Tristram of Lyonesse

Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Tristram of Lyonesse

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Algernon Charles Swinburne

Tristram of Lyonesse

To My Best Friend

Theodore Watts-Dunton

Spring speaks again, and all our woods are stirred,

And all our wide glad wastes aflower around,

That twice have heard keen April's clarion sound

Since here we first together saw and heard

Spring's light reverberate and reiterate word

Shine forth and speak in season. Life stands crowned

Here with the best one thing it ever found,

As of my soul's best birthdays dawns the third.

There is a friend that as the wise man saith

Cleaves closer than a brother: nor to me

Hath time not shown, through days like waves at strife,

This truth more sure than all things else but death,

This pearl most perfect found in all the sea

That washes toward your feet these waifs of life.

The Pines: April 1882

Prelude

Tristram and Iseult

Love, that is first and last of all things made,

The light that has the living world for shade,

The spirit that for temporal veil has on

The souls of all men woven in unison,

One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought

And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,

And alway through new act and passion new

Shines the divine same body and beauty through,

The body spiritual of fire and light

That is to worldly noon as noon to night;

Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man

And spirit within the flesh whence breath began;

Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;

Love, that is blood within the veins of time;

That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,

Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,

And with the pulse and motion of his breath

Through the great heart of the earth strikes life and death,

The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune live

Through day and night of things alternative,

Through silence and through sound of stress and strife,

And ebb and flow of dying death and life;

Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,

Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears,

That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings;

Love, that is root and fruit of terrene things;

Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,

The whole world's fiery forces not burn down;

Love, that what time his own hands guard his head

The whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead;

Love, that if once his own hands make his grave

The whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save;

Love, that for very life shall not be sold,

Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold;

So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell,

Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell;

So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given,

Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven;

Love that is fire within thee and light above,

And lives by grace of nothing but of love;

Through many and lovely thoughts and much desire

Led these twain to the life of tears and fire;

Through many and lovely days and much delight

Led these twain to the lifeless life of night.

Yea, but what then? albeit all this were thus,

And soul smote soul and left it ruinous,

And love led love as eyeless men lead men,

Through chance by chance to deathward – Ah, what then?

Hath love not likewise led them further yet,

Out through the years where memories rise and set,

Some large as suns, some moon-like warm and pale,

Some starry-sighted, some through clouds that sail

Seen as red flame through spectral float of fume,

Each with the blush of its own special bloom

On the fair face of its own coloured light,

Distinguishable in all the host of night,

Divisible from all the radiant rest

And separable in splendour? Hath the best

Light of love's all, of all that burn and move,

A better heaven than heaven is? Hath not love

Made for all these their sweet particular air

To shine in, their own beams and names to bear,

Their ways to wander and their wards to keep,

Till story and song and glory and all things sleep?

Hath he not plucked from death of lovers dead

Their musical soft memories, and kept red

The rose of their remembrance in men's eyes,

The sunsets of their stories in his skies,

The blush of their dead blood in lips that speak

Of their dead lives, and in the listener's cheek

That trembles with the kindling pity lit

In gracious hearts for some sweet fever-fit,

A fiery pity enkindled of pure thought

By tales that make their honey out of nought,

The faithless faith that lives without belief

Its light life through, the griefless ghost of grief?

Yea, as warm night refashions the sere blood

In storm-struck petal or in sun-struck bud,

With tender hours and tempering dew to cure

The hunger and thirst of day's distemperature

And ravin of the dry discolouring hours,

Hath he not bid relume their flameless flowers

With summer fire and heat of lamping song,

And bid the short-lived things, long dead, live long,

And thought remake their wan funereal fames,

And the sweet shining signs of women's names

That mark the months out and the weeks anew

He moves in changeless change of seasons through

To fill the days up of his dateless year

Flame from Queen Helen to Queen Guenevere?

For first of all the sphery signs whereby

Love severs light from darkness, and most high,

In the white front of January there glows

The rose-red sign of Helen like a rose:

And gold-eyed as the shore-flower shelterless

Whereon the sharp-breathed sea blows bitterness,

A storm-star that the seafarers of love

Strain their wind-wearied eyes for glimpses of,

Shoots keen through February's grey frost and damp

The lamplike star of Hero for a lamp;

The star that Marlowe sang into our skies

With mouth of gold, and morning in his eyes;

And in clear March across the rough blue sea

The signal sapphire of Alcyone

Makes bright the blown brows of the wind-foot year;

And shining like a sunbeam-smitten tear

Full ere it fall, the fair next sign in sight

Burns opal-wise with April-coloured light

When air is quick with song and rain and flame,

My birth-month star that in love's heaven hath name

Iseult, a light of blossom and beam and shower,

My singing sign that makes the song-tree flower;

Next like a pale and burning pearl beyond

The rose-white sphere of flower-named Rosamond

Signs the sweet head of Maytime; and for June

Flares like an angered and storm-reddening moon

Her signal sphere, whose Carthaginian pyre

Shadowed her traitor's flying sail with fire;

Next, glittering as the wine-bright jacinth-stone,

A star south-risen that first to music shone,

The keen girl-star of golden Juliet bears

Light northward to the month whose forehead wears

Her name for flower upon it, and his trees

Mix their deep English song with Veronese;

And like an awful sovereign chrysolite

Burning, the supreme fire that blinds the night,

The hot gold head of Venus kissed by Mars,

A sun-flower among small sphered flowers of stars,

The light of Cleopatra fills and burns

The hollow of heaven whence ardent August yearns;

And fixed and shining as the sister-shed

Sweet tears for Phaethon disorbed and dead,

The pale bright autumn's amber-coloured sphere,

That through September sees the saddening year

As love sees change through sorrow, hath to name

Francesca's; and the star that watches flame

The embers of the harvest overgone

Is Thisbe's, slain of love in Babylon,

Set in the golden girdle of sweet signs

A blood-bright ruby; last save one light shines

An eastern wonder of sphery chrysopras,

The star that made men mad, Angelica's;

And latest named and lordliest, with a sound

Of swords and harps in heaven that ring it round,

Last love-light and last love-song of the year's,

Gleams like a glorious emerald Guenevere's.

These are the signs wherethrough the year sees move,

Full of the sun, the sun-god which is love,

A fiery body blood-red from the heart

Outward, with fire-white wings made wide apart,

That close not and unclose not, but upright

Steered without wind by their own light and might

Sweep through the flameless fire of air that rings

From heaven to heaven with thunder of wheels and wings

And antiphones of motion-moulded rhyme

Through spaces out of space and timeless time.

So shine above dead chance and conquered change

The spherèd signs, and leave without their range

Doubt and desire, and hope with fear for wife,

Pale pains, and pleasures long worn out of life.

Yea, even the shadows of them spiritless,

Through the dim door of sleep that seem to press,

Forms without form, a piteous people and blind,

Men and no men, whose lamentable kind

The shadow of death and shadow of life compel

Through semblances of heaven and false-faced hell,

Through dreams of light and dreams of darkness tost

On waves innavigable, are these so lost?

Shapes that wax pale and shift in swift strange wise,

Void faces with unspeculative eyes,

Dim things that gaze and glare, dead mouths that move,

Featureless heads discrowned of hate and love,

Mockeries and masks of motion and mute breath,

Leavings of life, the superflux of death –

If these things and no more than these things be

Left when man ends or changes, who can see?

Or who can say with what more subtle sense

Their subtler natures taste in air less dense

A life less thick and palpable than ours,

Warmed with faint fires and sweetened with dead flowers

And measured by low music? how time fares

In that wan time-forgotten world of theirs,

Their pale poor world too deep for sun or star

To live in, where the eyes of Helen are,

And hers who made as God's own eyes to shine

The eyes that met them of the Florentine,

Wherein the godhead thence transfigured lit

All time for all men with the shadow of it?

Ah, and these too felt on them as God's grace

The pity and glory of this man's breathing face;

For these too, these my lovers, these my twain,

Saw Dante, saw God visible by pain,

With lips that thundered and with feet that trod

Before men's eyes incognisable God;

Saw love and wrath and light and night and fire

Live with one life and at one mouth respire,

And in one golden sound their whole soul heard

Sounding, one sweet immitigable word.

They have the night, who had like us the day;

We, whom day binds, shall have the night as they.

We, from the fetters of the light unbound,

Healed of our wound of living, shall sleep sound.

All gifts but one the jealous God may keep

From our soul's longing, one he cannot – sleep.

This, though he grudge all other grace to prayer,

This grace his closed hand cannot choose but spare.

This, though his ear be sealed to all that live,

Be it lightly given or lothly, God must give.

We, as the men whose name on earth is none,

We too shall surely pass out of the sun;

Out of the sound and eyeless light of things,

Wide as the stretch of life's time-wandering wings,

Wide as the naked world and shadowless,

And long-lived as the world's own weariness.

Us too, when all the fires of time are cold,

The heights shall hide us and the depths shall hold.

Us too, when all the tears of time are dry,

The night shall lighten from her tearless eye.

Blind is the day and eyeless all its light,

But the large unbewildered eye of night

Hath sense and speculation; and the sheer

Limitless length of lifeless life and clear,

The timeless space wherein the brief worlds move

Clothed with light life and fruitful with light love,

With hopes that threaten, and with fears that cease,

Past fear and hope, hath in it only peace.

Yet of these lives inlaid with hopes and fears,

Spun fine as fire and jewelled thick with tears,

These lives made out of loves that long since were,

Lives wrought as ours of earth and burning air,

Fugitive flame, and water of secret springs,

And clothed with joys and sorrows as with wings,

Some yet are good, if aught be good, to save

Some while from washing wreck and wrecking wave.

Was such not theirs, the twain I take, and give

Out of my life to make their dead life live

Some days of mine, and blow my living breath

Between dead lips forgotten even of death?

So many and many of old have given my twain

Love and live song and honey-hearted pain,

Whose root is sweetness and whose fruit is sweet,

So many and with such joy have tracked their feet,

What should I do to follow? yet I too,

I have the heart to follow, many or few

Be the feet gone before me; for the way,

Rose-red with remnant roses of the day

Westward, and eastward white with stars that break,

Between the green and foam is fair to take

For any sail the sea-wind steers for me

From morning into morning, sea to sea.

I

The Sailing of the Swallow

About the middle music of the spring

Came from the castled shore of Ireland's king

A fair ship stoutly sailing, eastward bound

And south by Wales and all its wonders round

To the loud rocks and ringing reaches home

That take the wild wrath of the Cornish foam,

Past Lyonesse unswallowed of the tides

And high Carlion that now the steep sea hides

To the wind-hollowed heights and gusty bays

Of sheer Tintagel, fair with famous days.

Above the stem a gilded swallow shone,

Wrought with straight wings and eyes of glittering stone

As flying sunward oversea, to bear

Green summer with it through the singing air.

And on the deck between the rowers at dawn,

As the bright sail with brightening wind was drawn,

Sat with full face against the strengthening light

Iseult, more fair than foam or dawn was white.

Her gaze was glad past love's own singing of,

And her face lovely past desire of love.

Past thought and speech her maiden motions were,

And a more golden sunrise was her hair.

The very veil of her bright flesh was made

As of light woven and moonbeam-coloured shade

More fine than moonbeams; white her eyelids shone

As snow sun-stricken that endures the sun,

And through their curled and coloured clouds of deep

Luminous lashes thick as dreams in sleep

Shone as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's

The springs of unimaginable eyes.

As the wave's subtler emerald is pierced through

With the utmost heaven's inextricable blue,

And both are woven and molten in one sleight

Of amorous colour and implicated light

Under the golden guard and gaze of noon,

So glowed their awless amorous plenilune,

Azure and gold and ardent grey, made strange

With fiery difference and deep interchange

Inexplicable of glories multiform;

Now as the sullen sapphire swells toward storm

Foamless, their bitter beauty grew acold,

And now afire with ardour of fine gold.

Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate,

For love upon them like a shadow sate

Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things,

A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings

That knew not what man's love or life should be,

Nor had it sight nor heart to hope or see

What thing should come, but childlike satisfied

Watched out its virgin vigil in soft pride

And unkissed expectation; and the glad

Clear cheeks and throat and tender temples had

Such maiden heat as if a rose's blood

Beat in the live heart of a lily-bud.

Between the small round breasts a white way led

Heavenward, and from slight foot to slender head

The whole fair body flower-like swayed and shone

Moving, and what her light hand leant upon

Grew blossom-scented: her warm arms began

To round and ripen for delight of man

That they should clasp and circle: her fresh hands,

Like regent lilies of reflowering lands

Whose vassal firstlings, crown and star and plume,

Bow down to the empire of that sovereign bloom,

Shone sceptreless, and from her face there went

A silent light as of a God content;

Save when, more swift and keen than love or shame,

Some flash of blood, light as the laugh of flame,

Broke it with sudden beam and shining speech,

As dream by dream shot through her eyes, and each

Outshone the last that lightened, and not one

Showed her such things as should be borne and done.

Though hard against her shone the sunlike face

That in all change and wreck of time and place

Should be the star of her sweet living soul.

Nor had love made it as his written scroll

For evil will and good to read in yet;

But smooth and mighty, without scar or fret,

Fresh and high-lifted was the helmless brow

As the oak-tree flower that tops the topmost bough,

Ere it drop off before the perfect leaf;

And nothing save his name he had of grief,

The name his mother, dying as he was born,

Made out of sorrow in very sorrow's scorn,

And set it on him smiling in her sight,

Tristram; who now, clothed with sweet youth and might,

As a glad witness wore that bitter name,

The second symbol of the world for fame.

Famous and full of fortune was his youth

Ere the beard's bloom had left his cheek unsmooth,

And in his face a lordship of strong joy

And height of heart no chance could curb or cloy

Lightened, and all that warmed them at his eyes

Loved them as larks that kindle as they rise

Toward light they turn to music love the blue strong skies.

So like the morning through the morning moved

Tristram, a light to look on and be loved.

Song sprang between his lips and hands, and shone

Singing, and strengthened and sank down thereon

As a bird settles to the second flight,

Then from beneath his harping hands with might

Leapt, and made way and had its fill and died,

And all whose hearts were fed upon it sighed

Silent, and in them all the fire of tears

Burned as wine drunken not with lips but ears.

