And Percivale made answer not a word.
“Is the King true?” “The King!” said Percivale.
“Why, then let men couple at once with wolves.
What! art thou mad?”
But Pelleas, leaping up,
Ran thro’ the doors and vaulted on his horse
And fled. Small pity upon his horse had he,
Or on himself, or any, and when he met
A cripple, one that held a hand for alms—
Hunch’d as he was, and like an old dwarf-elm
That turns its back on the salt blast, the boy
Paused not, but overrode him, shouting, “False,
And false with Gawain!” and so left him bruised
And batter’d, and fled on, and hill and wood
Went ever streaming by him till the gloom
That follows on the turning of the world
Darken’d the common path. He twitch’d the reins,
And made his beast, that better knew it, swerve
Now off it and now on; but when he saw
High up in heaven the hall that Merlin built,
Blackening against the dead-green stripes of even,
“Black nest of rats,” he groan’d, “ye build too
high.”
Not long thereafter from the city gates
Issued Sir Lancelot riding airily,
Warm with a gracious parting from the Queen,
Peace at his heart, and gazing at a star
And marvelling what it was; on whom the boy,
Across the silent seeded meadow-grass
Borne, clash’d; and Lancelot, saying, “What name
hast thou
That ridest here so blindly and so hard?”
“No name, no name,” he shouted, “a scourge am I
To lash the treasons of the Table Round.”
“Yea, but thy name?” “I have many names,” he
cried:
“I am wrath and shame and hate and evil fame,
And like a poisonous wind I pass to blast
And blaze the crime of Lancelot and the Queen.”
“First over me,” said Lancelot, “shalt thou pass.”
“Fight therefore,” yell’d the youth, and either
knight
Drew back a space, and when they closed, at once
The weary steed of Pelleas floundering flung
His rider, who call’d out from the dark field,
“Thou art false as hell; slay me, I have no sword.”
Then Lancelot, “Yea, between thy lips—and sharp;
But here will I disedge it by thy death.”
“Slay then,” he shriek’d, “my will is to be slain,”
And Lancelot, with his heel upon the fallen,
Rolling his eyes, a moment stood, then spake:
“Rise, weakling; I am Lancelot; say thy say.”
And Lancelot slowly rode his warhorse back
To Camelot, and Sir Pelleas in brief while
Caught his unbroken limbs from the dark field,
And follow’d to the city. It chanced that both
Brake into hall together, worn and pale.
There with her knights and dames was Guinevere.
Full wonderingly she gazed on Lancelot
So soon return’d, and then on Pelleas, him
Who had not greeted her, but cast himself
Down on a bench, hard-breathing. “Have ye
fought?”
She ask’d of Lancelot. “Ay, my Queen,” he said.
“And thou hast overthrown him?” “Ay, my Queen.”
Then she, turning to Pelleas, “O young knight,
Hath the great heart of knighthood in thee fail’d
So far thou canst not bide, unfrowardly,
A fall from him?” Then, for he answer’d not,
“Or hast thou other griefs? If I, the Queen,
May help them, loose thy tongue, and let me know.”
But Pelleas lifted up an eye so fierce
She quail’d; and he, hissing “I have no sword,”
Sprang from the door into the dark. The Queen
Look’d hard upon her lover, he on her,
And each foresaw the dolorous day to be;
And all talk died, as in a grove all song
Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey.
Then a long silence came upon the hall,
And Modred thought, “The time is hard at hand.”
THE LAST TOURNAMENT
DAGONET, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood
Had made mock-knight of Arthur’s Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
Danced like a wither’d leaf before the hall.
And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand,
And from the crown thereof a carcanet
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,
Came Tristram, saying, “Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?”
For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
Far down beneath a winding wall of rock
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead,
From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,
Clutch’d at the crag, and started thro’ mid air
Bearing an eagle’s nest; and thro’ the tree
Rush’d ever a rainy wind, and thro’ the wind
Pierced ever a child’s cry; and crag and tree
Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,
This ruby necklace thrice around her neck,
And all unscarr’d from beak or talon, brought
A maiden babe, which Arthur pitying took,
Then gave it to his Queen to rear. The Queen
But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms
Received, and after loved it tenderly,
And named it Nestling; so forgot herself
A moment, and her cares; till that young life
Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold
Past from her, and in time the carcanet
Vext her with plaintive memories of the child.
So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,
“Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence,
And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize.”
To whom the King: “Peace to thine eagle-borne
Dead nestling, and this honor after death,
Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse
Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone
Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear.”
“Would rather you had let them fall,” she cried,
“Plunge and be lost—ill-fated as they were,
A bitterness to me!—ye look amazed,
Not knowing they were lost as soon as given—
Slid from my hands when I was leaning out
Above the river—that unhappy child
Past in her barge; but rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that they came
Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,
But the sweet body of a maiden babe.
