Bonne Lance fretted, thinking of some trap

Day after day, till on a time he said :
" John of Newcastle, if we have good hap.

We catch our thief in two days." " How ? " I said.

" Why, Sir, to-day he rideth out again.
Hoping to take well certain sumpter mules

From Carcassone, going with little train.

Because, forsooth, he thinketh us mere fools ;

" But if we set an ambush in some wood.
He is but dead ; so. Sir, take thirty spears

To Verville forest, if it seem you good."
Then felt I like the horse in Job, who hears

The dancing trumpet sound, and we went forth ;

And my red lion on the spear-head flapped,
As faster than the cool wind we rode North,

Towards the wood of Verville ; thus it happed.
^35

We rode a soft pace on that day while spies
Got news about Sir Geoffrey ; the red wine

Under the road-side bush was clear ; the flies,
The dragon-flies I mind me most, did shine

In brighter arms than ever I put on ;

So — " Geffray," said our spies, " would pass that way
Next day at sundown ; " then he must be won ;

And so we enter' d Verville wood next day.

In the afternoon ; through it the highway runs,
'Twixt copses of green hazel, very thick.

And underneath, with glimmering of suns,
The primroses are happy ; the dews lick

The soft green moss. *< Put cloths about your arms.
Lest they should glitter ; surely they will go

In a long thin line, watchful for alarms.
With all their carriages of booty, so —

" Lay down my pennon in the grass — Lord God !

What have we lying here ? will they be cold,
I wonder, being so bare, above the sod.

Instead of under ? This was a knight too, fold

" Lying on fold of ancient rusted mail ;
No plate at all, gold rowels to the spurs,
136

And see the quiet gleam of turquoise pale
Along the ceinture ; but the long time blurs

" Even the tinder of his coat to nought,

Except these scraps of leather ; see how white

The skull is, loose within the coif! He fought
A good fight, maybe, ere he was slain quite.

** No armour on the legs too ; strange in faith —
A little skeleton for a knight though — ah !

This one is bigger, truly without scathe

His enemies escaped not — ribs driven out far, —

" That must have reach'd the heart, I doubt — how now.
What say you, Aldovrand — a woman ? why ? "

" Under the coif a gold wreath on the brow,
Yea, see the hair not gone to powder, lie,

" Golden, no doubt, once — yea, and very small —
This for a knight ; but for a dame, my lord.

These loose-hung bones seem shapely still, and tall, —
Didst ever see a woman's bones, my lord ? '*

Often, God help me ! I remember when

I was a simple boy, fifteen years old.
The Jacquerie froze up the blood of men

With their fell deeds, not fit now to be told :
137

God help again ! we enterM Beauvais town,
Slaying them fast, whereto I helped, mere boy

As I was then ; we gentles cut them down,
These burners and defilers, with great joy.

Reason for that, too, in the great church there
These fiends had lit a fire, that soon went out,

The church at Beauvais being so great and fair —
My father, who was by me, gave a shout

Between a beast's howl and a woman's scream,

Then, panting, chuckled to me ; " John ! look !
look!

Count the dames' skeletons ! " from some bad dream
Like a man just awaked, my father shook ;

And I, being faint with smelling the burnt bones,
And very hot with fighting down the street,

And sick of such a life, fell down, with groans
My head went weakly nodding to my feet. —

— ^An arrow had gone through her tender throat,
And her right wrist was broken ; then I saw

The reason why she had on that war-coat.
Their story came out clear without a flaw ;

For when he knew that they were being waylaid.
He threw it over her, yea, hood and all ;

138

Whereby he was much hackM, while they were stay*d
By those their murderers ; many an one did fall

Beneath his arm, no doubt, so that he clear'd
Their circle, bore his death-wound out of it ;

But as they rode, some archer least afFear'd
Drew a strong bow, and thereby she was hit.

Still as he rode he knew not she was dead.

Thought her but fainted from her broken wrist.

He bound with his great leathern belt — she bled ?
Who knows ! he bled too, neither was there miss'd

The beating of her heart, his heart beat well
For both of them, till here, within this wood.

He died scarce sorry ; easy this to tell ;

After these years the flowers forget their blood.

How could it be ? never before that day.

However much a soldier I might be.
Could I look on a skeleton and say

I care not for it, shudder not — now see,

Over those bones I sat and pored for hours.

And thought, and dream'd, and still I scarce could see

The small white bones that lay upon the flowers.
But evermore I saw the lady ; she
139

With her dear gentle walking leading in,

By a chain of silver twined about her wrists,

Her loving knight, mounted and arm'd to win
Great honour for her, fighting in the lists.

O most pale face, that brings such joy and sorrow
Into men's hearts — yea, too, so piercing sharp

That joy is, that it marcheth nigh to sorrow
For ever — like an overwinded harp.

Your face must hurt me always ; pray you now,
Does it not hurt you too ? seemeth some pain

To hold you always, pain to hold your brow
So smooth, unwrinkled ever ; yea again,

Your long eyes where the lids seem like to drop.
Would you not, lady, were they shut fast, feel

Far merrier ? there so high they will not stop.
They are most sly to glide forth and to steal

Into my heart ; / kiss their soft lids there^
And in green gardens scarce can stop my lips

From wandering on your face ^ hut that your hair
Falls down and tangles mcy hack my face slips.

Or say your mouth — I saw you drink red wine
Once at a feast ; how slowly it sank in,

140

As though you fear'd that some wild fate might twine
Within that cup, and slay you for a sin.

And when you talk your lips do arch and move
In such wise that a language new I know

Besides their sound ; they quiver, too, with love
When you are standing silent ; know this, too,

I saw you kissing once, like a curved sword
That bites with all its edge, did your lips lie.

Curled gently, slowly, long time could afford
For caught-up breathings ; like a dying sigh

They gathered up their lines and went away.
And still kept twitching with a sort of smile.

As likely to be weeping presently, —

Your hands too— how I watch'd them all the while !

" Cry out St. Peter now," quoth Aldovrand ;

I cried " St. Peter," broke out from the wood
With all my spears ; we met them hand to hand

And shortly slew them ; natheless, by the rood.

We caught not blackhead then, or any day ;

Months after that he died at last in bed.
From a wound pick'd up at a barrier-fray

That same year's end ; a steel bolt in the head,
141

And much bad living kill'd Teste Noire at last ;

John Froissart knoweth he is dead by now,
No doubt, but knoweth not this tale just past ;

Perchance then you can tell him what I show.

In my new castle, down beside the Eure,
There is a little chapel of squared stone,

Painted inside and out ; in green nook pure
There did I lay them, every wearied bone ;

And over it they lay, with stone-white hands

Clasped fast together, hair made bright with gold ;

This Jaques Picard, known through many lands.
Wrought cunningly ; he's dead now — I am old.

142

A GOOD KNIGHT IN PRISON

Sir Guy, being in the court of a Pagan castle,

THIS castle where I dwell, it stands
A long way ofF from Christian lands,
A long way ofF my lady's hands,
A long way off the aspen trees,
And murmur of the lime-tree bees.

But down the Valley of the Rose
My lady often hawking goes.
Heavy of cheer ; oft turns behind.
Leaning towards the western wind.
Because it bringeth to her mind
Sad whisperings of happy times.
The face of him who sings these rhymes.

King Guilbert rides beside her there.
Bends low and calls her very fair,
H3

And strives, by pulling down his hair,
To hide from my dear lady's ken
The grisly gash I gave him, when
I cut him down at Camelot ;
However he strives, he hides it not,
That tourney will not be forgot.
Besides, it is King Guilbert's lot.
Whatever he says she answers not.

Now tell me, you that are in love,
From the king's son to the wood-dove,
Which is the better, he or I ?

For this king means that I should die
In this lone Pagan castle, where
The flowers droop in the bad air
On the September evening.

Look, now I take mine ease and sing,
Counting as but a little thing
The foolish spite of a bad king.

For these vile things that hem me in.
These Pagan beasts who live in sin.
The sickly flowers pale and wan.
The grim blue-bearded castellan,

144

The stanchions half worn-out with rust,
Where to their banner vile they trust —
Why, all these things I hold them just
Like dragons in a missal-book,
Wherein, whenever we may look,
We see no horror, yea, delight
We have, the colours are so bright ;
Likewise we note the specks of white,
And the great plates of burnished gold.

Just so this Pagan castle old,
And everything I can see there.
Sick-pining in the marshland air,
I note ; I will go over now,
Like one who paints with knitted brow.
The flowers and all things one by one,
From the snail on the wall to the setting sun.

Four great walls, and a little one
That leads down to the barbican,
Which walls with many spears they man,
When news comes to the castellan
Of Launcelot being in the land.

And as I sit here, close at hand
Four spikes of sad sick sunflowers stand,
H5

The castellan with a long wand
Cuts down their leaves as he goes by,
Ponderingly, with screw'd-up eye,
And fingers twisted in his beard —
Nay, was it a knight's shout I heard ?
I have a hope makes me afeard :
It cannot be, but if some dream
Just for a minute made me deem
I saw among the flowers there
My lady's face with long red hair.
Pale, ivory-colour'd dear face come,
As I was wont to see her some
Fading September afternoon.
And kiss me, saying nothing, soon
To leave me by myself again ;
Could I get this by longing : vain !

The castellan is gone : I see
On one broad yellow flower a bee
Drunk with much honey —

Christ ! again.
Some distant knight's voice brings me pain,
I thought I had forgot to feel,
I never heard the blissful steel
These ten years past ; year after year
146

Through all my hopeless sojourn here,
No Christian pennon has been near ;
Laus Deo ! the dragging wind draws on
Over the marshes, battle won,
Knights' shouts, and axes hammering,
Yea, quicker now the dint and ring
Of flying hoofs ; ah ! castellan.
When they come back count man for man.
Say whom you miss.

The Pagans, from the battlements.
Mahound to aid !
Why flee ye so like men dismay'd ?

The Pagans, from without.
Nay, haste ! for here is Launcelot,
Who follows quick upon us, hot
And shouting with his men-at-arms.

Sir Guy.

Also the Pagans raise alarms,
And ring the bells for fear ; at last
My prison walls will be well past.

Sir Launcelot, from outside.
Ho ! in the name of the Trinity,
Let down the drawbridge quick to me,
147

And open doors, that I may see
Guy the good knight.

The Pagans, from the battlements*

Nay, Launcelot,
With mere big words ye win us not.

Sir Launcelot.
Bid Miles bring up la perriere.
And archers clear the vile walls there.
Bring back the notches to the ear,
Shoot well together ! God to aid !
These miscreants will be well paid.

Hurrah ! all goes together ; Miles
Is good to win my lady's smiles
For his good shooting — Launcelot !
On knights a-pace ! this game is hot !

Sir Guy sayeth afterwards.
I said, I go to meet her now.
And saying so, I felt a blow
From some clench 'd hand across my brow,
And fell down on the sunflowers
Just as a hammering smote my ears,
After which this I felt in sooth ;
My bare hands throttling without ruth
148

The hairy-throated castellan ;

Then a grim fight with these that ran

To slay me, while I shouted, " God

For the Lady Mary ! " deep I trod

That evening in my own red blood ;

Nevertheless so stiff I stood.

That when the knights burst the old wood

Of the castle-doors, I was not dead.

I kiss the Lady Mary's head.
Her lips, and her hair golden red,
Because to-day we have been wed.

149

OLD LOVE

" 'V^OU must be very old, Sir Giles/'

X I said ; he said : " Yea, very old :
Whereat the mournfullest of smiles

Crossed his dry skin with many a fold.

" They hammer'd out my basnet point

Into a round salade,'* he said,
" The basnet being quite out of joint,

Natheless the salade rasps my head."