And gazing on his fervent hands that made

The might of music all their souls obeyed

With trembling strong subservience of delight,

Full many a maid that had him once in sight

Thought in the secret rapture of her heart

In how dark onset had these hands borne part

How oft, and were so young and sweet of skill;

And those red lips whereon the song burned still,

What words and cries of battle had they flung

Athwart the swing and shriek of swords, so young;

And eyes as glad as summer, what strange youth

Fed them so full of happy heart and truth,

That had seen sway from side to sundering side

The steel flow of that terrible springtide

That the moon rules not, but the fire and light

Of men's hearts mixed in the mid mirth of fight.

Therefore the joy and love of him they had

Made thought more amorous in them and more glad

For his fame's sake remembered, and his youth

Gave his fame flowerlike fragrance and soft growth

As of a rose requickening, when he stood

Fair in their eye, a flower of faultless blood.

And that sad queen to whom his life was death,

A rose plucked forth of summer in mid breath,

A star fall'n out of season in mid throe

Of that life's joy that makes the star's life glow,

Made their love sadder toward him and more strong.

And in mid change of time and fight and song

Chance cast him westward on the low sweet strand

Where songs are sung of the old green Irish land,

And the sky loves it, and the sea loves best,

And as a bird is taken to man's breast

The sweet-souled land where sorrow sweetest sings

Is wrapt round with them as with hands and wings

And taken to the sea's heart as a flower.

There in the luck and light of his good hour

Came to the king's court like a noteless man

Tristram, and while some half a season ran

Abode before him harping in his hall,

And taught sweet craft of new things musical

To the dear maiden mouth and innocent hands

That for his sake are famous in all lands.

Yet was not love between them, for their fate

Lay wrapt in its appointed hour at wait,

And had no flower to show yet, and no sting.

But once being vexed with some past wound the king

Bade give him comfort of sweet baths, and then

Should Iseult watch him as his handmaiden,

For his more honour in men's sight, and ease

The hurts he had with holy remedies

Made by her mother's magic in strange hours

Out of live roots and life-compelling flowers.

And finding by the wound's shape in his side

This was the knight by whom their strength had died

And all their might in one man overthrown

Had left their shame in sight of all men shown,

She would have slain him swordless with his sword;

Yet seemed he to her so great and fair a lord

She heaved up hand and smote not; then said he,

Laughing – »What comfort shall this dead man be,

Damsel? what hurt is for my blood to heal?

But set your hand not near the toothèd steel

Lest the fang strike it.« – »Yea, the fang,« she said,

»Should it not sting the very serpent dead

That stung mine uncle? for his slayer art thou,

And half my mother's heart is bloodless now

Through thee, that mad'st the veins of all her kin

Bleed in his wounds whose veins through thee ran thin.«

Yet thought she how their hot chief's violent heart

Had flung the fierce word forth upon their part

Which bade to battle the best knight that stood

On Arthur's, and so dying of his wild mood

Had set upon his conqueror's flesh the seal

Of his mishallowed and anointed steel,

Whereof the venom and enchanted might

Made the sign burn here branded in her sight.

These things she stood recasting, and her soul

Subsiding till its wound of wrath were whole

Grew smooth again, as thought still softening stole

Through all its tempered passion; nor might hate

Keep high the fire against him lit of late;

But softly from his smiling sight she passed.

And peace thereafter made between them fast

Made peace between two kingdoms, when he went

Home with hands reconciled and heart content,

To bring fair truce 'twixt Cornwall's wild bright strand

And the long wrangling wars of that loud land.

And when full peace was struck betwixt them twain

Forth must he fare by those green straits again,

And bring back Iseult for a plighted bride

And set to reign at Mark his uncle's side.

So now with feast made and all triumphs done

They sailed between the moonfall and the sun

Under the spent stars eastward; but the queen

Out of wise heart and subtle love had seen

Such things as might be, dark as in a glass,

And lest some doom of these should come to pass

Bethought her with her secret soul alone

To work some charm for marriage unison

And strike the heart of Iseult to her lord

With power compulsive more than stroke of sword.

Therefore with marvellous herbs and spells she wrought

To win the very wonder of her thought,

And brewed it with her secret hands and blest

And drew and gave out of her secret breast

To one her chosen and Iseult's handmaiden,

Brangwain, and bade her hide from sight of men

This marvel covered in a golden cup,

So covering in her heart the counsel up

As in the gold the wondrous wine lay close;

And when the last shout with the last cup rose

About the bride and bridegroom bound to bed,

Then should this one word of her will be said

To her new-married maiden child, that she

Should drink with Mark this draught in unity,

And no lip touch it for her sake but theirs:

For with long love and consecrating prayers

The wine was hallowed for their mouths to pledge;

And if a drop fell from the beaker's edge

That drop should Iseult hold as dear as blood

Shed from her mother's heart to do her good.

And having drunk they twain should be one heart

Who were one flesh till fleshly death should part –

Death, who parts all. So Brangwain swore, and kept

The hid thing by her while she waked or slept.

And now they sat to see the sun again

Whose light of eye had looked on no such twain

Since Galahault in the rose-time of the year

Brought Launcelot first to sight of Guenevere.

And Tristram caught her changing eyes and said:

»As this day raises daylight from the dead

Might not this face the life of a dead man?«

And Iseult, gazing where the sea was wan

Out of the sun's way, said: »I pray you not

Praise me, but tell me there in Camelot,

Saving the queen, who hath most name of fair?

I would I were a man and dwelling there,

That I might win me better praise than yours,

Even such as you have; for your praise endures,

That with great deeds ye wring from mouths of men,

But ours – for shame, where is it? Tell me then,

Since woman may not wear a better here,

Who of this praise hath most save Guenevere?«

And Tristram, lightening with a laugh held in –

»Surely a little praise is this to win,

A poor praise and a little! but of these

Hapless, whom love serves only with bowed knees,

Of such poor women fairer face hath none

That lifts her eyes alive against the sun

Than Arthur's sister, whom the north seas call

Mistress of isles; so yet majestical

Above the crowns on younger heads she moves,

Outlightening with her eyes our late-born loves.«

»Ah,« said Iseult, »is she more tall than I?

Look, I am tall;« and struck the mast hard by,

With utmost upward reach of her bright hand;

»And look, fair lord, now, when I rise and stand,

How high with feet unlifted I can touch

Standing straight up; could this queen do thus much?

Nay, over tall she must be then, like me;

Less fair than lesser women. May this be,

That still she stands the second stateliest there,

So more than many so much younger fair,

She, born when yet the king your lord was not,

And has the third knight after Launcelot

And after you to serve her? nay, sir, then

God made her for a godlike sign to men.«

»Ay,« Tristram answered, »for a sign, a sign –

Would God it were not! for no planets shine

With half such fearful forecast of men's fate

As a fair face so more unfortunate.«

Then with a smile that lit not on her brows

But moved upon her red mouth tremulous

Light as a sea-bird's motion oversea,

»Yea,« quoth Iseult, »the happier hap for me,

With no such face to bring men no such fate.

Yet her might all we women born too late

Praise for good hap, who so enskied above

Not more in age excels us than man's love.«

There came a glooming light on Tristram's face

Answering: »God keep you better in his grace

Than to sit down beside her in men's sight.

For if men be not blind whom God gives light

And lie not in whose lips he bids truth live,

Great grief shall she be given, and greater give.

For Merlin witnessed of her years ago

That she should work woe and should suffer woe

Beyond the race of women: and in truth

Her face, a spell that knows nor age nor youth,

Like youth being soft, and subtler-eyed than age,

With lips that mock the doom her eyes presage,

Hath on it such a light of cloud and fire,

With charm and change of keen or dim desire,

And over all a fearless look of fear

Hung like a veil across its changing cheer,

Made up of fierce foreknowledge and sharp scorn,

That it were better she had not been born.

For not love's self can help a face which hath

Such insubmissive anguish of wan wrath,

Blind prescience and self-contemptuous hate

Of her own soul and heavy-footed fate,

Writ broad upon its beauty: none the less

Its fire of bright and burning bitterness

Takes with as quick a flame the sense of men

As any sunbeam, nor is quenched again

With any drop of dewfall; yea, I think

No herb of force or blood-compelling drink

Would heal a heart that ever it made hot.

Ay, and men too that greatly love her not,

Seeing the great love of her and Lamoracke,

Make no great marvel, nor look strangely back

When with his gaze about her she goes by

Pale as a breathless and star-quickening sky

Between moonrise and sunset, and moves out

Clothed with the passion of his eyes about

As night with all her stars, yet night is black;

And she, clothed warm with love of Lamoracke,

Girt with his worship as with girdling gold,

Seems all at heart anhungered and acold,

Seems sad at heart and loveless of the light,

As night, star-clothed or naked, is but night.«

And with her sweet eyes sunken, and the mirth

Dead in their look as earth lies dead in earth

That reigned on earth and triumphed, Iseult said:

»Is it her shame of something done and dead

Or fear of something to be born and done

That so in her soul's eye puts out the sun?«

And Tristram answered: »Surely, as I think,

This gives her soul such bitterness to drink,

The sin born blind, the sightless sin unknown,

Wrought when the summer in her blood was blown

But scarce aflower, and spring first flushed her will

With bloom of dreams no fruitage should fulfil,

When out of vision and desire was wrought

The sudden sin that from the living thought

Leaps a live deed and dies not: then there came

On that blind sin swift eyesight like a flame

Touching the dark to death, and made her mad

With helpless knowledge that too late forbade

What was before the bidding: and she knew

How sore a life dead love should lead her through

To what sure end how fearful; and though yet

Nor with her blood nor tears her way be wet

And she look bravely with set face on fate,

Yet she knows well the serpent hour at wait

Somewhere to sting and spare not; ay, and he,

Arthur« –

»The king,« quoth Iseult suddenly,

»Doth the king too live so in sight of fear?

They say sin touches not a man so near

As shame a woman; yet he too should be

Part of the penance, being more deep than she

Set in the sin.«

»Nay,« Tristram said, »for thus

It fell by wicked hap and hazardous,

That wittingly he sinned no more than youth

May sin and be assoiled of God and truth,

Repenting; since in his first year of reign

As he stood splendid with his foemen slain

And light of new-blown battles, flushed and hot

With hope and life, came greeting from King Lot

Out of his wind-worn islands oversea,

And homage to my king and fealty

Of those north seas wherein the strange shapes swim,

As from his man; and Arthur greeted him

As his good lord and courteously, and bade

To his high feast; who coming with him had

This Queen Morgause of Orkney, his fair wife,

In the green middle Maytime of her life,

And scarce in April was our king's as then,

And goodliest was he of all flowering men,

And of what graft as yet himself knew not;

But cold as rains in autumn was King Lot

And grey-grown out of season: so there sprang

Swift love between them, and all spring through sang

Light in their joyous hearing; for none knew

The bitter bond of blood between them two,

Twain fathers but one mother, till too late

The sacred mouth of Merlin set forth fate

And brake the secret seal on Arthur's birth,

And showed his ruin and his rule on earth

Inextricable, and light on lives to be.

For surely, though time slay us, yet shall we

Have such high name and lordship of good days

As shall sustain us living, and men's praise

Shall burn a beacon lit above us dead.

And of the king how shall not this be said

When any of us from any mouth has praise,

That such were men in only this king's days,

In Arthur's? yea, come shine or shade, no less

His name shall be one name with knightliness,

His fame one light with sunlight. Yet in sooth

His age shall bear the burdens of his youth

And bleed from his own bloodshed; for indeed

Blind to him blind his sister brought forth seed,

And of the child between them shall be born

Destruction: so shall God not suffer scorn,

Nor in men's souls and lives his law lie dead.«

And as one moved and marvelling Iseult said:

»Great pity it is and strange it seems to me

God could not do them so much right as we,

Who slay not men for witless evil done;

And these the noblest under God's glad sun

For sin they knew not he that knew shall slay,

And smite blind men for stumbling in fair day.

What good is it to God that such should die?

Shall the sun's light grow sunnier in the sky

Because their light of spirit is clean put out?«

And sighing, she looked from wave to cloud about,

And even with that the full-grown feet of day

Sprang upright on the quivering water-way,

And his face burned against her meeting face

Most like a lover's thrilled with great love's grace

Whose glance takes fire and gives; the quick sea shone

And shivered like spread wings of angels blown

By the sun's breath before him; and a low

Sweet gale shook all the foam-flowers of thin snow

As into rainfall of sea-roses shed

Leaf by wild leaf on that green garden-bed

Which tempests till and sea-winds turn and plough:

For rosy and fiery round the running prow

Fluttered the flakes and feathers of the spray,

And bloomed like blossoms cast by God away

To waste on the ardent water; swift the moon

Withered to westward as a face in swoon

Death-stricken by glad tidings: and the height

Throbbed and the centre quivered with delight

And the depth quailed with passion as of love,

Till like the heart of some new-mated dove

Air, light, and wave seemed full of burning rest,

With motion as of one God's beating breast.

And her heart sprang in Iseult, and she drew

With all her spirit and life the sunrise through,

And through her lips the keen triumphant air

Sea-scented, sweeter than land-roses were,

And through her eyes the whole rejoicing east

Sun-satisfied, and all the heaven at feast

Spread for the morning; and the imperious mirth

Of wind and light that moved upon the earth,

Making the spring, and all the fruitful might

And strong regeneration of delight

That swells the seedling leaf and sapling man,

Since the first life in the first world began

To burn and burgeon through void limbs and veins,

And the first love with sharp sweet procreant pains

To pierce and bring forth roses; yea, she felt

Through her own soul the sovereign morning melt,

And all the sacred passion of the sun;

And as the young clouds flamed and were undone

About him coming, touched and burnt away

In rosy ruin and yellow spoil of day,

The sweet veil of her body and corporal sense

Felt the dawn also cleave it, and incense

With light from inward and with effluent heat

The kindling soul through fleshly hands and feet.

