U 
 
THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/defenceofgueneveOOmorrrich 
 
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 
 
 cL 
 
 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. 
 
 ! 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, 
 
 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, 
 
 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 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 : 
 
 / 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, 
 
 ! 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 
 
 / 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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