He gazed at the great fire awhile :

<* And you are getting old. Sir John ; "

(He said this with that cunning smile

That was most sad ;) "we both wear on,

" Knights come to court and look at me,
With eyebrows up, except my lord,
150

And my dear lady, none I see

That know the ways of my old sword."

(My lady ! at that word no pang

Stopp'd all my blood.) " But tell me, John,
Is it quite true that Pagans hang

So thick about the east, that on

*' The eastern sea no Venice flag

Can fly unpaid for ? " " True," I said.

" And in such way the miscreants drag
Christ's cross upon the ground, I dread

That Constantine must fall this year."

Within my heart ; " These things are small ;

This is not small, that things outwear
I thought were made for ever, yea, all,

" All things go soon or late ; " I said —
I saw the duke in court next day ;

Just as before, his grand great head
Above his gold robes dreaming lay.

Only his face was paler ; there

I saw his duchess sit by him ;
And she — she was changed more ; her hair

Before my eyes that used to swim,
151

And make me dizzy with great bliss
Once when I used to watch her sit —

Her hair is bright still, yet it is

As though some dust were thrown on it.

Her eyes are shallower, as though

Some grey glass were behind ; her brow

And cheeks the straining bones show through,
Are not so good for kissing now.

Her lips are drier now she is

A great duke's wife these many years,
They will not shudder with a kiss

As once they did, being moist with tears.

Also her hands have lost that way
Of clinging that they used to have ;

They look'd quite easy, as they lay
Upon the silken cushions brave

With broidery of the apples green

My Lord Duke bears upon his shield.

Her face, alas ! that I have seen
Look fresher than an April field,

This is all gone now ; gone also

Her tender walking ; when she walks

152

She is most queenly I well know.
And she is fair still — as the stalks

Of faded summer-lilies are,
So is she grown now unto me

This spring-time, when the flowers star
The meadows, birds sing wonderfully.

I warrant once she used to cling
About his neck, and kiss'd him so,

And then his coming step would ring
Joy-bells for her, — some time ago.

Ah ! sometimes like an idle dream
That hinders true life overmuch.

Sometimes like a lost heaven, these seem-
This love is not so hard to smutch.

153

THE GILLIFLOWER OF GOLD

A GOLDEN gilliflower to-day
I wore upon my helm away,
And won the prize of this tourney.
Hah! hah! la Itelle jaune giroflee.

However well Sir Giles might sit,
His sun was weak to wither it.
Lord Miles's blood was dew on it :
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune girqflee.

Although my spear in splinters flew
From John's steel-coat my eye was true ;
I wheeFd about, and cried for you.
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune giroflee.

Yea, do not doubt my heart was good,
Though my sword flew like rotten wood.
To shout, although I scarcely stood,
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune giroflee.
154

My hand was steady too, to take
My axe from round my neck, and break
John's steel-coat up for my love's sake.
Hah / hah ! la belle jaune gtrqflee.

When I stood in my tent again,
Arming afresh, I felt a pain
Take hold of me, I was so fain —
Hah / hah ! la belle jaune girqflee.

To hear : " Honneur auxjils des preux / "
Right in my ears again, and shew
The gilliflower blossom'd new.
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune girqflee.

The Sieur Guillaume against me came.
His tabard bore three points of flame
From a red heart : with little blame —
Hah I hah / la belle jaune girqflee.

Our tough spears crackled up like straw ;
He was the first to turn and draw
His sword, that had nor speck nor flaw,-
Hah ! hah I la belle jaune g'lroflee.

But I felt weaker than a maid,
And my brain, dizzied and afraid,
155

Within my helm a fierce tune play'd,—
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune girqflee*

Until I thought of your dear head,
Bow'd to the gilliflower bed,
The yellow flowers stain'd with red ; —
Hah! hah! la belle jaune girqfiee.

Crash ! how the swords met, ^^giroflee! "
The fierce tune in my helm would play,
^^ La belle ! la belle ! jaune girqfiee ! "
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune ghqflee.

Once more the great swords met again,
" La belle ! la belle ! " but who fell then ?
Le Sieur Guillaume, who struck down ten —
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune giroflee.

And as with mazed and unarm'd face.
Toward my own crown and the Queen's place.
They led me at a gentle pace —
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune girqfiee.

I almost saw your quiet head
Bow'd o'er the gilliflower bed.
The yellow flowers stain'd with red —
Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune girqfiee,

156

SHAMEFUL DEATH

THERE were four of us about that bed ;
The mass-priest knelt at the side,
I and his mother stood at the head,

Over his feet lay the bride ;
We were quite sure that he was dead,
Though his eyes were open wide.

He did not die in the night,

He did not die in the day,
But in the morning twilight

His spirit pass'd away,
When neither sun nor moon was bright,

And the trees were merely grey.

He was not slain with the sword,
Knight's axe, or the knightly spear,

Yet spoke he never a word
After he came in here ;
'57

I cut away the cord

From the neck of my brother dear.

He did not strike one blow,
For the recreants came behind,

In a place where the hornbeams grow,
A path right hard to find.

For the hornbeam boughs swing so,
That the twilight makes it blind.

They lighted a great torch then.
When his arms were pinion'd fast.

Sir John the knight of the Fen,
Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast,

With knights threescore and ten.
Hung brave Lord Hugh at last.

I am threescore and ten.

And my hair is all turn'd grey.

But I met Sir John of the Fen
Long ago on a summer day,

And am glad to think of the moment when
I took his life away.

I am threescore and ten.

And my strength is mostly pass'd,
158

But long ago I and my men,

When the sky was overcast,
And the smoke rolFd over the reeds of the fen,

Slew Guy of the Dolorous Blast.

And now, knights all of you,

I pray you pray for Sir Hugh,
A good knight and a true.

And for Alice, his wife, pray too.

159

THE EVE OF CRECY

GOLD on her head, and gold on her feet,
And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet.
And a golden girdle round my sweet ; —
M ! quelle est belle La Marguerite.

Margaret's maids are fair to see.
Freshly dressed and pleasantly ;
Margaret's hair falls down to her knee ; —
Ah ! qu^elle est belle La Marguerite,

If I were rich I would kiss her feet,
I would kiss the place where the gold hems meet,
And the golden girdle round my sweet —
Ah / qu^elle est belle La Marguerite,

Ah me ! I have never touch'd her hand ;
When the arriere-ban goes through the land,
Six basnets under my pennon stand ; —
Ah ! qu^elle est belle La Marguerite,
1 60

And many an one grins under his hood :
" Sir Lambert de Bois, with all his men good,
Has neither food nor firewood ; " —
Jlh ! quelle est belle La Marguerite*

If I were rich I would kiss her feet,
And the golden girdle of my sweet,
And thereabouts where the gold hems meet ; —
Ah ! qu'elle est belle La Marguerite.

Yet even now it is good to think.
While my few poor varlets grumble and drink
In my desolate hall, where the fires sink, —
Ah / quelle est belle La Marguerite.

Of Margaret sitting glorious there,
In glory of gold and glory of hair.
And glory of glorious face most fair ; —
Ah / quelle est belle La Marguerite,

Likewise to-night I make good cheer,
Because this battle draweth near :
For what have I to lose or fear ? —
Ah ! qu^elle est belle La Marguerite,

For, look you, my horse is good to prance,
A right fair measure in this war-dance,

l6l M

Before the eyes of Philip of France ; —
Ah / qu^elle est belle La Marguerite,

And some time it may hap, perdie,
While my new towers stand up three and three,
And my hall gets painted fair to see —
Ah / quelle est belle La Marguerite.

That folks say: "Times change, by the rood,
For Lambert, banneret of the wood,
Has heaps of food and firewood ; —

Ah / quelle est belle La Marguerite ; —

" And wonderful eyes, too, under the hood
Of a damsel of right noble blood : "
St. Ives, for Lambert of the wood ! —
Ah / qu'elle est belle La Marguerite.

162

THE JUDGMENT OF GOD

« QWERVE to the left, son Roger," he said,
1^" When you catch his eyes through the helm
Swerve to the left, then out at his head,
And the Lord God give you joy of it ! "

The blue owls on my father's hood

Were a little dimm'd as I turned away ;

This giving up of blood for blood
Will finish here somehow to-day.

So — when I walk'd out from the tent,
Their howling almost blinded me ;

Yet for all that I was not bent
By any shame. Hard by, the sea

Made a noise like the aspens where
We did that wrong, but now the place

Is very pleasant, and the air

Blows cool on any passer's face.
163

And all the wrong is gathered now

Into the circle of these lists —
Yea, howl out, butchers ! tell me how

His hands were cut off at the wrists ;

And how Lord Roger bore his face
A league above his spear-point, high

Above the owls, to that strong place
Among the waters — yea, yea, cry :

" What a brave champion we have got !

Sir Oliver, the flower of all
The Hainault knights.'' The day being hot,

He sat beneath a broad white pall.

White linen over all his steel ;

What a good knight he look'd ! his sword
Laid thwart his knees ; he liked to feel

Its steadfast edge clear as his word.

And he look'd solemn ; how his love
Smiled whitely on him, sick with fear !

How all the ladies up above

Twisted their pretty hands ! so near

The fighting was — Ellayne ! EUayne !
They cannot love like you can, who
164

J

Would burn your hands off, if that pain
Could win a kiss — am I not true

To you for ever ? therefore I

Do not fear death or anything.
If I should limp home wounded, why,

When I lay sick you would but sing,

And sooth me into quiet sleep.

If they spat on the recreaunt knight,
Threw stones at him, and cursed him deep,

Why then — what then ; your hand would light

So gently on his drawn-up face.

And you would kiss him, and in soft

Cool scented clothes would lap him, pace
The quiet room and weep oft, — oft

Would turn and smile, and brush his cheek
With your sweet chin and mouth ; and in

The order'd garden you would seek
The biggest roses — any sin.

And these say : " No more now my knight,
Or God's knight any longer " — you.

Being than they so much more white,
So much more pure and good and true,

.65

Will cling to me for ever — there,
Is not that wrong turn'd right at last

Through all these years, and I wash'd clean ?
Say, yea, EUayne ; the time is past,

Since on that Christmas-day last year

Up to your feet the fire crept.
And the smoke through the brown leaves sere

Blinded your dear eyes that you wept ;

Was it not I that caught you then.
And kiss'd you on the saddle-bow ?

Did not the blue owl mark the men

Whose spears stood like the corn a-row ?

This Oliver is a right good knight.
And must needs beat me, as I fear,

Unless I catch him in the fight.

My father's crafty way — " John, here !

" Bring up the men from the south gate.

To help me if I fall or win,
For even if I beat, their hate

Will grow to more than this mere grin."

i66

u

THE LITTLE TOWER

P and away through the drifting rain !
Let us ride to the Little Tower again,

Up and away from the council-board !
Do on the hauberk, gird on the sword.

The king is blind with gnashing his teeth,
Change gilded scabbard to leather sheath :

Though our arms are wet with the slanting rain,
This is joy to ride to my love again :

I laugh in his face when he bids me yield ;
Who knows one field from the other field,

For the grey rain driveth all astray ? —

Which way through the floods, good carle, I pray ?

" The left side yet ! the left side yet !
Till your hand strikes on the bridge parapet."
167

" Yea so : the causeway holdeth good
Under the water ? " " Hard as wood ;

Right away to the uplands ; speed, good knight.' '
Seven hours yet before the light.

Shake the wet ofF the upland road ;
My taberd has grown a heavy load.

What matter ? up and down hill after hill ;
Dead grey night for five hours still.

The hill-road droppeth lower again,
Lower, down to the poplar plain.