And as the august great blossom of the dawn

Burst, and the full sun scarce from sea withdrawn

Seemed on the fiery water a flower afloat,

So as a fire the mighty morning smote

Throughout her, and incensed with the influent hour

Her whole soul's one great mystical red flower

Burst, and the bud of her sweet spirit broke

Rose-fashion, and the strong spring at a stroke

Thrilled, and was cloven, and from the full sheath came

The whole rose of the woman red as flame:

And all her Mayday blood as from a swoon

Flushed, and May rose up in her and was June.

So for a space her heart as heavenward burned:

Then with half summer in her eyes she turned,

And on her lips was April yet, and smiled,

As though the spirit and sense unreconciled

Shrank laughing back, and would not ere its hour

Let life put forth the irrevocable flower.

And the soft speech between them grew again

With questionings and records of what men

Rose mightiest, and what names for love or fight

Shone starriest overhead of queen or knight.

There Tristram spake of many a noble thing,

High feast and storm of tournay round the king,

Strange quest by perilous lands of marsh and brake

And circling woods branch-knotted like a snake

And places pale with sins that they had seen,

Where was no life of red fruit or of green

But all was as a dead face wan and dun;

And bowers of evil builders whence the sun

Turns silent, and the moon holds hardly light

Above them through the sick and star-crossed night;

And of their hands through whom such holds lay waste,

And all their strengths dishevelled and defaced

Fell ruinous, and were not from north to south:

And of the might of Merlin's ancient mouth,

The son of no man's loins, begot by doom

In speechless sleep out of a spotless womb;

For sleeping among graves where none had rest

And ominous houses of dead bones unblest

Among the grey grass rough as old rent hair

And wicked herbage whitening like despair

And blown upon with blasts of dolorous breath

From gaunt rare gaps and hollow doors of death,

A maid unspotted, senseless of the spell,

Felt not about her breathe some thing of hell

Whose child and hers was Merlin; and to him

Great light from God gave sight of all things dim

And wisdom of all wondrous things, to say

What root should bear what fruit of night or day,

And sovereign speech and counsel higher than man;

Wherefore his youth like age was wise and wan,

And his age sorrowful and fain to sleep;

Yet should sleep never, neither laugh nor weep,

Till in some depth of deep sweet land or sea

The heavenly hands of holier Nimue,

That was the nurse of Launcelot, and most sweet

Of all that move with magical soft feet

Among us, being of lovelier blood and breath,

Should shut him in with sleep as kind as death:

For she could pass between the quick and dead:

And of her love toward Pelleas, for whose head

Love-wounded and world-wearied she had won

A place beyond all pain in Avalon;

And of the fire that wasted afterward

The loveless eyes and bosom of Ettarde,

In whose false love his faultless heart had burned;

And now being rapt from her, her lost heart yearned

To seek him, and passed hungering out of life:

And after all the thunder-hours of strife

That roared between King Claudas and King Ban

How Nimue's mighty nursling waxed to man,

And how from his first field such grace he got

That all men's hearts bowed down to Launcelot,

And how the high prince Galahault held him dear

And led him even to love of Guenevere

And to that kiss which made break forth as fire

The laugh that was the flower of his desire,

The laugh that lightened at her lips for bliss

To win from Love so great a lover's kiss:

And of the toil of Balen all his days

To reap but thorns for fruit and tears for praise,

Whose hap was evil as his heart was good,

And all his works and ways by wold and wood

Led through much pain to one last labouring day

When blood for tears washed grief with life away:

And of the kin of Arthur, and their might;

The misborn head of Mordred, sad as night,

With cold waste cheeks and eyes as keen as pain,

And the close angry lips of Agravaine;

And gracious Gawain, scattering words as flowers,

The kindliest head of worldly paramours;

And the fair hand of Gareth, found in fight

Strong as a sea-beast's tushes and as white;

And of the king's self, glorious yet and glad

For all the toil and doubt of doom he had,

Clothed with men's loves and full of kingly days.

Then Iseult said: »Let each knight have his praise

And each good man good witness of his worth;

But when men laud the second name on earth,

Whom would they praise to have no worldly peer

Save him whose love makes glorious Guenevere?«

»Nay,« Tristram said, »such man as he is none.«

»What,« said she, »there is none such under sun

Of all the large earth's living? yet I deemed

Men spake of one – but maybe men that dreamed,

Fools and tongue-stricken, witless, babbler's breed –

That for all high things was his peer indeed

Save this one highest, to be so loved and love.«

And Tristram: »Little wit had these thereof;

For there is none such in the world as this.«

»Ay, upon land,« quoth Iseult, »none such is,

I doubt not, nor where fighting folk may be;

But were there none such between sky and sea,

The world's whole worth were poorer than I wist.«

And Tristram took her flower-white hand and kissed,

Laughing; and through his fair face as in shame

The light blood lightened. »Hear they no such name?«

She said; and he, »If there be such a word,

I wot the queen's poor harper hath not heard.«

Then, as the fuller-feathered hours grew long,

He holp to speed their warm slow feet with song.

»Love, is it morning risen or night deceased

That makes the mirth of this triumphant east?

Is it bliss given or bitterness put by

That makes most glad men's hearts at love's high feast?

Grief smiles, joy weeps, that day should live and die.

Is it with soul's thirst or with body's drouth

That summer yearns out sunward to the south,

With all the flowers that when thy birth drew nigh

Were molten in one rose to make thy mouth?

O love, what care though day should live and die?

Is the sun glad of all the love on earth,

The spirit and sense and work of things and worth?

Is the moon sad because the month must fly

And bring her death that can but bring back birth?

For all these things as day must live and die.

Love, is it day that makes thee thy delight

Or thou that seest day made out of thy light?

Love, as the sun and sea are thou and I,

Sea without sun dark, sun without sea bright;

The sun is one though day should live and die.

O which is elder, night or light, who knows?

And life or love, which first of these twain grows?

For life is born of love to wail and cry,

And love is born of life to heal his woes,

And light of night, that day should live and die.

O sun of heaven above the worldly sea,

O very love, what light is this of thee!

My sea of soul is deep as thou art high,

But all thy light is shed through all of me,

As love's through love, while day shall live and die.«

»Nay,« said Iseult, »your song is hard to read.«

»Ay?« said he: »or too light a song to heed,

Too slight to follow, it may be? Who shall sing

Of love but as a churl before a king

If by love's worth men rate his worthiness?

Yet as the poor churl's worth to sing is less,

Surely the more shall be the great king's grace

To show for churlish love a kindlier face.«

»No churl,« she said, »but one in soothsayer's wise

Who tells but truths that help no more than lies.

I have heard men sing of love a simpler way

Than these wrought riddles made of night and day,

Like jewelled reins whereon the rhyme-bells hang.«

And Tristram smiled and changed his song and sang.

»The breath between my lips of lips not mine,

Like spirit in sense that makes pure sense divine,

Is as life in them from the living sky

That entering fills my heart with blood of thine

And thee with me, while day shall live and die.

Thy soul is shed into me with thy breath,

And in my heart each heartbeat of thee saith

How in thy life the lifesprings of me lie,

Even one life to be gathered of one death

In me and thee, though day may live and die.

Ah, who knows now if in my veins it be

My blood that feels life sweet, or blood of thee,

And this thine eyesight kindled in mine eye

That shows me in thy flesh the soul of me,

For thine made mine, while day may live and die?

Ah, who knows yet if one be twain or one,

And sunlight separable again from sun,

And I from thee with all my lifesprings dry,

And thou from me with all thine heartbeats done,

Dead separate souls while day shall live and die?

I see my soul within thine eyes, and hear

My spirit in all thy pulses thrill with fear,

And in my lips the passion of thee sigh,

And music of me made in mine own ear;

Am I not thou while day shall live and die?

Art thou not I as I thy love am thou?

So let all things pass from us; we are now,

For all that was and will be, who knows why?

And all that is and is not, who knows how?

Who knows? God knows why day should live and die.«

And Iseult mused and spake no word, but sought

Through all the hushed ways of her tongueless thought

What face or covered likeness of a face

In what veiled hour or dream-determined place

She seeing might take for love's face, and believe

This was the spirit to whom all spirits cleave.

For that sweet wonder of the twain made one

And each one twain, incorporate sun with sun,

Star with star molten, soul with soul imbued,

And all the soul's works, all their multitude,

Made one thought and one vision and one song,

Love – this thing, this, laid hand on her so strong

She could not choose but yearn till she should see.

So went she musing down her thoughts; but he,

Sweet-hearted as a bird that takes the sun

With clear strong eyes and feels the glad god run

Bright through his blood and wide rejoicing wings,

And opens all himself to heaven and sings,

Made her mind light and full of noble mirth

With words and songs the gladdest grown on earth,

Till she was blithe and high of heart as he.

So swam the Swallow through the springing sea.

And while they sat at speech as at a feast,

Came a light wind fast hardening forth of the east

And blackening till its might had marred the skies;

And the sea thrilled as with heart-sundering sighs

One after one drawn, with each breath it drew,

And the green hardened into iron blue,

And the soft light went out of all its face.

Then Tristram girt him for an oarsman's place

And took his oar and smote, and toiled with might

In the east wind's full face and the strong sea's spite

Labouring; and all the rowers rowed hard, but he

More mightily than any wearier three.

And Iseult watched him rowing with sinless eyes

That loved him but in holy girlish wise.

For noble joy in his fair manliness

And trust and tender wonder; none the less

She thought if God had given her grace to be

Man, and make war on danger of earth and sea,

Even such a man she would be; for his stroke

Was mightiest as the mightier water broke,

And in sheer measure like strong music drave

Clean through the wet weight of the wallowing wave;

And as a tune before a great king played

For triumph was the tune their strong strokes made,

And sped the ship through with smooth strife of oars

Over the mid sea's grey foam-paven floors,

For all the loud breach of the waves at will.

So for an hour they fought the storm out still,

And the shorn foam spun from the blades, and high

The keel sprang from the wave-ridge, and the sky

Glared at them for a breath's space through the rain;

Then the bows with a sharp shock plunged again

Down, and the sea clashed on them, and so rose

The bright stem like one panting from swift blows,

And as a swimmer's joyous beaten head

Rears itself laughing, so in that sharp stead

The light ship lifted her long quivering bows

As might the man his buffeted strong brows

Out of the wave-breach; for with one stroke yet

Went all men's oars together, strongly set

As to loud music, and with hearts uplift

They smote their strong way through the drench and drift:

Till the keen hour had chafed itself to death

And the east wind fell fitfully, breath by breath,

Tired; and across the thin and slackening rain

Sprang the face southward of the sun again.

Then all they rested and were eased at heart;

And Iseult rose up where she sat apart,

And with her sweet soul deepening her deep eyes

Cast the furs from her and subtle embroideries

That wrapped her from the storming rain and spray,

And shining like all April in one day,

Hair, face, and throat dashed with the straying showers,

She stood the first of all the whole world's flowers,

And laughed on Tristram with her eyes, and said,

»I too have heart then, I was not afraid.«

And answering some light courteous word of grace

He saw her clear face lighten on his face

Unwittingly, with unenamoured eyes,

For the last time. A live man in such wise

Looks in the deadly face of his fixed hour

And laughs with lips wherein he hath no power

To keep the life yet some five minutes' space.

So Tristram looked on Iseult face to face

And knew not, and she knew not. The last time –

The last that should be told in any rhyme

Heard anywhere on mouths of singing men

That ever should sing praise of them again;

The last hour of their hurtless hearts at rest,

The last that peace should touch them, breast to breast,

The last that sorrow far from them should sit,

This last was with them, and they knew not it.

For Tristram being athirst with toil now spake,

Saying, »Iseult, for all dear love's labour's sake

Give me to drink, and give me for a pledge

The touch of four lips on the beaker's edge.«

And Iseult sought and would not wake Brangwain

Who slept as one half dead with fear and pain,

Being tender-natured; so with hushed light feet

Went Iseult round her, with soft looks and sweet

Pitying her pain; so sweet a spirited thing

She was, and daughter of a kindly king.

And spying what strange bright secret charge was kept

Fast in that maid's white bosom while she slept,

She sought and drew the gold cup forth and smiled

Marvelling, with such light wonder as a child

That hears of glad sad life in magic lands;

And bare it back to Tristram with pure hands

Holding the love-draught that should be for flame

To burn out of them fear and faith and shame,

And lighten all their life up in men's sight,

And make them sad for ever. Then the knight

Bowed toward her and craved whence had she this strange thing

That might be spoil of some dim Asian king,

By starlight stolen from some waste place of sands,

And a maid bore it here in harmless hands.

And Iseult, laughing – »Other lords that be

Feast, and their men feast after them; but we,

Our men must keep the best wine back to feast

Till they be full and we of all men least

Feed after them and fain to fare so well:

So with mine handmaid and your squire it fell

That hid this bright thing from us in a wile;«

And with light lips yet full of their swift smile,

And hands that wist not though they dug a grave,

Undid the hasps of gold, and drank, and gave,

And he drank after, a deep glad kingly draught:

And all their life changed in them, for they quaffed

Death; if it be death so to drink, and fare

As men who change and are what these twain were.

And shuddering with eyes full of fear and fire

And heart-stung with a serpentine desire

He turned and saw the terror in her eyes

That yearned upon him shining in such wise

As a star midway in the midnight fixed.

Their Galahault was the cup, and she that mixed;

Nor other hand there needed, nor sweet speech

To lure their lips together; each on each

Hung with strange eyes and hovered as a bird

Wounded, and each mouth trembled for a word;

Their heads neared, and their hands were drawn in one,

And they saw dark, though still the unsunken sun

Far through fine rain shot fire into the south;

And their four lips became one burning mouth.

II

The Queen's Pleasance

Out of the night arose the second day,

And saw the ship's bows break the shoreward spray.

As the sun's boat of gold and fire began

To sail the sea of heaven unsailed of man,

And the soft waves of sacred air to break

Round the prow launched into the morning's lake,

They saw the sign of their sea-travel done.

Ah, was not something seen of yester-sun,

When the sweet light that lightened all the skies

Saw nothing fairer than one maiden's eyes,

That whatsoever in all time's years may be

To-day's sun nor to-morrow's sun shall see?

