To wreck thee villainously: but, O Sir Knight, What dame or damsel have ye kneel'd to last?' And Tristram, Last to my Queen Paramount, Here now to my Queen. Paramount of love And loveliness - ay, lovelier than when first Her light feet fell on our rough Lyo nesse, Sailing from Ireland.' Softly laugh'd Isolt; Flatter me not, for hath not our great Queen My dole of beauty trebled?' and he said, 'Her beauty is her beauty, and thine thine, And thine is more to me-soft, gracious, kind Save when thy Mark is kindled on thy lips Most gracious; but she, haughty, ev'n to him, Lancelot; for I have seen him wan enow To make one doubt if ever the great Queen Have yielded him her love.' To whom Isolt, 'Ah then, false hunter and false harper, thou Who brakest thro' the scruple of my bond, Calling me thy white hind, and saying to me That Guinevere had sinn'd against the highest, And I misyoked with such a want of man That I could hardly sin against the lowest.' He answer'd, 'O my soul, be comforted! If this be sweet, to sin in leading-strings, If here be comfort, and if ours be sin, Crown'd warrant had we for the crowning sin That made us happy: but how ye greet me- - fear And, saddening on the sudden, spake 'I had forgotten all in my strong joy Here in the never-ended afternoon, Watch'd from this tower. Isolt of Britain dash'd Before Isolt of Brittany on the strand, Would that have chill'd her bride-kiss? Wedded her? Fought in her father's battles? wounded there? The King was all fulfill'd with grateful And Isolt answer'd, 'Yea, and why not I? Mine is the larger need, who am not meek, Pale-blooded, prayerful. Let me tell thee now. Here one black, mute midsummer night I sat, Lonely, but musing on thee, wondering where, Murmuring a light song I had heard thee sing, And once or twice I spake thy name aloud. Then flash'd a levin-brand; and near me stood, In fuming sulphur blue and green, a fiend Mark's way to steal behind one in the dark For there was Mark: "He has wedded her," he said, Not said, but hiss'd it: then this crown of towers So shook to such a roar of all the sky, That here in utter dark I swoon'd away, And woke again in utter dark, and cried, "I will flee hence and give myself to God" And thou wert lying in thy new leman's arms.' How darest thou, if lover, push me even In fancy from thy side, and set me far Flatter me rather, seeing me so weak, Lies like sweet wines: lie to me: I believe. Will ye not lie? not swear, as there ye kneel, And solemnly as when ye sware to him, The man of men, our King- My God, the power Was once in vows when men believed the King! They lied not then, who sware, and thro' their vows The King prevailing made his realm:I say, Swear to me thou wilt love me ev'n when old, Gray-hair'd, and past desire, and in despair.' every knight Believed himself a greater than himself, And every follower eyed him as a God; Till he, being lifted up beyond himself, Did mightier deeds than elsewise he had done, And so the realm was made; but then their vows First mainly thro' that sullying of our Queen Began to gall the knighthood, asking whence Had Arthur right to bind them to himself? Dropt down from heaven? wash'd up from out the deep? They fail'd to trace him thro' the flesh and blood Of our old kings: whence then? a doubtful lord To bind them by inviolable vows, Which flesh and blood perforce would violate : For feel this arm of mine. -the tide within Red with free chase and heather-scented air, Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me She rose, and set before him all he will'd; And after these had comforted the blood With meats and wines, and satiated their hearts Now talking of their woodland paradise, The deer, the dews, the fern, the founts, the lawns; Now mocking at the much ungainliness, And craven shifts, and long crane legs of Mark Then Tristram laughing caught the harp, and sang: 'Ay, ay, O ay the winds that bend the brier! 4 Climb'd to the high top of the gardenwall To spy some secret scandal if he might, And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court The wiliest and the worst; and more than this He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by Spied where he couch'd, and as the gardener's hand Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar, So from the high wall and the flowering grove Of grasses Lancelot pluck'd him by the heel, And cast him as a worm upon the way; But when he knew the Prince tho' marr'd with dust, He, reverencing king's blood in a bad man, Made such excuses as he might, and these Full knightly without scorn; for in those days No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in scorn; But, if a man were halt or hunch'd, in him By those whom God had made fulllimb'd and tall, Scorn was allow'd as part of his defect, And he was answer'd softly by the King And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp To raise the Prince, who rising twice or thrice Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled, and went: But, ever after, the small violence done A little bitter pool about a stone But when Sir Lancelot told This matter to the Queen, at first she laugh'd Lightly, to think of Modred's dusty fall, Then shudder'd, as the village wife who cries 'I shudder, some one steps across my grave;' |