No furlong farther for us to-night,
The Little Tower draweth in sight ;

They are ringing the bells, and the torches glare.
Therefore the roofs of wet slate stare.

There she stands, and her yellow hair slantingly
Drifts the same way that the rain goes by.

Who will be faithful to us to-day,

With little but hard glaive-strokes for pay ?

The grim king fumes at the council-board :
^' Three more days, and then the sword ;
i68

Three more days, and my sword through his head ;
And above his white brows, pale and dead,

A paper crown on the top of the spire ;
And for her the stake and the witches' fire."

Therefore though it be Jong ere day,
Take axe and pick and spade, I pray.

Break the dams down all over the plain :
God send us three more days such rain :

Block all the upland roads with trees ;
The Little Tower with no great ease

Is won, I warrant ; bid them bring
Much sheep and oxen, everything

The spits are wont to turn with ; wine
And wheaten bread, that we may dine

In plenty each day of the siege ;

Good friends, ye know me no hard liege ;

My lady is right fair, see ye !

Pray God to keep you frank and free.

Love Isabeau, keep goodly cheer ;
The Little Tower will stand well here
169

Many a year when we are dead,
And over it our green and red,
Barred with the Lady's golden head ;
From mere old age when we are dead.

17Q

THE SAILING OF THE SWORD

ACROSS the empty garden-beds,
When the Sword went out to sea,
I scarcely saw my sisters' heads

Bowed each beside a tree.
I could not see the castle leads,
When the Sword went out to sea,

Alicia wore a scarlet gown,

When the Sword went out to sea.

But Ursula's was russet brown :
For the mist we could not see

The scarlet roofs of the good town.
When the Sword went out to sea.

Green holly in Alicia's hand.
When the Sword went out to sea ;

With sere oak-leaves did Ursula stand ;
O ! yet alas for me !
171

I did but bear a peel'd white wand,
When the Sivord went out to sea,

O, russet brown and scarlet bright,
When the Sword went out to sea^

My sisters wore ; I wore but white :
Red, brown, and white, are three ;

Three damozels ; each had a knight,
When the Sword went out to sea.

Sir Robert shouted loud, and said.
When the Sword went out to sea,

" Alicia, while I see thy head.
What shall I bring for thee ? ''

" O, my sweet lord, a ruby red : "
The Sword ivent out to sea.

Sir Miles said, while the sails hung down.
When the Sword went out to sea^

" O, Ursula ! while I see the town,
What shall I bring for thee ? "

" Dear knight, bring back a falcon brown : "
The Sword went out to sea.

But my Roland, no word he said
When the Sivord went out to sea;

172

_J

But only turn'd away his head, —

A quick shriek came from me :
" Come back, dear lord, to your white maid ; '

The Sword ivent out to sea.

The hot sun bit the garden-beds,

When the Sword came hack from sea ;

Beneath an apple-tree our heads
Stretched out toward the sea ;

Grey gleam'd the thirsty castle leads,
When the Sword came back from sea.

Lord Robert brought a ruby red.
When the Sword came back from sea;

He kissed Alicia on the head :
" I am come back to thee ;

'Tis time, sweet love, that we were wed.
Now the Sword is back from sea / "

Sir Miles he bore a falcon brown.
When the Sword came back from sea ;

His arms went round tall Ursula's gown, —
" What joy, O love, but thee ?

Let us be wed in the good town,
Now the Sword is back from sea / "
173

My heart grew sick, no more afraid,
When the Sword came back from sea;

Upon the deck a tall white maid
Sat on Lord Roland's knee ;

His chin was press' d upon her head,
When the Sword came back from sea !

174

SPELL-BOUND

HOW weary is it none can tell,
How dismally the days go by !
I hear the tinkling of the bell,
I see the cross against the sky.

The year wears round to autumn-tide.

Yet comes no reaper to the corn ;
The golden land is like a bride

When first she knows herself forlorn-
She sits and weeps with all her hair

Laid downwards over tender hands ;
For stained silk she hath no care.

No care for broken ivory wands ;

The silver cups beside her stand ;
The golden stars on the blue roof
175

Yet glitter, though against her hand
His cold sword presses for a proof

He is not dead, but gone away.

How many hours did she wait
For me, I wonder ? Till the day

Had faded wholly, and the gate

Clanged to behind returning knights ?

I wonder did she raise her head
And go away, fleeing the lights ;

And lay the samite on her bed,

The wedding samite strewn with pearls :
Then sit with hands laid on her knees.

Shuddering at half-heard sound of girls
That chatter outside in the breeze ?

I wonder did her poor heart throb
At distant tramp of coming knight ?

How often did the choking sob

Raise up her head and lips ? The light.

Did it come on her unawares.

And drag her sternly down before

People who loved her not ? in prayers
Did she say one name and no more ?
176

And once — all songs they ever sung,

All tales they ever told to me,
This only burden through them rung :

0 / golden love that waitest me^

The days pass on, pass on apace.

Sometimes I have a little rest
In fairest dreams, ivhen on thy face

My lips lie, or thy hands are prest

About my forehead, and thy lips

Draw near and nearer to mine own ;

But when the vision from me slips.
In colourless dawn I lie and moan.

And wander forth with fever d blood.
That makes me start at little things.

The blackbird screaming from the ivood.
The sudden whirr of pheasants'^ wings,

0 ! dearest, scarcely seen by me —

But when that wild time had gone by.

And in these arms I folded thee.

Who ever thought those days could die ?

Yet now I wait, and you wait too.

For what perchance may never come ;

177 ]

You think I have forgotten you,
That I grew tired and went home.

But what if some day as I stood

Against the wall with strained hands,

And turn'd my face toward the wood.
Away from all the golden lands ;

And saw you come with tired feet

And pale face thin and wan with care,

And stained raiment no more neat,

The white dust lying on your hair : —

Then I should say, I could not come ;

This land was my wide prison, dear ;
I could not choose but go ; at home

There is a wizard whom I fear :

He bound me round with silken chains
I could not break ; he set me here

Above the golden-waving plains.
Where never reaper cometh near.

And you have brought me my good sword.
Wherewith in happy days of old

I won you well from knight and lord ;
My heart upswells and I grow bold.
178

But I shall die unless you stand,

— Half lying now, you are so weak,-

Within my arms, unless your hand
Pass to and fro across my cheek.

179

THE WIND

AH ! no, no, it is nothing, surely nothing at all.
Only the wild-going wind round by the garden-
wall,
For the dawn just now is breaking, the wind begin-
ning to fall.

Wind, wind / thou art sad, art thou kind P
Wind, nvlnd, unhappy ! thou art blind,
Tet still thou wanderest the Uly-seed tojind*

So I will sit, and think and think of the days gone by,
Never moving my chair for fear the dogs should cry,
Making no noise at all while the flambeau burns awry.

For my chair is heavy and carved, and with sweeping

green behind
It is hung, and the dragons thereon grin out in the

gusts of the wind ;

On its folds an orange lies, with a deep gash cut in

the rind.

i8o

wind, wind ! thou art sad, art thou kind P

Windy wind, unhappy ! thou art blind,

Tet still thou wanderest the Uly-seed tojind.

If I move my chair it will scream, and the orange will

roll out far,
And the faint yellow juice ooze out like blood from a

wizard's jar ;
And the dogs will howl for those who went last

month to the war.

Wind, wind ! thou art sad, art thou kind P
Wind, wind, unhappy / thou art blind,
Tet still thou wanderest the llly^seed tojind.

So I will sit and think of love that is over and past,
O ! so long ago — yes, I will be quiet at last ;
Whether I like it or not, a grim half-slumber is cast

Over my worn old brains, that touches the roots of my

heart.
And above my half-shut eyes the blue roof *gins to

part.
And show the blue spring sky, till I am ready to

start

i8i

From out of the green-hung chair; but something

keeps me still,
And I fall in a dream that I walk'd with her on the

side of a hill,
Dotted — for was it not spring ? — with tufts of the

daffodil.

Wind^ fwind ! thou art sad, art thou kind P
Wind, ivindy unhappy ! thou art Mind,
Tet still thou ivanderest the lily-seed tojind.

And Margaret as she walk'd held a painted book in

her hand ;
Her linger kept the place ; I caught her, we both did

stand
Face to face, on the top of the highest hill in the

land.

Wind, loind ! thou art sad, art thou hind P
Wind, ivind, unhappy ! thou art blind,
Tet still thou ivanderest the lily-seed tojind,

I held to her long bare arms, but she shuddered away

from me.
While the flush went out of her face as her head fell

back on a tree.
And a spasm caught her mouth, fearful for me to see ;
182

And still I held to her arms till her shoulder touched

my mail,
Weeping she totter'd forward, so glad that I should

prevail,
And her hair went over my robe, like a gold flag over

a sail.

Windy wind / thou art sady art thou kind P
Wind, windy unhappy ! thou art blindy
Tet still thou wanderest the lily -seed tojind.

I kiss'd her hard by the ear, and she kiss'd me on the

brow.
And then lay down on the grass, where the mark on

the moss is now.
And spread her arms out wide while I went down

below.

Windy wind ! thou art sady art thou kind P
Windy windy unhappy / thou art blindy
Tet still thou wanderest the lily-seed to find.

And then I walk'd for a space to and fro on the side

of the hill.
Till I gathered and held in my arms great sheaves of

the daffodil.
And when I came again my Margaret lay there still.
183

I piled them high and high above her heaving breast,
How they were caught and held in her loose ungirded

vest!
But one beneath her arm died, happy so to be prest !

Wind, ivtnd / thou art sad, art thou kind P
Wind, ivind, unhappy I thou art blind,
Tet still thou wanderest the lily-seed tojind.

Again I turn'd my back and went away for an hour ;
She said no word when I came again, so, flower by

flower,
I counted the daffodils over, and cast them languidly

lower.

Wind, wind ! thou art sad, art thou hind P
Wind, wind, unhappy / thou art blind,
Tet still thou wanderest the lily-seed tojind.

My dry hands shook and shook as the green gown

show'd again,
Clear'd from the yellow flowers, and I grew hollow

with pain.
And on to us both there fell from the sun-shower

drops of rain.

184

Wind^ wind / thou art sad^ art thou hind ?
Windy windy unhappy ! thou art hlind^
Tet still thou wanderest the lily-seed tojind.

Alas ! alas ! there was blood on the very quiet breast,
Blood lay in the many folds of the loose ungirded vest,
Blood lay upon her arm where the flower had been
prest.

I shriekM and leapt from my chair, and the orange

roll'd out far.
The faint yellow juice oozed out like blood from a

wizard's jar ;
And then in march'd the ghosts of those that had gone

to the war.

I knew them by the arms that I was used to paint
Upon their long thin shields ; but the colours were all

grown faint,
And faint upon their banner was Olaf, king and saint.

Windy wind I thou art sady art thou kind P
Windy windy unhappy / thou art blindy
Tet still thou wanderest the lily-seed to find.

i8S

THE BLUE CLOSET

The Damozels.

LADY Alice, lady Louise,
Between the wash of the tumbling seas
We are ready to sing, if so ye please ;
So lay your long hands on the keys ;

Sing, ^^ Laudate puerJJ^

And ever the great hell overhead
Bootnd in the iv'ind a hndl for the dead,
Though no one tolFd It, a knell for the dead.

Lady Louise.

Sister, let the measure swell
Not too loud ; for you sing not well
If you drown the faint boom of the bell ;
He is weary, so am I.
i86

jind ever the chevron overhead
Flapped on the banner of the dead ;
(^Was he asleep^ or was he dead P)

Lady Alice.