Not while she lives, not when she comes to die,

Shall she look sunward with that sinless eye.

Yet fairer now than song may show them stand

Tristram and Iseult, hand in amorous hand,

Soul-satisfied, their eyes made great and bright

With all the love of all the livelong night;

With all its hours yet singing in their ears

No mortal music made of thoughts and tears,

But such a song, past conscience of man's thought,

As hearing he grows god and knows it not.

Nought else they saw nor heard but what the night

Had left for seal upon their sense and sight,

Sound of past pulses beating, fire of amorous light.

Enough, and overmuch, and never yet

Enough, though love still hungering feed and fret,

To fill the cup of night which dawn must overset.

For still their eyes were dimmer than with tears

And dizzier from diviner sounds their ears

Than though from choral thunders of the quiring spheres.

They heard not how the landward waters rang,

Nor saw where high into the morning sprang,

Riven from the shore and bastioned with the sea,

Toward summits where the north wind's nest might be,

A wave-walled palace with its eastern gate

Full of the sunrise now and wide at wait,

And on the mighty-moulded stairs that clomb

Sheer from the fierce lip of the lapping foam

The knights of Mark that stood before the wall.

So with loud joy and storm of festival

They brought the bride in up the towery way

That rose against the rising front of day,

Stair based on stair, between the rocks unhewn,

To those strange halls wherethrough the tidal tune

Rang loud or lower from soft or strengthening sea,

Tower shouldering tower, to windward and to lee,

With change of floors and stories, flight on flight,

That clomb and curled up to the crowning height

Whence men might see wide east and west in one

And on one sea waned moon and mounting sun.

And severed from the sea-rock's base, where stand

Some worn walls yet they saw the broken strand,

The beachless cliff that in the sheer sea dips,

The sleepless shore inexorable to ships,

And the straight causeway's bare gaunt spine between

The sea-spanned walls and naked mainland's green.

On the mid stairs, between the light and dark,

Before the main tower's portal stood King Mark,

Crowned: and his face was as the face of one

Long time athirst and hungering for the sun

In barren thrall of bitter bonds, who now

Thinks here to feel its blessing on his brow.

A swart lean man, but kinglike, still of guise,

With black streaked beard and cold unquiet eyes,

Close-mouthed, gaunt-cheeked, wan as a morning moon,

Though hardly time on his worn hair had strewn

The thin first ashes from a sparing hand:

Yet little fire there burnt upon the brand,

And way-worn seemed he with life's wayfaring.

So between shade and sunlight stood the king,

And his face changed nor yearned not toward his bride;

But fixed between mild hope and patient pride

Abode what gift of rare or lesser worth

This day might bring to all his days on earth.

But at the glory of her when she came

His heart endured not: very fear and shame

Smote him, to take her by the hand and kiss,

Till both were molten in the burning bliss,

And with a thin flame flushing his cold face

He led her silent to the bridal place.

There were they wed and hallowed of the priest;

And all the loud time of the marriage feast

One thought within three hearts was as a fire,

Where craft and faith took counsel with desire.

For when the feast had made a glorious end

They gave the new queen for her maids to tend

At dawn of bride-night, and thereafter bring

With marriage music to the bridegroom king.

Then by device of craft between them laid

To him went Brangwain delicately, and prayed

That this thing even for love's sake might not be,

But without sound or light or eye to see

She might come in to bride-bed: and he laughed,

As one that wist not well of wise love's craft,

And bade all bridal things be as she would.

Yet of his gentleness he gat not good;

For clothed and covered with the nuptial dark

Soft like a bride came Brangwain to King Mark,

And to the queen came Tristram; and the night

Fled, and ere danger of detective light

From the king sleeping Brangwain slid away,

And where had lain her handmaid Iseult lay.

And the king waking saw beside his head

That face yet passion-coloured, amorous red

From lips not his, and all that strange hair shed

Across the tissued pillows, fold on fold,

Innumerable, incomparable, all gold,

To fire men's eyes with wonder, and with love

Men's hearts; so shone its flowering crown above

The brows enwound with that imperial wreath,

And framed with fragrant radiance round the face beneath.

And the king marvelled, seeing with sudden start

Her very glory, and said out of his heart;

»What have I done of good for God to bless

That all this he should give me, tress on tress,

All this great wealth and wondrous? Was it this

That in mine arms I had all night to kiss,

And mix with me this beauty? this that seems

More fair than heaven doth in some tired saint's dreams,

Being part of that same heaven? yea, more, for he,

Though loved of God so, yet but seems to see,

But to me sinful such great grace is given

That in mine hands I hold this part of heaven,

Not to mine eyes lent merely. Doth God make

Such things so godlike for man's mortal sake?

Have I not sinned, that in this fleshly life

Have made of her a mere man's very wife?«

So the king mused and murmured; and she heard

The faint sound trembling of each breathless word,

And laughed into the covering of her hair.

And many a day for many a month as fair

Slid over them like music; and as bright

Burned with love's offerings many a secret night.

And many a dawn to many a fiery noon

Blew prelude, when the horn's heart-kindling tune

Lit the live woods with sovereign sound of mirth

Before the mightiest huntsman hailed on earth

Lord of its lordliest pleasure, where he rode

Hard by her rein whose peerless presence glowed

Not as that white queen's of the virgin hunt

Once, whose crown-crescent braves the night-wind's brunt,

But with the sun for frontlet of a queenlier front.

For where the flashing of her face was turned

As lightning was the fiery light that burned

From eyes and brows enkindled more with speed

And rapture of the rushing of her steed

Than once with only beauty; and her mouth

Was as a rose athirst that pants for drouth

Even while it laughs for pleasure of desire,

And all her heart was as a leaping fire.

Yet once more joy they took of woodland ways

Than came of all those flushed and fiery days

When the loud air was mad with life and sound,

Through many a dense green mile, of horn and hound

Before the king's hunt going along the wind,

And ere the timely leaves were changed or thinned,

Even in mid maze of summer. For the knight

Forth was once ridden toward some frontier fight

Against the lewd folk of the Christless lands

That warred with wild and intermittent hands

Against the king's north border; and there came

A knight unchristened yet of unknown name,

Swart Palamede, upon a secret quest,

To high Tintagel, and abode as guest

In likeness of a minstrel with the king.

Nor was there man could sound so sweet a string,

Save Tristram only, of all held best on earth.

And one loud eve, being full of wine and mirth,

Ere sunset left the walls and waters dark,

To that strange minstrel strongly swore King Mark,

By all that makes a knight's faith firm and strong,

That he for guerdon of his harp and song

Might crave and have his liking. Straight there came

Up the swart cheek a flash of swarthier flame,

And the deep eyes fulfilled of glittering night

Laughed out in lightnings of triumphant light

As the grim harper spake: »O king, I crave

No gift of man that king may give to slave,

But this thy crowned queen only, this thy wife,

Whom yet unseen I loved, and set my life

On this poor chance to compass, even as here,

Being fairer famed than all save Guenevere.«

Then as the noise of seaward storm that mocks

With roaring laughter from reverberate rocks

The cry from ships near shipwreck, harsh and high

Rose all the wrath and wonder in one cry

Through all the long roof's hollow depth and length

That hearts of strong men kindled in their strength

May speak in laughter lion-like, and cease,

Being wearied: only two men held their peace

And each glared hard on other: but King Mark

Spake first of these: »Man, though thy craft be dark

And thy mind evil that begat this thing,

Yet stands the word once plighted of a king

Fast: and albeit less evil it were for me

To give my life up than my wife, or be

A landless man crowned only with a curse,

Yet this in God's and all men's sight were worse,

To live soul-shamed, a man of broken troth,

Abhorred of men as I abhor mine oath

Which yet I may forswear not.« And he bowed

His head, and wept: and all men wept aloud,

Save one, that heard him weeping: but the queen

Wept not: and statelier yet than eyes had seen

That ever looked upon her queenly state

She rose, and in her eyes her heart was great

And full of wrath seen manifest and scorn

More strong than anguish to go thence forlorn

Of all men's comfort and her natural right.

And they went forth into the dawn of night.

Long by wild ways and clouded light they rode,

Silent; and fear less keen at heart abode

With Iseult than with Palamede: for awe

Constrained him, and the might of love's high law,

That can make lewd men loyal; and his heart

Yearned on her, if perchance with amorous art

And soothfast skill of very love he might

For courtesy find favour in her sight

And comfort of her mercies: for he wist

More grace might come of that sweet mouth unkissed

Than joy for violence done it, that should make

His name abhorred for shame's disloyal sake.

And in the stormy starlight clouds were thinned

And thickened by short gusts of changing wind

That panted like a sick man's fitful breath:

And like a moan of lions hurt to death

Came the sea's hollow noise along the night.

But ere its gloom from aught but foam had light

They halted, being aweary: and the knight

As reverently forbore her where she lay

As one that watched his sister's sleep till day.

Nor durst he kiss or touch her hand or hair

For love and shamefast pity, seeing how fair

She slept, and fenceless from the fitful air.

And shame at heart stung nigh to death desire,

But grief at heart burned in him like a fire

For hers and his own sorrowing sake, that had

Such grace for guerdon as makes glad men sad,

To have their will and want it. And the day

Sprang: and afar along the wild waste way

They heard the pulse and press of hurrying horse hoofs play:

And like the rushing of a ravenous flame

Whose wings make tempest of the darkness, came

Upon them headlong as in thunder borne

Forth of the darkness of the labouring morn

Tristram: and up forthright upon his steed

Leapt, as one blithe of battle, Palamede,

And mightily with shock of horse and man

They lashed together: and fair that fight began

As fair came up that sunrise: to and fro,

With knees nigh staggered and stout heads bent low

From each quick shock of spears on either side,

Reeled the strong steeds heavily, haggard-eyed

And heartened high with passion of their pride

As sheer the stout spears shocked again, and flew

Sharp-splintering: then, his sword as each knight drew,

They flashed and foined full royally, so long

That but to see so fair a strife and strong

A man might well have given out of his life

One year's void space forlorn of love or strife.

As when a bright north-easter, great of heart,

Scattering the strengths of squadrons, hurls apart

Ship from ship labouring violently, in such toil

As earns but ruin – with even so strong recoil

Back were the steeds hurled from the spear-shock, fain

And foiled of triumph: then with tightened rein

And stroke of spur, inveterate, either knight

Bore in again upon his foe with might,

Heart-hungry for the hot-mouthed feast of fight

And all athirst of mastery: but full soon

The jarring notes of that tempestuous tune

Fell, and its mighty music made of hands

Contending, clamorous through the loud waste lands,

Broke at once off; and shattered from his steed

Fell, as a mainmast ruining, Palamede,

Stunned: and those lovers left him where he lay,

And lightly through green lawns they rode away.

There was a bower beyond man's eye more fair

Than ever summer dews and sunniest air

Fed full with rest and radiance till the boughs

Had wrought a roof as for a holier house

Than aught save love might breathe in; fairer far

Than keeps the sweet light back of moon and star

From high kings' chambers: there might love and sleep

Divide for joy the darkling hours, and keep

With amorous alternation of sweet strife

The soft and secret ways of death and life

Made smooth for pleasure's feet to rest and run

Even from the moondawn to the kindling sun,

Made bright for passion's feet to run and rest

Between the midnight's and the morning's breast,

Where hardly though her happy head lie down

It may forget the hour that wove its crown;

Where hardly though her joyous limbs be laid

They may forget the mirth that midnight made.

And thither, ere sweet night had slain sweet day,

Iseult and Tristram took their wandering way,

And rested, and refreshed their hearts with cheer

In hunters' fashion of the woods; and here

More sweet it seemed, while this might be, to dwell

And take of all world's weariness farewell

Than reign of all world's lordship queen and king.

Nor here would time for three moons' changes bring

Sorrow nor thought of sorrow; but sweet earth

Fostered them like her babes of eldest birth,

Reared warm in pathless woods and cherished well.

And the sun sprang above the sea and fell,

And the stars rose and sank upon the sea;

And outlaw-like, in forest wise and free,

The rising and the setting of their lights

Found those twain dwelling all those days and nights.

And under change of sun and star and moon

Flourished and fell the chaplets woven of June,

And fair through fervours of the deepening sky

Panted and passed the hours that lit July,

And each day blessed them out of heaven above,

And each night crowned them with the crown of love.

Nor till the might of August overhead

Weighed on the world was yet one roseleaf shed

Of all their joy's warm coronal, nor aught

Touched them in passing ever with a thought

That ever this might end on any day

Or any night not love them where they lay;

But like a babbling tale of barren breath

Seemed all report and rumour held of death,

And a false bruit the legend tear-impearled

That such a thing as change was in the world.

And each bright song upon his lips that came,

Mocking the powers of change and death by name,

Blasphemed their bitter godhead, and defied

Time, though clothed round with ruin as kings with pride,

To blot the glad life out of love: and she

Drank lightly deep of his philosophy

In that warm wine of amorous words which is

Sweet with all truths of all philosophies.

For well he wist all subtle ways of song,

And in his soul the secret eye was strong

That burns in meditation, till bright words

Break flamelike forth as notes from fledgeling birds

That feel the soul speak through them of the spring.

So fared they night and day as queen and king

Crowned of a kingdom wide as day and night.

Nor ever cloudlet swept or swam in sight

Across the darkling depths of their delight

Whose stars no skill might number, nor man's art

Sound the deep stories of its heavenly heart.

Till, even for wonder that such life should live,

Desires and dreams of what death's self might give

Would touch with tears and laughter and wild speech

The lips and eyes of passion, fain to reach,

Beyond all bourne of time or trembling sense,

The verge of love's last possible eminence.