Perchance—who knows?—the purest of thy knights
May win them for the purest of my maids.”
She ended, and the cry of a great jousts
With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways
From Camelot in among the faded fields
To furthest towers; and everywhere the knights
Arm’d for a day of glory before the King.
But on the hither side of that loud morn
Into the hall stagger’d, his visage ribb’d
From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his nose
Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one hand off,
And one with shatter’d fingers dangling lame,
A churl, to whom indignantly the King:
“My churl, for whom Christ died, what
evil beast Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face? or fiend? Man was it who marr’d heaven’s image in thee thus?”
Then, sputtering thro’ the hedge of splinter’d
teeth,
Yet strangers to the tongue, and with blunt stump
Pitch-blacken’d sawing the air, said the maim’d
churl:
“He took them and he drave them to his tower—
Some hold he was a table-knight of thine—
A hundred goodly ones—the Red Knight, he—
Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight
Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower;
And when I call’d upon thy name as one
That doest right by gentle and by churl,
Maim’d me and maul’d, and would outright have
slain,
Save that he sware me to a message, saying:
‘Tell thou the King and all his liars that I
Have founded my Round Table in the North,
And whatsoever his own knights have sworn
My knights have sworn the counter to it—and say
My tower is full of harlots, like his court,
But mine are worthier, seeing they profess
To be none other than themselves—and say
My knights are all adulterers like his own,
But mine are truer, seeing they profess
To be none other: and say his hour is come,
The heathen are upon him, his long lance
Broken, and his Excalibur a straw.’ ”
Then Arthur turn’d to Kay the seneschal.
“Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously
Like a king’s heir, till all his hurts be whole.
The heathen—but that ever-climbing wave,
Hurl’d back again so often in empty foam,
Hath lain for years at rest—and renegades,
Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom
The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere,
Friends, thro’ your manhood and your fealty,—now
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?”
Thereto Sir Lancelot answer’d: “It is well;
Yet better if the King abide, and leave
The leading of his younger knights to me.
Else, for the King has will’d it, it is well.”
Then Arthur rose and Lancelot follow’d him,
And while they stood without the doors, the King
Turn’d to him, saying: “Is it then so well?
Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he
Of whom was written, ‘A sound is in his ears’?
The foot that loiters, bidden go,—the glance
That only seems half-loyal to command,—
A manner somewhat fallen from reverence—
Or have I dream’d the bearing of our knights
Tells of a manhood ever less and lower?
Or whence the fear lest this my realm, uprear’d,
By noble deeds at one with noble vows,
From flat confusion and brute violences,
Reel back into the beast, and be no more?”
He spoke, and taking all his younger knights,
Down the slope city rode, and sharply turn’d
North by the gate. In her high bower 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 look’d 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,
Sat their great umpire looking o’er the lists.
He saw the laws that ruled the tournament
Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down
Before his throne of arbitration cursed
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 over-seas 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 even 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
Stood, while he mutter’d, “Craven crests! O shame!
What faith have these in whom they sware to love?
The glory of our Round Table is no more.”
So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems,
Not speaking other word than, “Hast thou won?
Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand
Wherewith thou takest this is red!” to whom
Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot’s languorous
mood,
Made answer: “Ay, but wherefore toss me this
Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound?
Let be thy fair Queen’s fantasy. Strength of heart
And might of limb, but mainly use and skill,
Are winners in this pastime of our King.
My hand—belike the lance hath dript upon it—
No bloo
d of mine, I trow; but O chief knight,
Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield,
Great brother, thou nor I have made the world;
Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.”
And Tristram round the gallery made his horse
Caracole; then bow’d his homage, bluntly saying,
“Fair damsels, each to him who worships each
Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold
This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.”
And most of these were mute, some anger’d, one
Murmuring, “All courtesy is dead,” and one,
“The glory of our Round Table is no more.”
Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,
And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day
Went glooming down in wet and weariness;
But under her black brows a swarthy one
Laugh’d shrilly, crying: “Praise the patient saints,
Our one white day of Innocence hath past,
Tho’ somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.
The snowdrop only, flowering thro’ the year,
Would make the world as blank as wintertide.
Come—let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen’s
And Lancelot’s, at this night’s solemnity
With all the kindlier colors of the field.”
So dame and damsel glittered at the feast
Variously gay; for he that tells the tale
Liken’d them, saying, as when an hour of cold
Falls on the mountain in midsummer snows,
And all the purple slopes of mountain flowers
Pass under white, till the warm hour returns
With veer of wind and all are flowers again,
So dame and damsel cast the simple white,
And glowing in all colors, the live grass,
Rose-campion, bluebell, kingcup, poppy, glanced
About the revels, and with mirth so loud
Beyond all use, that, half-amazed, the Queen,
And wroth at Tristram and the lawless jousts,
Brake up their sports, then slowly to her bower
Parted, and in her bosom pain was lord.
And little Dagonet on the morrow morn,