Alice the Queen, and Louise the Queen,
Two damozels wearing purple and green,
Four lone ladies dwelling here
From day to day and year to year ;
And there is none to let us go ;
To break the locks of the doors below.
Or shovel away the heaped-up snow ;
And when we die no man will know
That we are dead ; but they give us leave,
Once every year on Christmas-eve,
To sing in the Closet Blue one song ;
And we should be so long, so long.
If we dared, in singing ; for dream on dream,
They float on in a happy stream ;
Float from the gold strings, float from the keys,
Float from the openM lips of Louise ;
But, alas ! the sea-salt oozes through
The chinks of the tiles of the Closet Blue ;
^nd ever the great bell overhead

1S7

Booms in the wind a knell for the deady
The wind plays on it a knell for the dead,

( They sing all together, )

How long ago was it, how long ago,

He came to this tower with hands full of snow ?

" Kneel down, O love Louise, kneel down," he said,
And sprinkled the dusty snow over my head.

He watch'd the snow melting, it ran through my hair,
Ran over my shoulders, white shoulders and bare.

" I cannot weep for thee, poor love Louise,
For my tears are all hidden deep under the seas ;

" In a gold and blue casket she keeps all my tears.
But my eyes are no longer blue, as in old years ;

" Yea, they grow grey with time, grow small and dry,
I am so feeble now, would I might die."

^nd in truth the great bell overhead
Left off his pealing for the deady
Perchance^ because the wind was dead.

Will he come back again, or is he dead ?
O ! is he sleeping, my scarf round his head \
i88

Or did they strangle him as he lay there,
With the long scarlet scarf I used to wear ?

Only I pray thee, Lord, let him come here !
Both his soul and his body to me are most dear.

Dear Lord, that loves me, I wait to receive
Either body or spirit this wild Christmas-eve.

Through thejioor shot up a lily red^

With a patch of earth from the land of the dead.

For he was strong in the land of the dead.

What matter that his cheeks were pale,
His kind kiss'd lips all grey ?

" O, love Louise, have you waited long ? ''
" O, my lord Arthur, yea."

What if his hair that brush'd her cheek

Was stiff with frozen rime ?
His eyes were grown quite blue again.

As in the happy time.

" O, love Louise, this is the key
Of the happy golden land ! "

O, sisters, cross the bridge with me.
My eyes are full of sand.
189

What matter that I cannot see,
If ye take me by the hand ?

jind ever the great bell overhead j

And the tumbling seas mourn d for the dead ;

For their song ceased^ and they nvere dead.

190

THE TUNE OF SEVEN TOWERS

NO one goes there now ;
For what is left to fetch away
From the desolate battlements all arow,
And the lead roof heavy and grey ?
^^Thereforcy^ said fair Tolatid of the jiowers ^
*' This is the tune of Seven Towers J' ^

No one walks there now ;

Except in the white moonlight
The white ghosts walk in a row ;
If one could see it, an awful sight, —
" Listen ! " said fair Toland of the flowers ^
" This is the tune of Seven TowersJ'^

But none can see them now,

Though they sit by the side of the moat,
Feet half in the water, there in a row,

Long hair in the wind afloat.
191

" ThereforCy^ said fair Toland of the JlowerSy
" This is the tune of Seven Towers J^

If any will go to it now,

He must go to it all alone,
Its gates will not open to any row

Of glittering spears — will you go alone ?
^"^ Listen /" said fair Toland of the flowers ^
" This is the tune of Seven Towers T

By my love go there now.

To fetch me my coif away,
My coif and my kirtle, with pearls arow,
Oliver, go to-day !
** Therefore ^^ said fair Toland of the flowers ^
" This is the tune of Seven Towers J^

1 am unhappy now,

I cannot tell you why ;
If you go, the priests and I in a row
Will pray that you may not die.
" Listen ! " said fair Toland of the flowers ^
** This is the tune of Seven Towers J ^

If you will go for me now,
I will kiss your mouth at last ;
192

l^S^e sayeth inwardly r\
{The graves stand grey in a row,)
Oliver, hold me fast !
" Therefore y" said fair Toland of the flowers,
" This is the tune of Seven Tower s,^^

193

GOLDEN WINGS

MIDWAYS of a walled garden.
In the happy poplar land,
Did an ancient castle stand.
With an old knight for a warden.

Many scarlet bricks there were
In its walls, and old grey stone ;
Over which red apples shone

At the right time of the year.

On the bricks the green moss grew,
Yellow lichen on the stone.
Over which red apples shone ;

Little war that castle knew.

Deep green water fill'd the moat.
Each side had a red-brick lip.
Green and mossy with the drip

Of dew and rain ; there was a boat
194

Of carven wood, with hangings green
About the stern ; it was great bliss
For lovers to sit there and kiss

In the hot summer noons, not seen.

Across the moat the fresh west wind

In very little ripples went ;

The way the heavy aspens bent
Towards it, was a thing to mind.

The painted drawbridge over it

Went up and down with gilded chains,
'Twas pleasant in the summer rains

Within the bridge-house there to sit.

There were five swans that ne'er did eat
The water- weeds, for ladies came
Each day, and young knights did the same.

And gave them cakes and bread for meat.

They had a house of painted wood,
A red roof gold-spiked over it.
Wherein upon their eggs to sit

Week after week ; no drop of blood,
195

Drawn from men's bodies by sword-blows,
Came ever there, or any tear ;
Most certainly from year to year

'Twas pleasant as a Provence rose.

The banners seem'd quite full of ease.
That over the turret-roofs hung down ;
The battlements could get no frown

From the flower-moulded cornices.

Who walked in that garden there ?

Miles and Giles and Isabeau,

Tall Jehane du Castel beau,
Alice of the golden hair.

Big Sir Gervaise, the good knight,

Fair Ellayne le Violet,

Mary, Constance fille de fay.
Many dames with footfall light.

Whosoever wander' d there.
Whether it be dame or knight.
Half of scarlet, half of white

Their raiment was ; of roses fair
196

Each wore a garland on the head,
At Ladies' Gard the way was so :
Fair Jehane du Castel beau

Wore her wreath till it was dead.

Little joy she had of it,

Of the raiment white and red.
Or the garland on her head,

She had none with whom to sit

In the carven boat at noon ;

None the more did Jehane weep,
She would only stand and keep

Saying, "He will be here soon."

Many times in the long day

Miles and Giles and Gervaise past.
Holding each some white hand fast.

Every time they heard her say :

" Summer cometh to an end,
Undern cometh after noon ;
Golden wings will be here soon,

What if I some token send ? "
197

Wherefore that night within the hall,
With open mouth and open eyes,
Like some one listening with surprise,

She sat before the sight of all.

Stoop'd down a little she sat there.

With neck stretch'd out and chin thrown up.

One hand around a golden cup ;
And strangely with her fingers fair

She beat some tune upon the gold ;
The minstrels in the gallery
Sung : " Arthur, who will never die,

In Avallon he groweth old."

And when the song was ended, she

Rose and caught up her gown and ran ;
None stopp'd her eager face and wan

Of all that pleasant company.

Right so within her own chamber
Upon her bed she sat ; and drew
Her breath in quick gasps ; till she knew

That no man follow'd after her :
198

She took the garland from her head,
Loosed all her hair, and let it lie
Upon the coverlit ; thereby

She laid the gown of white and red ;

And she took off her scarlet shoon.

And bared her feet ; still more and more
Her sweet face redden'd ; evermore

She murmur'd : " He will be here soon ;

" Truly he cannot fail to know
My tender body waits him here ;
And if he knows, I have no fear

For poor Jehane du Castel beau."

She took a sword within her hand.
Whose hilts were silver, and she sung.
Somehow like this, wild words that rung

A long way over the moonlit land : —

Gold wings across the sea !
Grey light from tree to tree,
Gold hair beside my knee,
I pray thee come to me.
Gold wings !

199

The water slips,
The red-biird moor-hen dips
Sweet kisses on red lips ;
Alas ! the red rust grips,
And the blood-red dagger rips.
Yet, O knight, come to me !

Are not my blue eyes sweet ?
The west wind from the wheat
Blows cold across my feet ;
Is it not time to meet
Gold wings across the sea ?

White swans on the green moat,
Small feathers left afloat
By the blue-painted boat ;
Swift running of the stoat ;
Sweet gurgling note by note
Of sweet music.

O gold wings.
Listen how gold hair sings.
And the Ladies' Castle rings.
Gold wings across the sea.

I sit on a purple bed,
Outside, the wall is red,

200

Thereby the apple hangs,

And the wasp, caught by the fangs.

Dies in the autumn night.
And the bat flits till light,
And the love-crazed knight

Kisses the long wet grass :
The wTary days pass, —
Gold wings across the sea !

Gold wings across the sea !
Moonlight from tree to tree,
Sweet hair laid on my knee,
O, sweet knight, come to me !

Gold wings, the short night slips,
The white swan's long neck drips,
I pray thee, kiss my lips.
Gold wings across the sea.

No answer through the moonlit night ;

No answer in the cold grey dawn ;

No answer when the shaven lawn
Grows green, and all the roses bright.

Her tired feet look'd cold and thin,

Her lips were twitched, and wretched tears,
Some, as she lay, roll'd past her ears,

Some fell from off her quivering chin.

Her long throat, stretch'd to its full length.
Rose up and fell right brokenly ;
As though the unhappy heart was nigh

Striving to break with all its strength.

And when she slipp'd from off the bed.

Her cramped feet would not hold her ; she
Sank down and crept on hand and knee.

On the window-sill she laid her head.

There, with crooked arm upon the sill.
She look'd out, muttering dismally :
" There is no sail upon the sea.

No pennon on the empty hill.

" I cannot stay here all alone.

Or meet their happy faces here.

And wretchedly I have no fear ;
A little while, and I am gone."

Therewith she rose upon her feet,
And totter'd ; cold and misery
Still made the deep sobs come, till she

At last stretch'd out her fingers sweet,

And caught the great sword in her hand ;

And, stealing down the silent stair,

Barefooted in the morning air.
And only in her smock did stand

Upright upon the green lawn grass ;

And hope grew in her as she said ;

" I have thrown off the white and red,
And pray God it may come to pass

" I meet him ; if ten years go by
Before I meet him ; if, indeed,
Meanwhile both soul and body bleed,

Yet there is end of misery,

" And I have hope. He could not come.
But I can go to him and show
These new things I have got to know,

And make him speak, who has been dumb."
203

O Jehane ! the red morning sun

Changed her white feet to glowing gold,
Upon her smock, on crease and fold.

Changed that to gold which had been dun.

Oh Miles, and Giles, and Isabeau,
Fair Ellayne le Violet,
Mary, Constance fille de fay !

Where is Jehane du Castel beau ?

O big Gervaise ride apace !

Down to the hard yellow sand,
Where the water meets the land.

This is Jehane by her face ;

Why has she a broken sword ?

Mary ! she is slain outright ;

Verily a piteous sight ;
Take her up without a word !

Giles and Miles and Gervaise there,
Ladies' Gard must meet the war ;
Whatsoever knights these are,

Man the walls withouten fear !

204

Axes to the apple-trees,

Axes to the aspens tali !

Barriers without the wall
May be lightly made of these.

O poor shivering Isabeau ;
Poor Ellayne le Violet,
Bent with fear ! we miss to-day

Brave Jehane du Castel beau.

O poor Mary, weeping so !

Wretched Constance fille de fay !

Verily we miss to-day
Fair Jehane du Castel beau.

The apples now grow green and sour
Upon the mouldering castle-wall.
Before they ripen there they fall :

There are no banners on the tower.

The draggled swans most eagerly eat
The green weeds trailing in the moat !
Inside the rotting leaky boat

You see a slain man's stifFen'd feet,
205

THE HAYSTACK IN THE FLOODS

HAD she come all the way for this,
To part at last without a kiss ?
Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain
That her own eyes might see him slain
Beside the haystack in the floods ?