Out of the heaven that storm nor shadow mars,

Deep from the starry depth beyond the stars,

A yearning ardour without scope or name

Fell on them, and the bright night's breath of flame

Shot fire into their kisses; and like fire

The lit dews lightened on the leaves, as higher

Night's heart beat on toward midnight. Far and fain

Somewhiles the soft rush of rejoicing rain

Solaced the darkness, and from steep to steep

Of heaven they saw the sweet sheet lightning leap

And laugh its heart out in a thousand smiles,

When the clear sea for miles on glimmering miles

Burned as though dawn were strewn abroad astray,

Or, showering out of heaven, all heaven's array

Had paven instead the waters: fain and far

Somewhiles the burning love of star for star

Spake words that love might wellnigh seem to hear

In such deep hours as turn delight to fear

Sweet as delight's self ever. So they lay

Tranced once, nor watched along the fiery bay

The shine of summer darkness palpitate and play.

She had nor sight nor voice; her swooning eyes

Knew not if night or light were in the skies;

Across her beauty sheer the moondawn shed

Its light as on a thing as white and dead;

Only with stress of soft fierce hands she prest

Between the throbbing blossoms of her breast

His ardent face, and through his hair her breath

Went quivering as when life is hard on death;

And with strong trembling fingers she strained fast

His head into her bosom; till at last,

Satiate with sweetness of that burning bed,

His eyes afire with tears, he raised his head

And laughed into her lips; and all his heart

Filled hers; then face from face fell, and apart

Each hung on each with panting lips, and felt

Sense into sense and spirit in spirit melt.

»Hast thou no sword? I would not live till day;

O love, this night and we must pass away,

It must die soon, and let not us die late.«

»Take then my sword and slay me; nay, but wait

Till day be risen; what, wouldst thou think to die

Before the light take hold upon the sky?«

»Yea, love; for how shall we have twice, being twain,

This very night of love's most rapturous reign?

Live thou and have thy day, and year by year

Be great, but what shall I be? Slay me here;

Let me die not when love lies dead, but now

Strike through my heart: nay, sweet, what heart hast thou?

Is it so much I ask thee, and spend my breath

In asking? nay, thou knowest it is but death.

Hadst thou true heart to love me, thou wouldst give

This: but for hate's sake thou wilt let me live.«

Here he caught up her lips with his, and made

The wild prayer silent in her heart that prayed,

And strained her to him till all her faint breath sank

And her bright light limbs palpitated and shrank

And rose and fluctuated as flowers in rain

That bends them and they tremble and rise again

And heave and straighten and quiver all through with bliss

And turn afresh their mouths up for a kiss,

Amorous, athirst of that sweet influent love;

So, hungering towards his hovering lips above,

Her red-rose mouth yearned silent, and her eyes

Closed, and flashed after, as through June's darkest skies

The divine heartbeats of the deep live light

Make open and shut the gates of the outer night.

Long lay they still, subdued with love, nor knew

If cloud or light changed colour as it grew,

If star or moon beheld them; if above

The heaven of night waxed fiery with their love,

Or earth beneath were moved at heart and root

To burn as they, to burn and bring forth fruit

Unseasonable for love's sake; if tall trees

Bowed, and close flowers yearned open, and the breeze

Failed and fell silent as a flame that fails:

And all that hour unheard the nightingales

Clamoured, and all the woodland soul was stirred,

And depth and height were one great song unheard,

As though the world caught music and took fire

From the instant heart alone of their desire.

So sped their night of nights between them: so,

For all fears past and shadows, shine and snow,

That one pure hour all-golden where they lay

Made their life perfect and their darkness day.

And warmer waved its harvest yet to reap,

Till in the lovely fight of love and sleep

At length had sleep the mastery; and the dark

Was lit with soft live gleams they might not mark,

Fleet butterflies, each like a dead flower's ghost,

White, blue, and sere leaf-coloured; but the most

White as the sparkle of snow-flowers in the sun

Ere with his breath they lie at noon undone

Whose kiss devours their tender beauty, and leaves

But raindrops on the grass and sere thin leaves

That were engraven with traceries of the snow

Flowerwise ere any flower of earth's would blow;

So swift they sprang and sank, so sweet and light

They swam the deep dim breathless air of night.

Now on her rose-white amorous breast half bare,

Now on her slumberous love-dishevelled hair,

The white wings lit and vanished, and afresh

Lit soft as snow lights on her snow-soft flesh,

On hand or throat or shoulder; and she stirred

Sleeping, and spake some tremulous bright word,

And laughed upon some dream too sweet for truth,

Yet not so sweet as very love and youth

That there had charmed her eyes to sleep at last.

Nor woke they till the perfect night was past,

And the soft sea thrilled with blind hope of light.

But ere the dusk had well the sun in sight

He turned and kissed her eyes awake and said,

Seeing earth and water neither quick nor dead

And twilight hungering toward the day to be,

»As the dawn loves the sunlight I love thee.«

And even as rays with cloudlets in the skies

Confused in brief love's bright contentious wise,

Sleep strove with sense rekindling in her eyes;

And as the flush of birth scarce overcame

The pale pure pearl of unborn light with flame

Soft as may touch the rose's heart with shame

To break not all reluctant out of bud,

Stole up her sleeping cheek her waking blood;

And with the lovely laugh of love that takes

The whole soul prisoner ere the whole sense wakes,

Her lips for love's sake bade love's will be done.

And all the sea lay subject to the sun.

III

Tristram in Brittany

»›As the dawn loves the sunlight I love thee;‹

As men that shall be swallowed of the sea

Love the sea's lovely beauty; as the night

That wanes before it loves the young sweet light,

And dies of loving; as the worn-out noon

Loves twilight, and as twilight loves the moon

That on its grave a silver seal shall set –

We have loved and slain each other, and love yet.

Slain; for we live not surely, being in twain:

In her I lived, and in me she is slain,

Who loved me that I brought her to her doom,

Who loved her that her love might be my tomb.

As all the streams on earth and all fresh springs

And sweetest waters, every brook that sings,

Each fountain where the young year dips its wings

First, and the first-fledged branches of it wave,

Even with one heart's love seek one bitter grave.

From hills that first see bared the morning's breast

And heights the sun last yearns to from the west,

All tend but toward the sea, all born most high

Strive downward, passing all things joyous by,

Seek to it and cast their lives in it and die.

So strive all lives for death which all lives win;

So sought her soul to my soul, and therein

Was poured and perished: O my love, and mine

Sought to thee and died of thee and died as thine.

As the dawn loves the sunlight that must cease

Ere dawn again may rise and pass in peace;

Must die that she being dead may live again,

To be by his new rising nearly slain.

So rolls the great wheel of the great world round,

And no change in it and no fault is found,

And no true life of perdurable breath,

And surely no irrevocable death.

Day after day night comes that day may break,

And day comes back for night's reiterate sake.

Each into each dies, each of each is born:

Day past is night, shall night past not be morn?

Out of this moonless and faint-hearted night

That love yet lives in, shall there not be light?

Light strong as love, that love may live in yet?

Alas, but how shall foolish hope forget

How all these loving things that kill and die

Meet not but for a breath's space and pass by?

Night is kissed once of dawn and dies, and day

But touches twilight and is rapt away.

So may my love and her love meet once more,

And meeting be divided as of yore.

Yea, surely as the day-star loves the sun

And when he hath risen is utterly undone,

So is my love of her and hers of me –

And its most sweetness bitter as the sea.

Would God yet dawn might see the sun and die!«

Three years had looked on earth and passed it by

Since Tristram looked on Iseult, when he stood

So communing with dreams of evil and good,

And let all sad thoughts through his spirit sweep

As leaves through air or tears through eyes that weep

Or snowflakes through dark weather: and his soul,

That had seen all those sightless seasons roll

One after one, wave over weary wave,

Was in him as a corpse is in its grave.

Yet, for his heart was mighty, and his might

Through all the world as a great sound and light,

The mood was rare upon him; save that here

In the low sundawn of the lightening year

With all last year's toil and its triumph done

He could not choose but yearn for that set sun

Which at this season saw the firstborn kiss

That made his lady's mouth one fire with his.

Yet his great heart being greater than his grief

Kept all the summer of his strength in leaf

And all the rose of his sweet spirit in flower;

Still his soul fed upon the sovereign hour

That had been or that should be; and once more

He looked through drifted sea and drifting shore

That crumbled in the wave-breach, and again

Spake sad and deep within himself: »What pain

Should make a man's soul wholly break and die,

Sapped as weak sand by water? How shall I

Be less than all less things are that endure

And strive and yield when time is? Nay, full sure

All these and we are parts of one same end;

And if through fire or water we twain tend

To that sure life where both must be made one,

If one we be, what matter? Thou, O sun,

The face of God, if God thou be not – nay,

What but God should I think thee, what should say,

Seeing thee rerisen, but very God? – should I,

I fool, rebuke thee sovereign in thy sky,

The clouds dead round thee and the air alive,

The winds that lighten and the waves that strive

Toward this shore as to that beneath thy breath,

Because in me my thoughts bear all towards death?

O sun, that when we are dead wilt rise as bright,

Air deepening up toward heaven, and nameless light,

And heaven immeasurable, and faint clouds blown

Between us and the lowest aerial zone

And each least skirt of their imperial state –

Forgive us that we held ourselves so great!

What should I do to curse you? I indeed

Am a thing meaner than this least wild weed

That my foot bruises and I know not – yet

Would not be mean enough for worms to fret

Before their time and mine was.

Ah, and ye

Light washing weeds, blind waifs of dull blind sea,

Do ye so thirst and hunger and aspire,

Are ye so moved with such long strong desire

In the ebb and flow of your sad life, and strive

Still toward some end ye shall not see alive –

But at high noon ye know it by light and heat

Some half-hour, till ye feel the fresh tide beat

Up round you, and at night's most bitter noon

The ripples leave you naked to the moon?

And this dim dusty heather that I tread,

These half-born blossoms, born at once and dead,

Sere brown as funeral cloths, and purple as pall,

What if some life and grief be in them all?

Ay, what of these? but, O strong sun! O sea!

I bid not you, divine things! comfort me,

I stand not up to match you in your sight –

Who hath said ye have mercy toward us, ye who have might?

And though ye had mercy, I think I would not pray

That ye should change your counsel or your way

To make our life less bitter: if such power

Be given the stars on one deciduous hour,

And such might be in planets to destroy

Grief and rebuild, and break and build up joy,

What man would stretch forth hand on them to make

Fate mutable, God foolish, for his sake?

For if in life or death be aught of trust,

And if some unseen just God or unjust

Put soul into the body of natural things

And in time's pauseless feet and worldwide wings

Some spirit of impulse and some sense of will

That steers them through the seas of good and ill

To some incognizable and actual end,

Be it just or unjust, foe to man or friend,

How should we make the stable spirit to swerve,

How teach the strong soul of the world to serve,

The imperious will in time and sense in space

That gives man life turn back to give man place –

The conscious law lose conscience of its way,

The rule and reason fail from night and day,

The streams flow back toward whence the springs began,

That less of thirst might sear the lips of man?

Let that which is be, and sure strengths stand sure,

And evil or good and death or life endure,

Not alterable and rootless, but indeed

A very stem born of a very seed

That brings forth fruit in season: how should this

Die that was sown, and that not be which is,

And the old fruit change that came of the ancient root,

And he that planted bid it not bear fruit,

And he that watered smite his vine with drouth

Because its grapes are bitter in our mouth,

And he that kindled quench the sun with night

Because its beams are fire against our sight,

And he that tuned untune the sounding spheres

Because their song is thunder in our ears?

How should the skies change and the stars, and time

Break the large concord of the years that chime,

Answering, as wave to wave beneath the moon

That draws them shoreward, mar the whole tide's tune

For the instant foam's sake on one turning wave –

For man's sake that is grass upon a grave?

How should the law that knows not soon or late,

For whom no time nor space is – how should fate,

That is not good nor evil, wise nor mad,

Nor just nor unjust, neither glad nor sad –

How should the one thing that hath being, the one

That moves not as the stars move or the sun

Or any shadow or shape that lives or dies

In likeness of dead earth or living skies,

But its own darkness and its proper light

Clothe it with other names than day or night,

And its own soul of strength and spirit of breath

Feed it with other powers than life or death –

How should it turn from its great way to give

Man that must die a clearer space to live?

Why should the waters of the sea be cleft,

The hills be molten to his right and left,

That he from deep to deep might pass dry-shod,

Or look between the viewless heights on God?

Hath he such eyes as, when the shadows flee,

The sun looks out with to salute the sea?

Is his hand bounteous as the morning's hand?

Or where the night stands hath he feet to stand?

Will the storm cry not when he bids it cease?

Is it his voice that saith to the east wind, Peace?

Is his breath mightier than the west wind's breath?

Doth his heart know the things of life and death?

Can his face bring forth sunshine and give rain,

Or his weak will that dies and lives again

Make one thing certain or bind one thing fast,

That as he willed it shall be at the last?

How should the storms of heaven and kindled lights

And all the depths of things and topless heights

And air and earth and fire and water change

Their likeness, and the natural world grow strange,

And all the limits of their life undone

Lose count of time and conscience of the sun,

And that fall under which was fixed above,

That man might have a larger hour for love?«

So musing with close lips and lifted eyes

That smiled with self-contempt to live so wise,

With silent heart so hungry now so long,

So late grown clear, so miserably made strong,

About the wolds a banished man he went,

The brown wolds bare and sad as banishment,

By wastes of fruitless flowerage, and grey downs

That felt the sea-wind shake their wild-flower crowns

As though fierce hands would pluck from some grey head

The spoils of majesty despised and dead,

And fill with crying and comfortless strange sound

Their hollow sides and heights of herbless ground.

Yet as he went fresh courage on him came,

Till dawn rose too within him as a flame;

The heart of the ancient hills and his were one;

The winds took counsel with him, and the sun

Spake comfort; in his ears the shout of birds

Was as the sound of clear sweet-spirited words,

The noise of streams as laughter from above

Of the old wild lands, and as a cry of love

Spring's trumpet-blast blown over moor and lea:

The skies were red as love is, and the sea

Was as the floor of heaven for love to tread.

So went he as with light about his head,

And in the joyous travail of the year

Grew April-hearted; since nor grief nor fear

Can master so a young man's blood so long

That it shall move not to the mounting song

Of that sweet hour when earth replumes her wings

And with fair face and heart set heavenward sings

As an awakened angel unaware

That feels his sleep fall from him, and his hair

By some new breath of wind and music stirred,

Till like the sole song of one heavenly bird

Sounds all the singing of the host of heaven,

And all the glories of the sovereign Seven

Are as one face of one incorporate light.

