or fiend?

whom

Make their last head like Satan in the North.

My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower

Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds, Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved,

The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore.

But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place Enchair'd to-morrow, arbitrate the field; For wherefore shouldst thou care to mingle with it,

Only to yield my Queen her own again? Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it well?"

He spoke, and taking all his younger knights, Down the slope city rode, and sharply turn'd

the Queen,

Working a tapestry, lifted up her head, Watch'd her lord pass, and knew not that she sigh'd.

Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme

Of bygone Merlin, "Where is he who knows?

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.

But when the morning of a tournament, By these in earnest, those in mockery, call'd

The Tournament of the Dead Innocence, Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot,

Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey,

The words of Arthur flying shriek'd, arose, And down a streetway hung with folds of pure

White samite, and by fountains running wine,

Where children sat in white with cups of gold,

Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps

Ascending, fill'd his double-dragon'd

chair.

He glanced and saw the stately galleries, Dame, damsel, each thro' worship of their Queen

White-robed in honor of the stainless child,

And some with scatter'd jewels, like a bank

Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of fire.

He lookt but once, and veil'd his eyes again.

The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream

To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began:

And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf

And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume

Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, When all the goodlier guests are past away,

lists.

He saw the laws that ruled the tournament Broken, but spake not; once, a knight

cast down

Before his throne of arbitration cursed The dead babe and the follies of the King; And once the laces of a helmet crack'd, And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole, Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar

An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,

But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest, And armor'd all in forest green, whereon There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, With ever-scattering berries, and on shield

A spear, a harp, a bugle — Tristram late

From overseas in Brittany return'd, And marriage with a princess of that realm,

Isolt the White-Sir Tristram of the Woods

Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain

His own against him, and now yearn'd to shake

The burthen off his heart in one full shock With Tristram ev'n to death: his strong

hands gript

And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, Until he groan'd for wrath - so many of those,

That ware their ladies' colors on the casque,

Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds,

And

there with gibes and flickering

mockeries

Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come,

"Good now, what music have I broken, fool?"

And little Dagonet, skipping, "Arthur, the king's;

For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt,

Thou makest broken music with thy bride, Her daintier namesake down in Brittany

And so thou breakest Arthur's music too." "Save for that broken music in thy brains, Sir Fool," said Tristram, "I would break thy head.

Fool, I came late, the heathen wars were o'er,

The life had flown, we sware but by the shell

I am but a fool to reason with a fool. Come, thou art crabb'd and sour: but lean me down,

Sir Dagonet, one of thy long asses' ears, And hearken if my music be not true.