Along the dripping leafless woods.
The stirrup touching either shoe,
She rode astride as troopers do ;
With kirtle kilted to her knee.
To which the mud splash'd wretchedly ;
And the wet dripp'd from every tree
Upon her head and heavy hair.
And on her eyelids broad and fair ;
The tears and rain ran down her face.

By fits and starts they rode apace.
And very often was his place

206

Far off from her ; he had to ride

Ahead, to see what might betide

When the roads cross'd ; and sometimes, when

There rose a murmuring from his men.

Had to turn back with promises ;

Ah me ! she had but little ease ;

And often for pure doubt and dread

She sobb'd, made giddy in the head

By the swift riding ; while, for cold.

Her slender fingers scarce could hold

The wet reins ; yea, and scarcely, too.

She felt the foot within her shoe

Against the stirrup : all for this,

To part at last without a kiss

Beside the haystack in the floods.

For when they near'd that old soak'd hay,

They saw across the only way

That Judas, Godmar, and the three

Red running lions dismally

Grinn'd from his pennon, under which.

In one straight line along the ditch.

They counted thirty heads.

So then,
While Robert turn'd round to his men,

207

She saw at once the wretched end,
And, stooping down, tried hard to rend
Her coif the wrong way from her head.
And hid her eyes ; while Robert said :
" Nay, love, 'tis scarcely two to one.
At Poictiers, where we made them run
So fast — why, sweet my love, good cheer.
The Gascon frontier is so near.
Nought after this/'

But, <« O," she said,
" My God ! my God ! I have to tread
The long way back without you ; then
The court at Paris ; those six men ;
The gratings of the Chatelet ;
The swift Seine on some rainy day
Like this, and people standing by.
And laughing, while my weak hands try
To recollect how strong men swim.
All this, or else a life with him.
For which I should be damned at last.
Would God that this next hour were past ! "

He answer'd not, but cried his cry,
" St. George for Marny ! " cheerily ;
208

And laid his hand upon her rein.
Alas ! no man of all his train
Gave back that cheery cry again ;
And, while for rage his thumb beat fast
Upon his sword-hilts, some one cast
About his neck a kerchief long,
And bound him.

Then they went along
To Godmar ; who said : " Now, Jehane,
Your lover's life is on the wane
So fast, that, if this very hour
You yield not as my paramour,
He will not see the rain leave off —
Nay, keep your tongue from gibe and scoff.
Sir Robert, or I slay you now."

She laid her hand upon her brow.

Then gazed upon the palm, as though

She thought her forehead bled, and — ** No,"

She said, and turn'd her head away.

As there were nothing else to say,

And everything were settled : red

Grew Godmar's face from chin to head :

"Jehane, on yonder hill there stands

My castle, guarding well my lands :

209 p

What hinders me from taking you,
And doing that I list to do
To your fair wilful body, while
Your knight lies dead ? "

A wicked smile
Wrinkled her face, her lips grew thin,
A long way out she thrust her chin :
<* You know that I should strangle you
While you were sleeping ; or bite through
Your throat, by God's help — ah ! " she said,
" Lord Jesus, pity your poor maid !
For in such wise they hem me in,
I cannot choose but sin and sin,
Whatever happens : yet I think
They could not make me eat and drink.
And so should I just reach my rest."

" Nay, if you do not my behest,

O Jehane ! though I love you well,"

Said Godmar, " would I fail to tell

All that I know." " Foul lies," she said.

" Eh ? lies, my Jehane ? by God's head,

At Paris folks would deem them true !

Do you know, Jehane, they cry for you,

* Jehane the brown ! Jehane the brown !

Give us Jehane to burn or drown ! ' —

Eh — gag me Robert — Sweet my friend,

This were indeed a piteous end

For those long fingers, and long feet.

And long neck, and smooth shoulders sweet ;

An end that few men would forget

That saw it — So, an hour yet :

Consider, Jehane, which to take

Of life or death!''

So, scarce awake,
Dismounting, did she leave that place.
And totter some yards ; with her face
Turn'd upward to the sky she lay.
Her head on a wet heap of hay.
And fell asleep : and while she slept.
And did not dream, the minutes crept
Round to the twelve again ; but she,
Being waked at last, sigh'd quietly.
And strangely child-like came, and said :
<* I will not." Straightway Godmar's head.
As though it hung on strong wires, turn'd
Most sharply round, and his face burn'd.

For Robert — both his eyes were dry,
He could not weep, but gloomily
He seem'd to watch the rain ; yea, too.
His lips were firm ; he tried once more
To touch her lips ; she reach'd out, sore
And vain desire so tortured them.
The poor grey lips, and now the hem
Of his sleeve brush'd them.

With a start
Up Godmar rose, thrust them apart ;
From Robert's throat he loosed the bands
Of silk and mail; with empty hands
Held out, she stood and gazed, and saw
The long bright blade without a flaw
Glide out, from Godmar's sheath, his hand
In Robert's hair ; she saw him bend
Back Robert's head ; she saw him send
The thin steel down ; the blow told well,
Right backward the knight Robert fell.
And moan'd as dogs do, being half dead,
Unwitting, as I deem : so then
Godmar turn'd grinning to his men.
Who ran, some five or six, and beat
His head to pieces at their feet.

Then Godmar turn'd again and said :
" So, Jehane, the first fitte is read !
Take note, my lady, that your way
Lies backward to the Chatelet ! "
She shook her head and gazed awhile
At her cold hands with a rueful smile,
As though this thing had made her mad.

This was the parting that they had
Beside the haystack in the floods.

213

TWO RED ROSES ACROSS THE MOON

THERE was a lady lived in a hall,
Large in the eyes, and slim and tall ;
And ever she sang from noon to noon,
Tivo red roses across the moon.

There was a knight came riding by
In early spring, when the roads were dry ;
And he heard that lady sing at the noon,
Tnvo red roses across the moon.

Yet none the more he stopp'd at all.
But he rode a-gallop past the hall ;
And left that lady singing at noon,
Tivo red roses across the moon.

Because, forsooth, the battle was set.
And the scarlet and blue had got to be met.
He rode on the spur till the next warm noon ; —
Two red roses across the moon.
214

But the battle was scattered from hill to hill,
From the windmill to the watermill ;
And he said to himself, as it near'd the noon.
Two red roses across the moon.

You scarce could see for the scarlet and blue,
A golden helm or a golden shoe ;
So he cried, as the fight grew thick at the noon.
Two red roses across the moon.

Verily then the gold bore through
The huddled spears of the scarlet and blue ;
And they cried, as they cut them down at the noon,
Two red roses across the moon,

I trow he stopp'd when he rode again
By the hall, though draggled sore with the rain ;
And his lips were pinch'd to kiss at the noon
Two red roses across the moon.

Under the may she stoop'd to the crown.
All was gold, there was nothing of brown ;
And the horns blew up the hall at noon
Two red roses across the moon.

215

WELLAND RIVER

FAIR Ellayne she walk'd by Welland river,
Across the lily lee :
O, gentle Sir Robert, ye are not kind
To stay so long at sea.

Over the marshland none can see

Your scarlet pennon fair ;
O, leave the Easterlings alone.

Because of my golden hair.

The day when over Stamford bridge

That dear pennon I see
Go up toward the goodly street,

'Twill be a fair day for me.

O, let the bonny pennon bide

At Stamford, the good town.
And let the Easterlings go free.

And their ships go up and down.
zi6

For every day that passes by

I wax both pale and green,
From gold to gold of my girdle

There is an inch between.

I sew'd it up with scarlet silk

Last night upon my knee,
And my heart grew sad and sore to think

Thy face I'd never see.

I sew'd it up with scarlet silk,

As I lay upon my bed :
Sorrow ! the man I'll never see

That had my maidenhead.

But as Ellayne sat on her window-seat
And comb'd her yellow hair.

She saw come over Stamford bridge
The scarlet pennon fair.

As Ellayne lay and sicken'd sore,

The gold shoes on her feet,
She saw Sir Robert and his men

Ride up the Stamford street.

He had a coat of fine red gold,

And a bascinet of steel ;
Take note his goodly Collayne sword

Smote the spur upon his heel.

And by his side, on a grey jennet.

There rode a fair lady.
For every ruby Ellayne wore,

I count she carried three.

Say, was not Ellayne's gold hair fine.

That fell to her middle free ?
But that lady's hair down in the street.

Fell lower than her knee.

Fair Ellayne's face, from sorrow and grief,

Was waxen pale and green ;
That lady's face was goodly red.

She had but little tene.

But as he pass'd by her window

He grew a little wroth :
O, why does yon pale face look at me

From out the golden cloth ?
218

It is some burd, the fair dame said

That aye rode him beside,
Has come to see your bonny face

This merry summer-tide.

But Ellayne let a lily-flower

Light on his cap of steel :
O, I have gotten two hounds, fair knight.

The one has served me well.

But the other, just an hour agone,
Has come from over the sea.

And all his fell is sleek and fine,
But little he knows of me.

Now which shall I let go, fair knight,
And which shall bide with me ?

O, lady, have no doubt to keep
The one that best loveth thee.

O, Robert, see how sick I am !

Ye do not so by me.
Lie still, fair love ! have ye gotten harm

While I was on the sea ?
219

Of one gift, Robert, that ye gave,

I sicken to the death,
I pray you nurse-tend me, my knight,

Whiles that I have my breath.

Six fathoms from the Stamford bridge

He left that dame to stand.
And whiles she wept, and whiles she cursed

That she had ever taken land,

He has kiss'd sweet Ellayne on the mouth.

And fair she fell asleep,
And long and long days after that

Sir Robert's house she did keep.

RIDING TOGETHER

FOR many, many days together
The wind blew steady from the East ;
For many days hot grew the weather.
About the time of our Lady's Feast.

For many days we rode together,
Yet met we neither friend nor foe ;

Hotter and clearer grew the weather,
Steadily did the East wind blow.

We saw the trees in the hot, bright weather
Clear-cut, with shadows very black.

As freely we rode on together

With helms unlaced and bridles slack.

And often as we rode together.

We, looking down the green-bank'd stream.
Saw flowers in the sunny weather.

And saw the bubble-making bream.

And in the night lay down together,
And hung above our heads the rood,

Or watch'd night-long in the dewy weather,
The while the moon did watch the wood.

Our spears stood bright and thick together.
Straight out the banners stream' d behind,

As we gallop'd on in the sunny weather.
With faces turn'd towards the wind.

Down sank our threescore spears together.

As thick we saw the pagans ride ;
His eager face in the clear fresh weather.

Shone out that last time by my side.

Up the sweep of the bridge we dash'd together.
It rock'd to the crash of the meeting spears,

Down rain'd the buds of the dear spring weather,
The elm-tree flowers fell like tears.

There, as we roU'd and writhed together,

I threw my arms above my head.
For close by my side, in the lovely weather,

I saw him reel and fall back dead.

I and the slayer met together,

He waited the death -stroke there in his place,

With thoughts of death, in the lovely weather,
Gapingly mazed at my madden'd face.

Madly I fought as we fought together ;

In vain : the little Christian band
The pagans drown'd, as in stormy weather.

The river drowns low-lying land.

They bound my blood-stain'd hands together,
They bound his corpse to nod by my side :

Then on we rode, in the bright March weather,
With clash of cymbals did we ride.

We ride no more, no more together ;

My prison-bars are thick and strong,
I take no heed of any weather.

The sweet Saints grant I live not long.

223

FATHER JOHN'S WAR-SONG

The Reapers.