And as that host of singers in God's sight

Might draw toward one that slumbered, and arouse

The lips requickened and rekindling brows,

So seemed the earthly host of all things born

In sight of spring and eyeshot of the morn,

All births of land or waifs of wind and sea,

To draw toward him that sorrowed, and set free

From presage and remembrance of all pains

The life that leapt and lightened in his veins.

So with no sense abashed nor sunless look,

But with exalted eyes and heart, he took

His part of sun or storm-wind, and was glad,

For all things lost, of these good things he had.

And the spring loved him surely, being from birth

One made out of the better part of earth,

A man born as at sunrise; one that saw

Not without reverence and sweet sense of awe

But wholly without fear or fitful breath

The face of life watched by the face of death;

And living took his fill of rest and strife,

Of love and change, and fruit and seed of life,

And when his time to live in light was done

With unbent head would pass out of the sun:

A spirit as morning, fair and clear and strong,

Whose thought and work were as one harp and song

Heard through the world as in a strange king's hall

Some great guest's voice that sings of festival.

So seemed all things to love him, and his heart

In all their joy of life to take such part,

That with the live earth and the living sea

He was as one that communed mutually

With naked heart to heart of friend to friend:

And the star deepening at the sunset's end,

And the moon fallen before the gate of day

As one sore wearied with vain length of way,

And the winds wandering, and the streams and skies,

As faces of his fellows in his eyes.

Nor lacked there love where he was evermore

Of man and woman, friend of sea or shore,

Not measurable with weight of graven gold,

Free as the sun's gift of the world to hold

Given each day back to man's reconquering sight

That loses but its lordship for a night.

And now that after many a season spent

In barren ways and works of banishment,

Toil of strange fights and many a fruitless field,

Ventures of quest and vigils under shield,

He came back to the strait of sundering sea

That parts green Cornwall from grey Brittany,

Where dwelt the high king's daughter of the lands,

Iseult, named alway from her fair white hands,

She looked on him and loved him; but being young

Made shamefastness a seal upon her tongue,

And on her heart, that none might hear its cry,

Set the sweet signet of humility.

Yet when he came a stranger in her sight,

A banished man and weary, no such knight

As when the Swallow dipped her bows in foam

Steered singing that imperial Iseult home,

This maiden with her sinless sixteen years

Full of sweet thoughts and hopes that played at fears

Cast her eyes on him but in courteous wise,

And lo, the man's face burned upon her eyes

As though she had turned them on the naked sun:

And through her limbs she felt sweet passion run

As fire that flowed down from her face, and beat

Soft through stirred veins on even to her hands and feet

As all her body were one heart on flame,

Athrob with love and wonder and sweet shame.

And when he spake there sounded in her ears

As 'twere a song out of the graves of years

Heard, and again forgotten, and again

Remembered with a rapturous pulse of pain.

But as the maiden mountain snow sublime

Takes the first sense of April's trembling time

Soft on a brow that burns not though it blush

To feel the sunrise hardly half aflush,

So took her soul the sense of change, nor thought

That more than maiden love was more than nought.

Her eyes went hardly after him, her cheek

Grew scarce a goodlier flower to hear him speak,

Her bright mouth no more trembled than a rose

May for the least wind's breathless sake that blows

Too soft to sue save for a sister's kiss,

And if she sighed in sleep she knew not this.

Yet in her heart hovered the thoughts of things

Past, that with lighter or with heavier wings

Beat round about her memory, till it burned

With grief that brightened and with hope that yearned,

Seeing him so great and sad, nor knowing what fate

Had bowed and crowned a head so sad and great.

Nor might she guess but little, first or last,

Though all her heart so hung upon his past,

Of what so bowed him for what sorrow's sake:

For scarce of aught at any time he spake

That from his own land oversea had sent

His lordly life to barren banishment.

Yet still or soft or keen remembrance clung

Close round her of the least word from his tongue

That fell by chance of courtesy, to greet

With grace of tender thanks her pity, sweet

As running straems to men's way-wearied feet.

And when between strange words her name would fall,

Suddenly straightway to that lure's recall

Back would his heart bound as the falconer's bird,

And tremble and bow down before the word.

»Iseult« – and all the cloudlike world grew flame,

And all his heart flashed lightning at her name;

»Iseult« – and all the wan waste weary skies

Shone as his queen's own love-enkindled eyes.

And seeing the bright blood in his face leap up

As red wine mantling in a royal cup

To hear the sudden sweetness of the sound

Ring, but ere well his heart had time to bound

His cheek would change, and grief bow down his head,

»Haply,« the girl's heart, though she spake not, said,

»This name of mine was worn of one long dead,

Some sister that he loved:« and therewithal

Would pity bring her heart more deep in thrall.

But once, when winds about the world made mirth,

And March held revel hard on April's birth

Till air and sea were jubilant as earth,

Delight and doubt in sense and soul began,

And yearning of the maiden toward the man,

Harping on high before her: for his word

Was fire that kindled in her heart that heard,

And alway through the rhymes reverberate came

The virginal soft burden of her name.

And ere the full song failed upon her ear

Joy strove within her till it cast out fear,

And all her heart was as his harp, and rang

Swift music, made of hope whose birthnote sprang

Bright in the blood that kindled as he sang.

»Stars know not how we call them, nor may flowers

Know by what happy name the hovering hours

Baptize their new-born heads with dew and flame:

And Love, adored of all time as of ours,

Iseult, knew nought for ages of his name.

With many tongues men called on him, but he

Wist not which word of all might worthiest be

To sound for ever in his ear the same,

Till heart of man might hear and soul might see,

Iseult, the radiance ringing from thy name.

By many names men called him, as the night

By many a name calls many a starry light,

Her several sovereigns of dividual fame;

But day by one name only calls aright,

Iseult, the sun that bids men praise his name.

In many a name of man his name soared high

And song shone round it soaring, till the sky

Rang rapture, and the world's fast-founded frame

Trembled with sense of triumph, even as I,

Iseult, with sense of worship at thy name.

In many a name of woman smiled his power

Incarnate, as all summer in a flower,

Till winter bring forgetfulness or shame:

But thine, the keystone of his topless tower,

Iseult, is one with Love's own lordliest name.

Iseult my love, Iseult my queen twice crowned,

In thee my death, in thee my life lies bound:

Names are there yet that all men's hearts acclaim,

But Love's own heart rings answer to the sound,

Iseult, that bids it bow before thy name.«

There ceased his voice yearning upon the word,

Struck with strong passion dumb: but she that heard

Quailed to the heart, and trembled ere her eyes

Durst let the loving light within them rise,

And yearn on his for answer: yet at last,

Albeit not all her fear was overpast,

Hope, kindling even the frost of fear apace

With sweet fleet bloom and breath of gradual grace,

Flushed in the changing roses of her face.

And ere the strife took truce of white with red,

Or joy for soft shame's sake durst lift up head,

Something she would and would not fain have said,

And wist not what the fluttering word would be,

But rose and reached forth to him her hand: and he,

Heart-stricken, bowed his head and dropped his knee,

And on her fragrant hand his lips were fire;

And their two hearts were as one trembling lyre

Touched by the keen wind's kiss with brief desire

And music shuddering at its own delight.

So dawned the moonrise of their marriage night.

IV

The Maiden Marriage

Spring watched her last moon burn and fade with May

While the days deepened toward a bridal day.

And on her snowbright hand the ring was set

While in the maiden's ear the song's word yet

Hovered, that hailed as love's own queen by name

Iseult: and in her heart the word was flame;

A pulse of light, a breath of tender fire,

Too dear for doubt, too driftless for desire.

Between her father's hand and brother's led

From hall to shrine, from shrine to marriage-bed,

She saw not how by hap at home-coming

Fell from her new lord's hand a royal ring,

Whereon he looked, and felt the pulse astart

Speak passion in his faith-forsaken heart.

For this was given him of the hand wherein

That heart's pledge lay for ever: so the sin

That should be done if truly he should take

This maid to wife for strange love's faithless sake

Struck all his mounting spirit abashed, and fear

Fell cold for shame's sake on his changing cheer.

Yea, shame's own fire that burned upon his brow

To bear the brand there of a broken vow

Was frozen again for very fear thereof

That wrung his heart with keener pangs than love.

And all things rose upon him, all things past

Ere last they parted, cloven in twain at last,

Iseult from Tristram, Tristram from the queen;

And how men found them in the wild woods green

Sleeping, but sundered by the sword between,

Dividing breast from amorous breast a span,

But scarce in heart the woman from the man

As far as hope from joy or sleep from truth,

And Mark that saw them held for sacred sooth

These were no fleshly lovers, by that sign

That severed them, still slumbering; so divine

He deemed it: how at waking they beheld

The king's folk round the king, and uncompelled

Were fain to follow and fare among them home

Back to the towers washed round with rolling foam

And storied halls wherethrough sea-music rang:

And how report thereafter swelled and sprang,

A full-mouthed serpent, hissing in men's ears

Word of their loves: and one of all his peers

That most he trusted, being his kinsman born,

A man base-moulded for the stamp of scorn,

Whose heart with hate was keen and cold and dark,

Gave note by midnight whisper to King Mark

Where he might take them sleeping; how ere day

Had seen the grim next morning all away

Fast bound they brought him down a weary way

With forty knights about him, and their chief

That traitor who for trust had given him grief,

To the old hoar chapel, like a strait stone tomb

Sheer on the sea-rocks, there to take his doom:

How, seeing he needs must die, he bade them yet

Bethink them if they durst for shame forget

What deeds for Cornwall had he done, and wrought

For all their sake what rescue, when he fought

Against the fierce foul Irish foe that came

To take of them for tribute in their shame

Three hundred heads of children; whom in fight

His hand redeeming slew Moraunt the knight

That none durst lift his eyes against, not one

Had heart but he, who now had help of none,

To take the battle; whence great shame it were

To knighthood, yea, foul shame on all men there,

To see him die so shamefully: nor durst

One man look up, nor one make answer first,

Save even the very traitor, who defied

And would have slain him naked in his pride,

But he, that saw the sword plucked forth to slay,

Looked on his hands, and wrenched their bonds away,

Haling those twain that he went bound between

Suddenly to him, and kindling in his mien

Shone lion-fashion forth with eyes alight,

And lion-wise leapt on that kinsman knight

And wrung forth of his felon hands with might

The sword that should have slain him weaponless,

And smote him sheer down: then came all the press

All raging in upon him; but he wrought

So well for his deliverance as they fought

That ten strong knights rejoicingly he slew,

And took no wound, nor wearied: then the crew

Waxed greater, and their cry on him; but he

Had won the chapel now above the sea

That chafed right under: then the heart in him

Sprang, seeing the low cliff clear to leap, and swim

Right out by the old blithe way the sea-mew takes

Across the bounding billow-belt that breaks

For ever, but the loud bright chain it makes

To bind the bridal bosom of the land

Time shall unlink not ever, till his hand

Fall by its own last blow dead: thence again

Might he win forth into the green great main

Far on beyond, and there yield up his breath

At least, with God's will, by no shameful death,

Or haply save himself, and come anew

Some long day later, ere sweet life were through.

And as the sea-gull hovers high, and turns

With eyes wherein the keen heart glittering yearns

Down toward the sweet green sea whereon the broad noon burns,

And suddenly, soul-stricken with delight,

Drops, and the glad wave gladdens, and the light

Sees wing and wave confuse their fluttering white,

So Tristram one brief breathing-space apart

Hung, and gazed down; then with exulting heart

Plunged: and the fleet foam round a joyous head

Flashed, that shot under, and ere a shaft had sped

Rose again radiant, a rejoicing star,

And high along the water-ways afar

Triumphed: and all they deemed he needs must die;

But Gouvernayle his squire, that watched hard by,

Sought where perchance a man might win ashore,

Striving, with strong limbs labouring long and sore,

And there abode an hour: till as from fight

Crowned with hard conquest won by mastering might,

Hardly, but happier for the imperious toil,

Swam the knight in forth of the close waves' coil,

Sea-satiate, bruised with buffets of the brine,

Laughing, and flushed as one afire with wine:

All this came hard upon him in a breath;

And how he marvelled in his heart that death

Should be no bitterer than it seemed to be

There, in the strenuous impulse of the sea

Borne as to battle deathward: and at last

How all his after seasons overpast

Had brought him darkling to this dark sweet hour,

Where his foot faltered nigh the bridal bower.

And harder seemed the passage now to pass,

Though smoother-seeming than the still sea's glass,

More fit for very manhood's heart to fear,

Than all straits past of peril. Hardly here

Might aught of all things hearten him save one,

Faith: and as men's eyes quail before the sun

So quailed his heart before the star whose light

Put out the torches of his bridal night,

So quailed and shrank with sense of faith's keen star

That burned as fire beheld by night afar

Deep in the darkness of his dreams; for all

The bride-house now seemed hung with heavier pall

Than clothes the house of mourning. Yet at last,

Soul-sick with trembling at the heart, he passed

Into the sweet light of the maiden bower

Where lay the lonely lily-featured flower

That, lying within his hand to gather, yet

Might not be gathered of it. Fierce regret

And bitter loyalty strove hard at strife

With amorous pity toward the tender wife

That wife indeed might never be, to wear

The very crown of wedlock; never bear

Children, to watch and worship her white hair

When time should change, with hand more soft than snow,

The fashion of its glory; never know

The loveliness of laughing love that lives

On little lips of children: all that gives

Glory and grace and reverence and delight

To wedded woman by her bridal right,

All praise and pride that flowers too fair to fall,

Love that should give had stripped her of them all

And left her bare for ever. So his thought

Consumed him, as a fire within that wrought

Visibly, ravening till its wrath were spent:

So pale he stood, so bowed and passion-rent,

Before the blithe-faced bride-folk, ere he went

Within the chamber, heavy-eyed: and there

Gleamed the white hands and glowed the glimmering hair

That might but move his memory more of one more fair,

More fair than all this beauty: but in sooth

So fair she too shone in her flower of youth

That scarcely might man's heart hold fast its truth,

Though strong, who gazed upon her: for her eyes

Were emerald-soft as evening-coloured skies,

And a smile in them like the light therein

Slept, or shone out in joy that knew not sin,

Clear as a child's own laughter: and her mouth,

Albeit no rose full-hearted from the south

And passion-coloured for the perfect kiss

That signs the soul for love and stamps it his,

Was soft and bright as any bud new-blown;

And through her cheek the gentler lifebloom shone

Of mild wild roses nigh the northward sea.