SO many reapers, Father John,
So many reapers and no Httle son,
To meet you when the day is done,
With Httle stiff legs to waddle and run ?
Pray you beg, borrow, or steal one son.
Hurrah for the corn-sheaves of Father John !

Father John.
O maiden Mary, be wary, be wary 1
And go not down to the river.
Lest the kingfisher, your evil wisher,
Lure you down to the river.
Lest your white feet grow muddy,
Your red hair too ruddy
With the river-mud so red :
But when you are wed
224

Go down to the river ;

O maiden Mary, be very wary,

And dwell among the corn !

See, this dame Alice, maiden Mary,

Her hair is thin and white.

But she is a housewife good and wary,

And a great steel key hangs bright

From her gown, as red as the flowers in corn;

She is good and old like the autumn corn.

Maiden Mary.

This is knight Roland, Father John,
Stark in his arms from a field half-won ;
Ask him if he has seen your son :
Roland, lay your sword on the corn,
The piled-up sheaves of the golden corn.

Knight Roland.
Why does she kiss me. Father John ?
She is my true love truly won ;
Under my helm is room for one,
But the molten lead-streams trickle and run
From my roof- tree, burning under the sun ;
No corn to burn, we had eaten the corn.
There was no waste of the golden corn.

225 Q

Father John.

Ho, you reapers, away from the corn,

To march with the banner of Father John !

The Reapers.

We will win a house for Roland his son,
And for maiden Mary, with hair like corn.
As red as the reddest of golden corn.

Omnes.

Father John, you have got you a son.
Seven feet high when his helm is on !
Pennon of Roland, banner of John,
Star of Mary, march well on.

226

H

SIR GILES' WAR-SONG

0 / is there any will ride with me.
Sir Giles, le bon des barrieres P

The clink of arms is good to hear,
The flap of pennons fair to see ;
Ho ! is there any will ride with me.
Sir Giles, le bon des barrieres P

The leopards and lilies are fair to see,
" St. George Guienne " right good to hear ;
Ho ! is there any will ride with me.
Sir Giles, le bon des barrieres ?

I stood by the barrier,
My coat being blazon'd fair to see ;
Ho ! is there any will ride with me.
Sir Gilesy le bon des barrieres P
227

Clisson put out his head to see,
And Hfted his basnet up to hear ;

I puird him through the bars to ME,
Sir Giles y le hon des barrieres.

22S

NEAR AVALON

A SHIP with shields before the sun,
Six maidens round the mast,
A red-gold crown on every one,
A green gown on the last.

The fluttering green banners there
Are wrought with ladies' heads most fair,
And a portraiture of Guenevere
The middle of each sail doth bear.

A ship with sails before the wind.

And round the helm six knights.

Their heaumes are on, whereby, half blind,

They pass by many sights.

The tatter'd scarlet banners there.
Right soon will leave the spear-heads bare,
Those six knights sorrowfully bear
In all their heaumes some yellow hair.

229

PRAISE OF MY LADY

MY lady seems of ivory-
Forehead, straight nose, and cheeks that be
Hollow'd a little mournfully.

Beata mea Domina I

Her forehead, overshadow'd much
By bows of hair, has a wave such
As God was good to make for me,
Beata mea Domina /

Not greatly long my lady's hair,
Nor yet with yellow colour fair,
But thick and crisped wonderfully :
Beata mea Domina /

Heavy to make the pale face sad.
And dark, but dead as though it had
Been forged by God most wonderfully
— Beata mea Domina I —
230

Of some strange metal, thread by thread,
To stand out from my lady's head,
Not moving much to tangle me.

Beata mea Dom'tna I

Beneath her brows the lids fall slow,
The lashes a clear shadow throw
Where I would wish my lips to be.
Beata mea Dom'tna !

Her great eyes, standing far apart,
Draw up some memory from her heart,
And gaze out very mournfully ;

— Beata mea Domina / —

So beautiful and kind they are.
But most times looking out afar,
Waiting for something, not for me.
Beata mea Domina !

I wonder if the lashes long

Are those that do her bright eyes wrong.

For always half tears seem to be

— Beata mea Domina ! —
231

Lurking below the underlid,
Darkening the place where they lie hid-
If they should rise and flow for me !
Beata mea Domina /

Her full lips being made to kiss,
CurlM up and pensive each one is ;
This makes me faint to stand and see.
Beata mea Domina /

Her lips are not contented now,
Because the hours pass so slow
Towards a sweet time : (pray for me),
— Beata mea Domina ! —

Nay, hold thy peace ! for who can tell ;
But this at least I know full well.
Her lips are parted longingly,

— Beata mea Domina ! —

So passionate and swift to move.
To pluck at any flying love.
That I grow faint to stand and see.
Beata mea Domina /

Yea ! there beneath them is her chin,
So fine and round, it were a sin
To feel no weaker when I see

— Beat a mea Domina J —

God's dealings ; for with so much care.
And troublous, faint lines wrought in there,
He finishes her face for me.

Beata mea Domina /

Of her long neck what shall I say ?
What things about her body's sway,
Like a knight's pennon or slim tree

— Beata mea Domina ! —

Set gently waving in the wind ;
Or her long hands that I may find
On some day sweet to move o'er me ?
Beata mea Domina !

God pity me though, if I miss'd
The telling, how along her wrist
The veins creep, dying languidly

— Beata mea Domina ! —
233

Inside her tender palm and thin.
Now give me pardon, dear, wherein
My voice is weak and vexes thee.
Beata mea Domina /

All men that see her any time,

I charge you straightly in this rhyme,

What, and wherever you may be,

— Beata mea Domina ! —

To kneel before her ; as for me,
I choke and grow quite faint to see
My lady moving graciously.

Beata mea Domina !

234

SUMMER DAWN

PRAY but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed
lips,

Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,

Faint and grey 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt
the cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn :

Patient and colourless, though Heaven's gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn.

The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises ; the roses are dun ;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn.
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.

Speak but one word to me over the corn,

Over the tender, bow'd locks of the corn.

235

IN PRISON

WEARILY, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone ;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song.
Bending the banner-poles.

While, all alone.

Watching the loophole's spark.

Lie I, with life all dark,

Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd

Fast to the stone.

The grim walls, square lettered

With prison'd men's groan.

Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song.
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong.
236

NOTES

NOTES

Page I. *' Gauivaifte." Morris has here substituted Gau-
waine for his brother Agravaine, who is the accuser and
judge of Guinevere both in Malory and in the French prose
Morte d^Artur. In Malory, Gauwaine makes an eloquent
appeal on her behalf to Arthur (Book xx. c. vii., p. 808,
ed. Sommer).

Page 4. ^^ at Christmas -time This happenea.^^ This account
of Launcelot's coming to Arthur's court is entirely of Morris's
invention, as Malory brings Launcelot into his story with-
out any preliminary introduction.

Page 7. '* Came Launcelot lualking," Malory omits also
the first declaration of love between Launcelot and Guinevere
— one of the most charming passages in medieval prose.
Galehault, his intimate friend, having guessed his secret,
brings about a meeting in the presence of the Dame de
Malehault, who gives the warning cough familiar to readers
of Dante.

Page 8. '* Remember in ivhat grave your mother sleeps ^ Mor-
gause, wife of King Lot, was Arthur's sister, and mother of
Gauwaine, Agravaine, Gaheriet, Gareth, and afterwards of
Mordred. Her death is another of Morris's inventions.

239

NOTES

Page 9. " Mellyagraunce,''^ Launcelot,. coming to see the
queen one day in her chamber, dropped some blood on the
coverlet. Kay was lying wounded in the room, and Melly-
agraunce, her captor, accused them of misconduct, and met
his death at the hands of Launcelot ultimately, though not
in the judicial battle which attested Guinevere's innocence.
The story of the battle is taken from Malory (Book xix. c.
9, p. 786, ed. Sommer).

Page 9. *'/^ Fausse Garde, ''^ Mellyagraunce's castle.

Page 20. " I tell myself a tale." Morris once said to the
writer, "I never walk behind a man in the street, or sit
opposite him in a railway carriage, without making up a
story about him and his doings."

Page 20. ^^ Gareth." Brother of Sir Gauwaine. He was
compared by King Arthur to an eager wolf. See p. 34, &c.

Page 20. " Dinadan." Sir Dinadan was a knight of
sportive mind, who had occasional gleams of common-sense,
which being incomprehensible to them, were the joy of
Arthur's court. He figures often in the Tristram stories.

Page 21. ^^ the stroke Whereiuith Goa threiv all men upon the
face, ^^." A rabbinical story, also found in Mohammedan
legend.

Page 22. " boddice." This legitimate and etymologically
correct spelling is altered in the later editions to " bodice."

Page 22. ^^ there ivere no colours then," In moonlight one
cannot distinguish colour.

Page 22. *« Maiden Margaret." This is probably not St.
Margaret of Antioch but St. Margaret Pelagian, who for
the love of virginity ran away on her wedding night, and
taking the name of Pelagian became a monk. Being ap-
pointed prior of a convent of nuns, she fell under suspicion
of unchastity with one of them and was immured for life.
On the point of death she confessed her sex, and was buried
240

NOTES

in honour. '* Insomuch as she was named Margaret, she is
always likened to a flower, for she had in her flower of her
virginity " (Caxton, Golden Legend), But the scarlet lilies
would also be appropriate to St Margaret of Antioch as a
virgin martyr. See note to p. 49.

Page 24. '■^ by the thorn-tree Wherefrom St, Joseph in the
days past preached, " Joseph of Arimathea is said to have in-
troduced Christianity into Britain and to have founded the
Abbey of Glastonbury. His staff' miraculously budded there,
and grew into a thorn-tree, which blossomed at Christmas
each year. A full account of the legend may be found in
Skeat's Joseph of Arithmathie (E.E.T.S.).

Page 27. ^^ If even I go hell, I cannot choose.'^ The Kelms-
cott Press edition inserts " to '' before " hell."

Page 28. " Fair serpent marU'd ivith V upon the head,^^ The
line refers to the markings on the head of poisonous snakes.

Page 29. ^^ Lucius, the Emperor,''^ In Malory, it was
Arthur who killed Lucius, who was sent embalmed to Rome.

Page. 31, ** Breuse even, as he rode, feared lest, l^c." Breuse
sans pitie, the brown knight without pity, was a felon
knight whose name often occurs in Malory as an antagonist
of the Round Table. He was slain by Gareth.

Page 32. ^^Iseultfrom the West, Or, better still, Leult of Brit-
tany.^^ The two loves of Tristram, the latter — Iseult of the
White Hands — was the sister of his companion and his wife.
Swinburne's splendid poem should be read for the story.

Page 34. '< And by him Palomydes." Palomydes, the good
knight, was the unsuccessful lover of Iseult and rival of
Tristram. Beast Glatysaunt, or the Questing Beast, <* had
in shape a head like a leopard, buttocks like a lion, and
footed like a hart, and in its body was such a noise as if it
had been the noise of thirty couple of hounds questing."
This beast was continually pursued by Palomydes who was
241 R

NOTES

a heathen, but at the last was reconciled to Tristram and
baptized. Palomydes adopted the beast as his device. See
also pp. 42, 46.

Page 35. ^'' Kay^ Kay, the son of Sir Ector, was the
seneschal of Arthur's court. In the stories he continually
undertakes tasks he is unable to perform, and suffers defeat
in the combats he wages.

Page 36. *< Malay's crease:' Cf. Tennyson (1847), " The
cursed Malayan crease."

Page 41. ^'' Sir Galahad:^ Galahad was the only son
of Launcelot. His mother was Elaine, daughter of King
Pelles, guardian of the Holy Grail. He was the ideal of
knightly purity, a Launcelot without his faults. It is not
without interest that Launcelot's own name was at first
Galahad.

Page 43. '* Candlemas y February 2nd. The Feast of
the Purification of the Virgin.

Page 44. ^^ the Sangreal" The Holy Graal is in the
legend a vessel in which some drops of the Redeemer's blood
were preserved. It appeared from time to time, and its
legend was early in the 13th century incorporated in an
immense cycle of tales best read in Paulin Paris's abridg-
ment, Legendes de la Table Ronde. Malory gives a good
account of the latter part of its history in the Quest of the
Holy Grail.

Page 44. <' Mador de la porte. " One of the best knights
of the Round Table. He is mentioned by Malory as mis-
takenly accusing Guinevere of poisoning his cousin Patrice,
when she was rescued by Launcelot in a judicial combat,
and again as one of the twelve knights, who accompanied
Mordred in his attempt to seize Launcelot in the queen's
chamber, and were slain there.
242

NOTES

Page 45. " 'whose sivordjird made him knight.^'' i.e. Arthur,
who knighted Launcelot, still loves and trusts him, and this
treachery wounds the High God.

Page 46. ''^ destrier y A war-horse or charger, so called
because led by the squire with his right hand.

Page 46. *' Palomyaes.''^ See note to p. 34.

Page 48. ^^ the ivondrous ship ivherein The spindles of King
Solomon are laid^ tfft." A full account of these marvels is
found in Malory, Book xviii. c. v.-vii. , p. 696, &c. , ed.
Sommer. The spindles were made of a tree brought from
Paradise by Eve, originally white, green at the first birth,
and red at the first murder. Solomon's wife, who was an
evil woman, made three spindles from the wood of this tree,
which with David's sword were put in a ship and set afloat.
No one but a true believer could enter the ship, and if the
sword were handled by any one but the destined knight,
evil came to him.

Page 49. *' Margaret of Antioch,''^ Margaret was the
daughter of Theodosius, High Priest of Antioch, and was
beloved by Olybrius the Prefect. She suffered martyrdom
for her refusal to sacrifice or to marry him, after many
tortures and temptations of the devil, in one of which a
dragon essayed to swallow her, but she making the sign of
the cross, he " brake asunder, and so she issued out all whole
and sound." This incident often appears in frescoes.

Page 49. '' Cecily.''^ St. Cecily was the daughter 01 a
noble Roman, who, betrothed and married to Valerian, per-
suaded him to join her in a life of perpetual virginity.
They were martyred at Rome.

Page 49. '*Zi/c:y." St. Lucy was born at Syracuse of a
noble lineage. She sold her patrimony and gave it to the
poor, whereon her betrothed lodged a complaint against her
before Paschasius, who finally ordered her to be the sport of
ribalds, and finding them unable to come near her, caused
her to be martyred. She was the patron saint of Syracuse.

^43

NOTES

Page 49. ^^ Katlierhiey St. Katharine was Queen of
Alexandria, and refusing an earthly spouse was mystically
married to Christ. Maxentius the Emperor came to Alex-
andria, and at his orders fifty philosophers tried to convert
her to paganism. Her reasonings converted them, and they
were martyred, she being imprisoned without food for
twelve days. After this she was set between wheels armed
with knives, and when these could not harm her she was
beheaded. Her memory survives in the Catherine wheels of
childhood.

Page 50. ^'- Poor merry DinaaanJ'^ The death of Dinadan
is not recorded in Malory.

Page 51. ^^ Lauvaine." Lauvaine was the brother of
Elaine of Astolat. He was one of the first to come after
Launcelot in his attempted rescue of Guinevere from
Mellyagraunce.

Page 55. ^^The Chapel in Lyoness" This first appeared
in the September number of the Oxfora and Cambridge
Maga zinCy 1 8 5 6 .

Page 55. *' Sir Ozana le cure Hardy. ^^ The whole of this
story is entirely of the poet's invention, as no germ of it
exists in Malory — though other knights lay wounded as
here described. Sir Ozana was a well-known figure in
Malory.

Page 55. *^ parclose." A parclose is a screen or railing
made to separate or inclose any object or place, such as a
tomb or an altar in a church.

Page 56. ^^ samite." Originally a heavy silk material of
which each thread was supposed to contain six fibres
(hexamitum)^ it came to mean any rich heavy silk, especially
that with a satin-like gloss.

Page 58. " Sir Bars," Bors was a cousin of Launcelot,
and one of his most trusted friends.
244

NOTES

Page 63. *' Sir Peter Harfidon," The name was probably-
suggested to the poet by John Harpeden who married a
cousin of Clisson's. Sir Peter is, of course, a creature of
fiction.

Page 66. " Cllsson or Sanxere." Oliver de Clisson first
fought on the English side but joined the French in 1367,
became brother-in-arms of Du Guesclin in 1369, Constable
of France in 1380. He has been surnamed *' the Butcher."

Louis de Sancerre was one of the French leaders,
Marechal in 1369, and Constable in 1397. One of the
brothers-in-arms of Du Guesclin.

Page 66. ^' At Lusac bridge^ tff^;." Lusac-les-Chateaux,
on the Vienne, nine miles from Montmorillon. Here
Chandos was killed. See Froissart, vol. xvii. p. 493, ed.
Lettenhove.

Page 67. ^^ Guesclin. ^^ Bertrand du Guesclin, 1320-1380,
a Breton gentleman, Constable of France, was one of the
bravest soldiers and tacticians of his period. His career
was one long series of combats and adventures, but he only-
resembled the knights of chivalry in his courage and respect
for his word.

Page 67. ^^ petrariae,^^ Large catapults for hurling stones
in war.

Page 70. " Balen.''^ Balen, the knight with two swords,
goes through a number of adventures in Malory, but is
always unfortunate even in success. He finally kills his
brother unwittingly, and dies of the wounds received.

Page 70. ^^Bergerath." Bergerac, on the Dordogne, was
long a subject of contention between the Kings of England
and France. In 1367 it was in French hands, but in 1375
it seems to have been besieged by Du Guesclin. See
Froissart, vol. xxiv. p. 89, ed. Lettenhove.

72. ^^ archgai/s." An iron-pointed wooden spear.
The word is always spelt in three syllables, archegay.
245

NOTES

Page 85. ' ' Do you care altogether more than France. '* " Than "
is an obvious misprint for "for."

Page 85. ^^ Andf somehoiv clad in poor old rusty artns.^^ A
reference to an early legendary adventure of Du Guesclin's
when shut out from a tournament on account of his youth.

Page 86. ^^ grey monh.^^ " Wishing ivell for Clement,^*
Grey monks are Cistercians, who, having large possessions
in England, were, in general, sympathisers with its rule.
Clement VII. (1378-94) was the French anti-pope at the
time, while the English recognised Urban VI. , and a change
of allegiance necessitated a change of Pope, though many of
the religious orders refused to declare themselves in favour
of one or the other candidate.

Page 87. " Friend oj the constable.''* Bertrand du Guesclin
was Constable of France, 2nd Oct., 1370. He was the
brother-in-arms of Olivier de Clisson from Oct. 1369.

Page 97. ^^ lombards.^^ Cannon of heavy calibre, firing
stone balls.

Page 97. ^^ base-court. ^^ The lower or outer court of a
castle or mansion, occupied by the servants.

Page loi. *' Or high up in the dustiness of the apse.^^ This
was altered later to " duskness."

Page 102. " Countess Mountfort.^^ The fortunate knight
was Sir Walter de Manny, who had ridden into Brittany to
her rescue.

Page 103. ^^ Launcelot or Wade.''^ This comparison is
taken from Malory when Lynet is mocking Gareth after
his encounter with the Green Knight. "Were thou as
wight as ever was Wade or Launcelot," &c. Wade is a
mythical Teutonic hero, belonging to the cycle of Weyland,
the Smith.

Page 105. " muckle." This is altered later to " mickle,"
both meaning the same thing ; but '< muckle" is a northern
form.

246

NOTES

Page 114. ^^ On the foiver-carven marble could see.^* << I " has
evidently dropped out before " see." It was replaced in the
Kelmscott Press edition.

Page 119. ^* And let gold Michael y ivho look^a doivn^ When I
ivas there J on Rouen toivn." ^' Less than forty years ago [in
1854] I first saw the city of Rouen, then still in its outward
aspect a piece of the Middle Ages : no words can tell you
how its mingled beauty, history, and romance took hold on
me : I can only say that, looking back on my past life, I
find it was the greatest pleasure I have ever had : and now
it is a pleasure which no one can ever have again : it is lost
to the world for ever " (W. Morris, The Aims of Arty

Page 122. " The shoiver^d mail-rings on the speed-ivalk lay.^"*
In the Kelmscott Press edition '* speedwell" was substituted
for '< speed-walk."

Page 125. The Prince'' s Song. This song, under the title
of " Hands," first appeared in the July number of the
Oxford and Camhriage Magazine y 1 856.

Page 133, '< Ge£ray Teste Noire. ^^ This freebooter was a
Breton leader of free companions, and his doings with those
of Sir John Bonne Lance and others may be read in Froissart
(vol. xiii. p. 45, &c., ed. Lettenhove).

Page 133. ^^ And if you meet the Canon of Chimay.'^ The
Canon of Chimay was John Froissart. Here is Morris's
own account of him. «' As the tale is here told, its incidents,
often the very words of them, are taken from the writings
of one of those men who make past times live before our
eyes for ever. John Froissart, Canon of Chimay, in Hain-
ault, was indeed but a hanger-on of the aristocracy . . . but
class-lying was not the fine art which it has since become ;
and the simpler habits of thought of Froissart's days gave
people intense delight in the stories of deeds done, and de-
veloped in them what has been called epic impartiality . . .
Englishman, Scotchman, Fleming, Spaniard, Frenchman,
247

NOTES

Gascon, Breton are treated by John Froissart as men
capable of valiancy, their deeds to be told of and listened to
with little comment of blame or discrimination : and I think
you will say before you have done with him, that he could
even see the good side of the revolutionary characters of his
time, so long as they were not slack in noble deeds. . . .
John Froissart has given me at least as much pleasure as he
did to any one of the lords, ladies, knights, squires, and
sergeants who first heard him read."

Page 133. *■'' bastides^^ Temporary huts or towers erected
for besieging purposes.

Page 134. *''■ Veutadoury The ruins of the castle can still
be seen at Moustier-Ventadour (Correze). A full account
of it is given in Froissart (ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove), and a
curious deposition of one of GefTray Teste Noire's servants,
Guillaume de Bouc, is preserved in the Registers of the
Chatelet.

Page 134. " camailhy A mailed defence of chain armour
for the neck and shoulders. It was covered by a plate
which formed part of the basinet.

Page 135. ^^ Carcassoney "One of the strong cities of
the world, for it is placed high and all on a rock, and well
closed with towers and walls and gates of grey stone." —
Froissart, It was one of the principal cities of France, but
suffered much in the Black Death, and from the English in
1356. " Verville" is an invented name.

Page 135. *' horse in Job.^^ '' He swalloweth the ground
with fierceness and rage : neither believeth he that it is the
sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets. Ha,
Ha ; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the
captains, and the shouting " (Job xxxix. 24).