So in her bride-bed lay the bride: and he

Drew nigh, and all the high sad heart in him

Yearned on her, seeing the twilight meek and dim

Through all the soft alcove tremblingly lit

With hovering silver, as a heart in it

Beating, that burned from one deep lamp above,

Fainter than fire of torches, as the love

Within him fainter than a bridegroom's fire,

No marriage-torch red with the heart's desire,

But silver-soft, a flameless light that glowed

Starlike along night's dark and starry road

Wherein his soul was traveller. And he sighed,

Seeing, and with eyes set sadly toward his bride

Laid him down by her, and spake not: but within

His heart spake, saying how sore should be the sin

To break toward her, that of all womankind

Was faithfullest, faith plighted, or unbind

The bond first linked between them when they drank

The love-draught: and his quick blood sprang and sank,

Remembering in the pulse of all his veins

That red swift rapture, all its fiery pains

And all its fierier pleasures: and he spake

Aloud, one burning word for love's keen sake –

»Iseult;« and full of love and lovelier fear

A virgin voice gave answer – »I am here.«

And a pang rent his heart at root; but still,

For spirit and flesh were vassals to his will,

Strong faith held mastery on them: and the breath

Felt on his face did not his will to death,

Nor glance nor lute-like voice nor flower-soft touch

Might so prevail upon it overmuch

That constancy might less prevail than they,

For all he looked and loved her as she lay

Smiling; and soft as bird alights on bough

He kissed her maiden mouth and blameless brow,

Once, and again his heart within him sighed:

But all his young blood's yearning toward his bride,

How hard soe'er it held his life awake

For passion, and sweet nature's unforbidden sake,

And will that strove unwillingly with will it might not break,

Fell silent as a wind abashed, whose breath

Dies out of heaven, suddenly done to death,

When in between them on the dumb dusk air

Floated the bright shade of a face more fair

Than hers that hard beside him shrank and smiled

And wist of all no more than might a child.

So had she all her heart's will, all she would,

For love's sake that sufficed her, glad and good,

All night safe sleeping in her maidenhood.

V

Iseult at Tintagel

But that same night in Cornwall oversea

Couched at Queen Iseult's hand, against her knee,

With keen kind eyes that read her whole heart's pain

Fast at wide watch lay Tristram's hound Hodain,

The goodliest and the mightiest born on earth,

That many a forest day of fiery mirth

Had plied his craft before them; and the queen

Cherished him, even for those dim years between,

More than of old in those bright months far flown

When ere a blast of Tristram's horn was blown

Each morning as the woods rekindled, ere

Day gat full empire of the glimmering air,

Delight of dawn would quicken him, and fire

Spring and pant in his breath with bright desire

To be among the dewy ways on quest:

But now perforce at restless-hearted rest

He chafed through days more barren than the sand,

Soothed hardly but soothed only with her hand,

Though fain to fawn thereon and follow, still

With all his heart and all his loving will

Desiring one divided from his sight,

For whose lost sake dawn was as dawn of night

And noon as night's noon in his eyes was dark.

But in the halls far under sat King Mark,

Feasting, and full of cheer, with heart uplift,

As on the night that harper gat his gift:

And music revelled on the fitful air,

And songs came floated up the festal stair,

And muffled roar of wassail, where the king

Took heart from wine-cups and the quiring string

Till all his cold thin veins rejoiced and ran

Strong as with lifeblood of a kinglier man.

But the queen shut from sound her wearied ears,

Shut her sad eyes from sense of aught save tears,

And wrung her hair with soft fierce hands, and prayed:

»O God, God born of woman, of a maid,

Christ, once in flesh of thine own fashion clad;

O very love, so glad in heaven and sad

On earth for earth's sake alway; since thou art

Pure only, I only impure of spirit and heart,

Since thou for sin's sake and the bitter doom

Didst as a veil put on a virgin's womb,

I that am none, and cannot hear or see

Or shadow or likeness or a sound of thee

Far off, albeit with man's own speech and face

Thou shine yet and thou speak yet, showing forth grace –

Ah me! grace only shed on souls that are

Lit and led forth of shadow by thy star –

Alas! to these men only grace, to these,

Lord, whom thy love draws Godward, to thy knees –

I, can I draw thee me-ward, can I seek,

Who love thee not, to love me? seeing how weak,

Lord, all this little love I bear thee is,

And how much is my strong love more than this,

My love that I love man with, that I bear

Him sinning through me sinning? wilt thou care,

God, for this love, if love be any, alas,

In me to give thee, though long since there was,

How long, when I too, Lord, was clean, even I,

That now am unclean till the day I die –

Haply by burning, harlot-fashion, made

A horror in all hearts of wife and maid,

Hateful, not knowing if ever in these mine eyes

Shone any light of thine in any wise

Or this were love at all that I bore thee?«

And the night spake, and thundered on the sea,

Ravening aloud for ruin of lives: and all

The bastions of the main cliff's northward wall

Rang response out from all their deepening length,

As the east wind girded up his godlike strength

And hurled in hard against that high-towered hold

The fleeces of the flock that knows no fold,

The rent white shreds of shattering storm: but she

Heard not nor heeded wind or storming sea,

Knew not if night were mild or mad with wind.

»Yea, though deep lips and tender hair be thinned,

Though cheek wither, brow fade, and bosom wane,

Shall I change also from this heart again

To maidenhood of heart and holiness?

Shall I more love thee, Lord, or love him less –

Ah miserable! though spirit and heart be rent,

Shall I repent, Lord God? shall I repent?

Nay, though thou slay me! for herein I am blest,

That as I loved him yet I love him best –

More than mine own soul or thy love or thee,

Though thy love save and my love save not me.

Blest am I beyond women even herein,

That beyond all born women is my sin,

And perfect my transgression: that above

All offerings of all others is my love,

Who have chosen it only, and put away for this

Thee, and my soul's hope, Saviour, of the kiss

Wherewith thy lips make welcome all thine own

When in them life and death are overthrown;

The sinless lips that seal the death of sin,

The kiss wherewith their dumb lips touched begin

Singing in heaven.

Where we shall never, love,

Never stand up nor sing! for God above

Knows us, how too much more than God to me

Thy sweet love is, my poor love is to thee!

Dear, dost thou see now, dost thou hear to-night,

Sleeping, my waste wild speech, my face worn white,

– Speech once heard soft by thee, face once kissed red! –

In such a dream as when men see their dead

And know not if they know if dead these be?

Ah love, are thy days my days, and to thee

Are all nights like as my nights? does the sun

Grieve thee? art thou soul-sick till day be done,

And weary till day rises? is thine heart

Full of dead things as mine is? Nay, thou art

Man, with man's strength and praise and pride of life,

No bondwoman, no queen, no loveless wife

That would be shamed albeit she had not sinned.«

And swordlike was the sound of the iron wind,

And as a breaking battle was the sea.

»Nay, Lord, I pray thee let him love not me,

Love me not any more, nor like me die,

And be no more than such a thing as I.

Turn his heart from me, lest my love too lose

Thee as I lose thee, and his fair soul refuse

For my sake thy fair heaven, and as I fell

Fall, and be mixed with my soul and with hell.

Let me die rather, and only; let me be

Hated of him so he be loved of thee,

Lord: for I would not have him with me there

Out of thy light and love in the unlit air,

Out of thy sight in the unseen hell where I

Go gladly, going alone, so thou on high

Lift up his soul and love him – Ah, Lord, Lord,

Shalt thou love as I love him? she that poured

From the alabaster broken at thy feet

An ointment very precious, not so sweet

As that poured likewise forth before thee then

From the rehallowed heart of Magdalen,

From a heart broken, yearning like the dove,

An ointment very precious which is love –

Couldst thou being holy and God, and sinful she,

Love her indeed as surely she loved thee?

Nay, but if not, then as we sinners can

Let us love still in the old sad wise of man.

For with less love than my love, having had

Mine, though God love him he shall not be glad.

And with such love as my love, I wot well,

He shall not lie disconsolate in hell:

Sad only as souls for utter love's sake be

Here, and a little sad, perchance, for me –

Me happy, me more glad than God above,

In the utmost hell whose fires consume not love!

For in the waste ways emptied of the sun

He would say – ›Dear, thy place is void, and one

Weeps among angels for thee, with his face

Veiled, saying, O sister, how thy chosen place

Stands desolate, that God made fair for thee!

Is heaven not sweeter, and we thy brethren, we

Fairer than love on earth and life in hell?‹

And I – with me were all things then not well?

Should I not answer – ›O love, be well content;

Look on me, and behold if I repent.‹

This were more to me than an angel's wings.

Yea, many men pray God for many things,

But I pray that this only thing may be.«

And as a full field charging was the sea,

And as the cry of slain men was the wind.

»Yea, since I surely loved him, and he sinned

Surely, though not as my sin his be black,

God, give him to me – God, God, give him back!

For now how should we live in twain or die?

I am he indeed, thou knowest, and he is I.

Not man and woman several as we were,

But one thing with one life and death to bear.

How should one love his own soul overmuch?

And time is long since last I felt the touch,

The sweet touch of my lover, hand and breath,

In such delight as puts delight to death,

Burn my soul through, till spirit and soul and sense,

In the sharp grasp of the hour, with violence

Died, and again through pangs of violent birth

Lived, and laughed out with refluent might of mirth;

Laughed each on other and shuddered into one,

As a cloud shuddering dies into the sun.

Ah, sense is that or spirit, soul or flesh,

That only love lulls or awakes afresh?

Ah, sweet is that or bitter, evil or good,

That very love allays not as he would?

Nay, truth is this or vanity, that gives

No love assurance when love dies or lives?

This that my spirit is wrung withal, and yet

No surelier knows if haply thine forget,

Thou that my spirit is wrung for, nor can say

Love is not in thee dead as yesterday?

Dost thou feel, thou, this heartbeat whence my heart

Would send thee word what life is mine apart,

And know by keen response what life is thine?

Dost thou not hear one cry of all of mine?

O Tristram's heart, have I no part in thee?«

And all her soul was as the breaking sea,

And all her heart anhungered as the wind.

»Dost thou repent thee of the sin we sinned?

Dost thou repent thee of the days and nights

That kindled and that quenched for us their lights,

The months that feasted us with all their hours,

The ways that breathed of us in all their flowers,

The dells that sang of us with all their doves?

Dost thou repent thee of the wildwood loves?

Is thine heart changed, and hallowed? art thou grown

God's, and not mine? Yet, though my heart make moan,

Fain would my soul give thanks for thine, if thou

Be saved – yea, fain praise God, and knows not how.

How should it know thanksgiving? nay, or learn

Aught of the love wherewith thine own should burn,

God's, that should cast out as an evil thing

Mine? yea, what hand of prayer have I to cling,

What heart to prophesy, what spirit of sight

To strain insensual eyes toward increate light,

Who look but back on life wherein I sinned?«

And all their past came wailing in the wind,

And all their future thundered in the sea.

»But if my soul might touch the time to be,

If hand might handle now or eye behold

My life and death ordained me from of old,

Life palpable, compact of blood and breath,

Visible, present, naked, very death,

Should I desire to know before the day

These that I know not, nor is man that may?

For haply, seeing, my heart would break for fear,

And my soul timeless cast its load off here,

Its load of life too bitter, love too sweet,

And fall down shamed and naked at thy feet,

God, who wouldst take no pity of it, nor give

One hour back, one of all its hours to live

Clothed with my mortal body, that once more,

Once, on this reach of barren beaten shore,

This stormy strand of life, ere sail were set,

Had haply felt love's arms about it yet –

Yea, ere death's bark put off to seaward, might

With many a grief have bought me one delight

That then should know me never. Ah, what years

Would I endure not, filled up full with tears,

Bitter like blood and dark as dread of death,

To win one amorous hour of mingling breath,

One fire-eyed hour and sunnier than the sun,

For all these nights and days like nights but one?

One hour of heaven born once, a stormless birth,

For all these windy weary hours of earth?

One, but one hour from birth of joy to death,

For all these hungering hours of feverish breath?

And I should lose this, having died and sinned.«

And as man's anguish clamouring cried the wind,

And as God's anger answering rang the sea.

»And yet what life – Lord God, what life for me

Has thy strong wrath made ready? Dost thou think

How lips whose thirst hath only tears to drink

Grow grey for grief untimely? Dost thou know,

O happy God, how men wax weary of woe –

Yea, for their wrong's sake that thine hand hath done

Come even to hate thy semblance in the sun?

Turn back from dawn and noon and all thy light

To make their souls one with the soul of night?

Christ, if thou hear yet or have eyes to see,

Thou that hadst pity, and hast no pity on me,

Know'st thou no more, as in this life's sharp span,

What pain thou hadst on earth, what pain hath man?

Hast thou no care, that all we suffer yet?

What help is ours of thee if thou forget?

What profit have we though thy blood were given,

If we that sin bleed and be not forgiven?

Not love but hate, thou bitter God and strange,

Whose heart as man's heart hath grown cold with change,

Not love but hate thou showest us that have sinned.«

And like a world's cry shuddering was the wind,

And like a God's voice threatening was the sea.

»Nay, Lord, for thou wast gracious; nay, in thee

No change can come with time or varying fate,

No tongue bid thine be less compassionate,

No sterner eye rebuke for mercy thine,

No sin put out thy pity – no, not mine.

Thou knowest us, Lord, thou knowest us, all we are,

He, and the soul that hath his soul for star:

Thou knowest as I know, Lord, how much more worth

Than all souls clad and clasped about with earth,

But most of all, God, how much more than I,

Is this man's soul that surely shall not die.