Page 137. ^^The Jacquerie." "After the victory of the
English at Poitiers, an outburst of patriotic anger and revolt

248

NOTES

brought about the Jacquerie. * They could no longer sup-
port the ills which oppressed them, and seeing that their
lords, far from defending them, used them worse than their
enemies, the peasants thought they had a right to rebel,
taking their vengeance into their own hands.' A certain
Guillaume Caillet led the mob : his nickname, Jacques Bon-
homme, has stuck to the French peasant ever since. Soon
he had a following of a hundred thousand men as fierce,
ignorant, untrained as a hundred thousand gorillas, and
great were their excesses. How the King of Navarre and
the Count of Foix rode across France, killing the villainous
Jacques ' in great heaps, like beasts ' ; hunting them down,
in a battue ; driving them into the Marne to drown ; burn-
ing wholesale them and their villages — all this, is it not
written in the chronicles of Froissart ? " (Mme. Duclaux).
On the other hand, M. Coville, the most recent historian of
the period, is disposed to minimise the excesses of the rebels.
They burnt the chateaux and chased the nobles, but only
thirty victims of the insurrection are known, the rapes and
murders reported being hearsay, and against them may be
put the thousands of Jacques destroyed in reprisal. See
Colville, Histoire de France (ed. Lavisse), vol. 4, 2, 2, for a
full account.

Page 138. ^* Beawvah^ Beauvais was the centre of the
Jacquerie and one of the last places to be subdued. The
<' great church" is the wonderful cathedral of Beauvais,
always a special object of love to the poet.

Page 142. " John Froissart y See note p. 133.

Page 142. " Jaques Picard.''^ A name of the poet's in-
vention. There is a famous sculptor of the time mentioned
in Froissart of another name.

Page 148. '* la perriere,*^ The perrier is the same as the
petrary, a military catapult.

Page 1 50. * ^ Thei^ hammered out my basnet-point Into a round
salade, ^ifr," The basinet was a small, light, steel headpiece,
249

NOTES

in shape somewhat globular, terminating in a point raised
slightly above the head, and closed in front with a ventail
or visor. The salade (or sallet) has rounded surfaces every-
where, and is distinguished by a fixed projection behind.

Page 151. ^^ no Venice jlag Can JJy unpa'ia for.^* Venice
was in the habit of paying an annual tribute to the Sultan
for trading privileges. In 1478 this amounted to 10,000
ducats, but this was a century later. At the time of the
poem Venice was engaged in its death-struggle with Genoa.

Page 155. " Honneur aux fils des preux ! " The cry of the
heralds in the intervals of the tourney.

Page 162. '' Lambert, banneret of the tuood^ The distinc-
tion between knight and banneret was made by the king
cutting off the tails of the knight's pennon on the field of
battle after a victory.

Page 168. " taberd." This is the old spelling for '' tabard."

Page 180. "77/^ ivina.''^ This is perhaps the most re-
markable phrase of the volume for its success in reproducing
the emotional effect of music independently of thought or
the story told.

Page 187. " r//<?'yro«." A chevron on a banner is a device
consisting of a bar bent like two meeting rafters. The device
is here the principal thing seen, and the rest of the banner
is neglected, as we say " the lions of England floated in the
breeze."

Page 195. "a thing to mhid.^^ A thing to remember, to
bear in mind.

Page 197. " Undern." Tierce, nine o'clock in the morn-
ing, or the period from that hour to noon. It is here pro-
bably used as a derived word for the afternoon, in the same
way as "undermeal" was used by Elizabethan writers for
the afternoon's refreshment, though it refers to the undern
meal.

250

NOTES

Page 214. " Tivo red roses across the moon." The knight's
arms — as the poet on one occasion remarked to the writer.

Page 218. ^^ bascinet" ^^ Collayne szvord." Bascinet is
basinet. CoUayne is Cologne. The best steel at the time
was reputed to come from Cologne, as in the ballad of
Otterhurnn and in the Percy Ballads, See note to p. 150.

Page 218. ^^ tene" Grief, sorrow, trouble. See Chaucer:

Almighty and al merciable Quene,

To whom that al this world fleeth for socour,

To have relees of sinne, sorwe, and tene.

A, B, C, 1. 3.
Page 219. " burd," Young lady, maiden.

Page 219. ^^fell." The skin with its hair, &c.

Page 221. ^^ Riding Together." This poem first appeared
in the May number of the Oxfora and Cambridge Magazine^
1836. A very beautiful and somewhat similar one '' Winter
Weather " is in the January number.

Page 227. '' Sir Giles' War-Song." There is extant a
letter from Browning to Morris, congratulating him on the
Earthly Paradise and mentioning this little poem. " It is a
double delight to me to read such poetry, and know you of
all the world wrote it, — you whose songs I used to sing
while galloping by Fiesole in old days, — ' Ho, is there any
will ride with me ? ' "

Page 227. ^''leopards and lilies" The arms of England
and France quartered worn by the English king.

Page 229. ** A ship ivith sails before the ivind." This has
been altered, without improving it, by substituting ' ' which "
for "with."

NOTES

Page 230, ^^ Praise of My Lady^ Written at Man-
chester in 1857 while on a visit to Canon Dixon.

Page 235. '* Summer Baivn,"*^ This poem first appeared,
under the title of " Pray but One Prayer for Me," in the
October number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine^ 1 85 6.

Page 235. *' Through the long tivilight they pray for the
daivn^ In the Kelmscott Press edition the poet avoids the
Cockney rhyme of "dawn" and "corn" by altering his
line into "They pray the long gloom through for daylight
new born," but he evidently did not notice that the same
rhyme is used three lines before. The new line is hardly an
improvement.

252

INDEX

Agravaine, 8, 239.

Alice de la Barde, 68, 71, 81, 90,

51, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 100, lOI.
Alice, 159.

Alice, Lady, i86, 187.
Alicia, 171, 172, 173.
Aquadent, Jacques, 63, 64.
Arthur, King, 4, 24, 25, 27, 30, 36,

198.
Arthur, 189.
Auvergne, 134.
Avalon, 95, 198, 229.

Balen, 70, 245.
Ballad poetry, xvi.
Ban, King, 4.
Beauvais, 138.
Benwick, 4.
Bergerath, 70, 245.
Berry, Duke of, 133.
Blake, xiv.

Bois, Sir Lambert de, 161.
Bordeaux, 93.
Breuse, 31, 241.
Brownings, The, xli, xlii.
Burne-Jones, xxxiv, xxxvii.
Byron, xxiii.

Camelot, 26, 31, 32, 144.

Carlyle, xxvii.

Castel, Jehane du, 196, 197, 199,

204, 205.
Cecily, 49. 243.
Chandos, 66, 69.

Charles, King, 133.

Charterhouse, 66.

Chatterton, xx.

Chimay, Canon of, 133, 247. See

Froissart.
Clisson, 66, 84, 86, 88, 50, 91, 92,

94, 96, 100, 1 01, 245.
Coleridge, xxii, xxvi.
Constance, 196.
Constantiue, 151.
Curzon, John, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67,

7ij 72, 73j 78, 79> 80, 81, 82, 83.

Dinadan, 34, 35, 50.
Dixon, Canon, xxxv, xxxvi.

Ellayne, 216, 217, 218, 219.
Enoch, 21.

France, Philip of, 162.

France, 66, 74.

Froissart, xlv. sqq., 142, 247.

Galahad, Sir, xliv, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46,

47. 48, 49. 50, 55, 57» 58, 59, 242.

Ganys, Sir Bors de, 49, 50, 55, 58,

^59- ^.

Gareth, Su:, 20, 34, 35, 239, 240.

Gascons, 67. _

Gauwaine, Sir, xliii, xliv, xlv, i,

^3> 8, 9, 14, 34, 5.1, 239-

Geflfray Teste Noire, 133, 134, 135,

136, 142, 247.
Gervaise, Sir, 196, 197.

»53

INDEX

Giles, Sir, 150, 154, 227, 228.
Giles, 196, 197, 204.
Glastonbury, 19, 24.
Glatysaunt, 34, 241.
Godmar, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212,

213.
Graal, xliii, xliv.

Guendolen, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129.
Guenevere, Queen, i, 7, 19, 20, 21,

23> 25, 27, 28, 31, 35, 43, 229.
Guesclin, du, 67, 71, 84, 87, 88, 94,

99, 102.
Guilbert, King, 143, 144.
Guillaume, Sieur, 155, 156.
Guy, Sir, 143, 147, 148, 158, 159.

Hardy, Sir Ozana le Cure, 55, 56,

57. 58, 59-
Harpdon, Sir Peter, 63, 64, 65, 66,

67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79.

80, 8i, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90,

97, 245.
Hector, 76.
Helen, 76.
Hugh, Sir, 159.

Isabeau, 196, 204.
Iseult of Brittany, 32, 35, 42, 46,
241.

Jehane, 209, 210, 211.
John, Father, 224, 225, 226.
John, Sir, 150, 158.
John of Castleneuf, i33' ^,
Joseph of Arimathea, xliii, 24, 241.

Katherine, Saint, 49, 244.
Kay, 35, 240, 242.

La fausse Garde, 9, 240.
Lambert, Sir, 6S, 70, 72, 74, 75,

77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 91.
Lance, Sir John Bonne, 133, 135,

247.
Launcelot, Sir, xliv, xlv, 3, 4, 7,
E:io, II, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 23,

25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,

35, 36, 37, 43, 45) 48, 5°, 5i, io3,

104, 147, 148, 239.

Lauvaine, 51, 244.

Lionel, Sir, 51.

Louise, Lady, 186, 188, 189.

Lucius, Emperor, 29, 30, 241.

Lucy, Saint, 49, 243.

Lusac Bridge, 66, 68, 70, 245.

Macpherson, xiv.

Mador de la Porte, 44, 242.

Malony, xliii.

Margaret, Saint, 22, 49, 240, 243.

Margaret, 182, 183.

Marguerite, La, 160, 161, 162.

Mary Magdalen, 33.

Mary, The Virgin, 149, 196, 205,

224, 225, 226.
Mellyagraunce, 9, 10, 11, 240.
Miles, Lord, 154.
Miles, 196, ip7, 204.
Morris, William, xxxiii, sqq.
Mountfort, Countess, 102.

Newcastle, John of, 135.

Oliver, Sir, 164, 166.
Oliver, 192, 193.
Ortaise, 133.
Ossian, xiu.

Palomydes, 34, 42, 46, 241.

Paris, 208.

Paul, 33.

Pembroke, 66.

Percival, 45, 50.

Percy, Reliqucs, xiv.

Peter, 33.

Phelton, 66.

Picard, Jacques, 142.

Plombiere, Peter, 63, 64.

Poictou, 93.

Rapunzel, 109, no, in, 1x2, 118,

121, 123, 124, 125.
Robert, Sir, 122, 172, 173, 207,

208, 209, 211, 212, 2i6, 217, 219,

220.
Roger, Lord, 163, 164.

254

INDEX

Roland, Knight, 225, 226.

Roland, Sir, 172, 174.

Rossetti, xxxi, xxxii, xxxvii, xli,

xlii.
Rouen, 247.
Roux, Alleyne, 134.
Rowley Poems, xx, xxi.
Ruskin, xxx.

Sangreal, The, 44, 48, 242. '
Sanxere, 66, 245.
Scott, xiv, XV, xxiv, xxv.
Sebald, King, log, no, in, 113,
116, 117, 121, 123, 125, 127, 128.
Shelley, xxiv.
Solomon, King, 48, 243.
St. George, 65, 72, 97.
St. Ives, 72.
St. Joseph, 24.
Stamford Bridge, 216, 217, 220.

Swinburne, xxxix, xl.

Tennyson, xxix, xxxv, xli.
Tristram, 34, 35.

Ursula, 171, 172, 173.

Ventadour, 134, 248.

Verville, 135, 136.

Violet, EUayne le, 196, 205.

Wade, 103, 246.
Watts-Dunton, xxvii, li.
Westminster, 66.
Witch, The, 109, no, iii, 112, 115,

117, 127, 128, 129.
Wordsworth, xvii, xx, xxii, xxviii.

Yoland of the Flowers, 191, 192,
193-

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