What righteousness, what judgment, Lord most high,

Were this, to bend a brow of doom as grim

As threats me, me the adulterous wife, on him?

There lies none other nightly by his side:

He hath not sought, he shall not seek a bride.

Far as God sunders earth from heaven above,

So far was my love born beneath his love.

I loved him as the sea-wind loves the sea,

To rend and ruin it only and waste: but he,

As the sea loves a sea-bird loved he me,

To foster and uphold my tired life's wing,

And bounteously beneath me spread forth spring,

A springtide space whereon to float or fly,

A world of happy water, whence the sky

Glowed goodlier, lightening from so glad a glass,

Than with its own light only. Now, alas!

Cloud hath come down and clothed it round with storm,

And gusts and fits of eddying winds deform

The feature of its glory. Yet be thou,

God, merciful: nay, show but justice now,

And let the sin in him that scarce was his

Stand expiated with exile: and be this

The price for him, the atonement this, that I

With all the sin upon me live, and die

With all thy wrath on me that most have sinned.«

And like man's heart relenting sighed the wind,

And as God's wrath subsiding sank the sea.

»But if such grace be possible – if it be

Not sin more strange than all sins past, and worse

Evil, that cries upon thee for a curse,

To pray such prayers from such a heart, do thou

Hear, and make wide thine hearing toward me now;

Let not my soul and his for ever dwell

Sundered: though doom keep always heaven and hell

Irreconcilable, infinitely apart,

Keep not in twain for ever heart and heart

That once, albeit by not thy law, were one;

Let this be not thy will, that this be done.

Let all else, all thou wilt of evil, be,

But no doom, none, dividing him and me.«

By this was heaven stirred eastward, and there came

Up the rough ripple a labouring light like flame;

And dawn, sore trembling still and grey with fear,

Looked hardly forth, a face of heavier cheer

Than one which grief or dread yet half enshrouds,

Wild-eyed and wan, across the cleaving clouds.

And Iseult, worn with watch long held on pain,

Turned, and her eye lit on the hound Hodain,

And all her heart went out in tears: and he

Laid his kind head along her bended knee,

Till round his neck her arms went hard, and all

The night past from her as a chain might fall:

But yet the heart within her, half undone,

Wailed, and was loth to let her see the sun.

And ere full day brought heaven and earth to flower,

Far thence, a maiden in a marriage bower,

That moment, hard by Tristram, oversea,

Woke with glad eyes Iseult of Brittany.

VI

Joyous Gard

A little time, O Love, a little light,

A little hour for ease before the night.

Sweet Love, that art so bitter; foolish Love,

Whom wise men know for wiser, and thy dove

More subtle than the serpent; for thy sake

These pray thee for a little beam to break,

A little grace to help them, lest men think

Thy servants have but hours like tears to drink.

O Love, a little comfort, lest they fear

To serve as these have served thee who stand here.

For these are thine, thy servants these, that stand

Here nigh the limit of the wild north land,

At margin of the grey great eastern sea,

Dense-islanded with peaks and reefs, that see

No life but of the fleet wings fair and free

Which cleave the mist and sunlight all day long

With sleepless flight and cries more glad than song.

Strange ways of life have led them hither, here

To win fleet respite from desire and fear

With armistice from sorrow; strange and sweet

Ways trodden by forlorn and casual feet

Till kindlier chance woke toward them kindly will

In happier hearts of lovers, and their ill

Found rest, as healing surely might it not,

By gift and kingly grace of Launcelot

At gracious bidding given of Guenevere.

For in the trembling twilight of this year

Ere April sprang from hope to certitude

Two hearts of friends fast linked had fallen at feud

As they rode forth on hawking, by the sign

Which gave his new bride's brother Ganhardine

To know the truth of Tristram's dealing, how

Faith kept of him against his marriage vow

Kept virginal his bride-bed night and morn;

Whereat, as wroth his blood should suffer scorn,

Came Ganhardine to Tristram, saying, »Behold,

We have loved thee, and for love we have shown of old

Scorn hast thou shown us: wherefore is thy bride

Not thine indeed, a stranger at thy side,

Contemned? what evil hath she done, to be

Mocked with mouth-marriage and despised of thee,

Shamed, set at nought, rejected?« But there came

On Tristram's brow and eye the shadow and flame

Confused of wrath and wonder, ere he spake,

Saying, »Hath she bid thee for thy sister's sake

Plead with me, who believed of her in heart

More nobly than to deem such piteous part

Should find so fair a player? or whence hast thou

Of us this knowledge?« »Nay,« said he, »but now,

Riding beneath these whitethorns overhead,

There fell a flower into her girdlestead

Which laughing she shook out, and smiling said –

›Lo, what large leave the wind hath given this stray,

To lie more near my heart than till this day

Aught ever since my mother lulled me lay

Or even my lord came ever;‹ whence I wot

We are all thy scorn, a race regarded not

Nor held as worth communion of thine own,

Except in her be found some fault alone

To blemish our alliance.« Then replied

Tristram, »Nor blame nor scorn may touch my bride,

Albeit unknown of love she live, and be

Worth a man worthier than her love thought me.

Faith only, faith withheld me, faith forbade

The blameless grace wherewith love's grace makes glad

All lives linked else in wedlock; not that less

I loved the sweet light of her loveliness,

But that my love toward faith was more: and thou,

Albeit thine heart be keen against me now,

Couldst thou behold my very lady, then

No more of thee than of all other men

Should this my faith be held a faithless fault.«

And ere that day their hawking came to halt,

Being sore of him entreated for a sign,

He sware to bring his brother Ganhardine

To sight of that strange Iseult: and thereon

Forth soon for Cornwall are these brethren gone,

Even to that royal pleasance where the hunt

Rang ever of old with Tristram's horn in front

Blithe as the queen's horse bounded at his side:

And first of all her dames forth pranced in pride

That day before them, with a ringing rein

All golden-glad, the king's false bride Brangwain,

The queen's true handmaid ever: and on her

Glancing, »Be called for all time truth-teller,

O Tristram, of all true men's tongues alive,«

Quoth Ganhardine; »for may my soul so thrive

As yet mine eye drank never sight like this.«

»Ay?« Tristram said, »and she thou look'st on is

So great in grace of goodliness, that thou

Hast less thought left of wrath against me now,

Seeing but my lady's handmaid? Nay, behold;

See'st thou no light more golden than of gold

Shine where she moves in midst of all, above

All, past all price or praise or prayer of love?

Lo, this is she.« But as one mazed with wine

Stood, stunned in spirit and stricken, Ganhardine,

And gazed out hard against them: and his heart

As with a sword was cloven, and rent apart

As with strong fangs of fire; and scarce he spake,

Saying how his life for even a handmaid's sake

Was made a flame within him. And the knight

Bade him, being known of none that stood in sight,

Bear to Brangwain his ring, that she unseen

Might give in token privily to the queen

And send swift word where under moon or sun

They twain might yet be no more twain but one.

And that same night, under the stars that rolled

Over their warm deep wildwood nights of old

Whose hours for grains of sand shed sparks of fire,

Such way was made anew for their desire

By secret wile of sickness feigned, to keep

The king far off her vigils or her sleep,

That in the queen's pavilion midway set

By glimmering moondawn were those lovers met,

And Ganhardine of Brangwain gat him grace.

And in some passionate soft interspace

Between two swells of passion, when their lips

Breathed, and made room for such brief speech as slips

From tongues athirst with draughts of amorous wine

That leaves them thirstier than the salt sea's brine,

Was counsel taken how to fly, and where

Find covert from the wild world's ravening air

That hunts with storm the feet of nights and days

Through strange thwart lines of life and flowerless ways.

Then said Iseult: »Lo, now the chance is here

Foreshown me late by word of Guenevere,

To give me comfort of thy rumoured wrong,

My traitor Tristram, when report was strong

Of me forsaken and thine heart estranged:

Nor should her sweet soul toward me yet be changed

Nor all her love lie barren, if mine hand

Crave harvest of it from the flowering land.

See therefore if this counsel please thee not,

That we take horse in haste for Camelot

And seek that friendship of her plighted troth

Which love shall be full fain to lend, nor loth

Shall my love be to take it.« So next night

The multitudinous stars laughed round their flight,

Fulfilling far with laughter made of light

The encircling deeps of heaven: and in brief space

At Camelot their long love gat them grace

Of those fair twain whose heads men's praise impearled

As love's two lordliest lovers in the world:

And thence as guests for harbourage past they forth

To win this noblest hold of all the north.

Far by wild ways and many days they rode,

Till clear across June's kingliest sunset glowed

The great round girth of goodly wall that showed

Where for one clear sweet season's length should be

Their place of strength to rest in, fain and free,

By the utmost margin of the loud lone sea.

And now, O Love, what comfort? God most high,

Whose life is as a flower's to live and die,

Whose light is everlasting: Lord, whose breath

Speaks music through the deathless lips of death

Whereto time's heart rings answer: Bard, whom time

Hears, and is vanquished with a wandering rhyme

That once thy lips made fragrant: Seer, whose sooth

Joy knows not well, but sorrow knows for truth,

Being priestess of thy soothsayings: Love, what grace

Shall these twain find at last before thy face?

This many a year they have served thee, and deserved,

If ever man might yet of all that served,

Since the first heartbeat bade the first man's knee

Bend, and his mouth take music, praising thee,

Some comfort; and some honey indeed of thine

Thou hast mixed for these with life's most bitter wine,

Commending to their passionate lips a draught

No deadlier than thy chosen of old have quaffed

And blessed thine hand, their cupbearer's: for not

On all men comes the grace that seals their lot

As holier in thy sight, for all these feuds

That rend it, than the light-souled multitude's,

Nor thwarted of thine hand nor blessed; but these

Shall see no twilight, Love, nor fade at ease,

Grey-grown and careless of desired delight,

But lie down tired and sleep before the night.

These shall not live till time or change may chill

Or doubt divide or shame subdue their will,

Or fear or slow repentance work them wrong,

Or love die first: these shall not live so long.

Death shall not take them drained of dear true life

Already, sick or stagnant from the strife,

Quenched: not with dry-drawn veins and lingering breath

Shall these through crumbling hours crouch down to death.

Swift, with one strong clean leap, ere life's pulse tire,

Most like the leap of lions or of fire,

Sheer death shall bound upon them: one pang past,

The first keen sense of him shall be their last,

Their last shall be no sense of any fear,

More than their life had sense of anguish here.

Weeks and light months had fled at swallow's speed

Since here their first hour sowed for them the seed

Of many sweet as rest or hope could be;

Since on the blown beach of a glad new sea

Wherein strange rocks like fighting men stand scarred

They saw the strength and help of Joyous Gard.

Within the full deep glorious tower that stands

Between the wild sea and the broad wild lands

Love led and gave them quiet: and they drew

Life like a God's life in each wind that blew,

And took their rest, and triumphed. Day by day

The mighty moorlands and the sea-walls grey,

The brown bright waters of green fells that sing

One song to rocks and flowers and birds on wing,

Beheld the joy and glory that they had,

Passing, and how the whole world made them glad,

And their great love was mixed with all things great,

As life being lovely, and yet being strong like fate.

For when the sun sprang on the sudden sea

Their eyes sprang eastward, and the day to be

Was lit in them untimely: such delight

They took yet of the clear cold breath and light

That goes before the morning, and such grace

Was deathless in them through their whole life's space

As dies in many with their dawn that dies

And leaves in pulseless hearts and flameless eyes

No light to lighten and no tear to weep

For youth's high joy that time has cast on sleep.

Yea, this old grace and height of joy they had,

To lose no jot of all that made them glad

And filled their springs of spirit with such fire

That all delight fed in them all desire;

And no whit less than in their first keen prime

The spring's breath blew through all their summer time,

And in their skies would sunlike Love confuse

Clear April colours with hot August hues,

And in their hearts one light of sun and moon

Reigned, and the morning died not of the noon:

Such might of life was in them, and so high

Their heart of love rose higher than fate could fly.

And many a large delight of hawk and hound

The great glad land that knows no bourne or bound,

Save the wind's own and the outer sea-bank's, gave

Their days for comfort; many a long blithe wave

Buoyed their blithe bark between the bare bald rocks,

Deep, steep, and still, save for the swift free flocks

Unshepherded, uncompassed, unconfined,

That when blown foam keeps all the loud air blind

Mix with the wind's their triumph, and partake

The joy of blasts that ravin, waves that break,

All round and all below their mustering wings,

A clanging cloud that round the cliff's edge clings

On each bleak bluff breaking the strenuous tides

That rings reverberate mirth when storm bestrides

The subject night in thunder: many a noon

They took the moorland's or the bright sea's boon

With all their hearts into their spirit of sense,

Rejoicing, where the sudden dells grew dense

With sharp thick flight of hillside birds, or where

On some strait rock's ledge in the intense mute air

Erect against the cliff's sheer sunlit white

Blue as the clear north heaven, clothed warm with light,

Stood neck to bended neck and wing to wing

With heads fast hidden under, close as cling

Flowers on one flowering almond-branch in spring,

Three herons deep asleep against the sun,

Each with one bright foot downward poised, and one

Wing-hidden hard by the bright head, and all

Still as fair shapes fixed on some wondrous wall

Of minster-aisle or cloister-close or hall

To take even time's eye prisoner with delight.

Or, satisfied with joy of sound and sight,

They sat and communed of things past: what state

King Arthur, yet unwarred upon by fate,

Held high in hall at Camelot, like one

Whose lordly life was as the mounting sun

That climbs and pauses on the point of noon,

Sovereign: how royal rang the tourney's tune

Through Tristram's three days' triumph, spear to spear,

When Iseult shone enthroned by Guenevere,

Rose against rose, the highest adored on earth,

Imperial: yet with subtle notes of mirth

Would she bemock her praises, and bemoan

Her glory by that splendour overthrown

Which lightened from her sister's eyes elate;

Saying how by night a little light seems great,

But less than least of all things, very nought,

When dawn undoes the web that darkness wrought;

How like a tower of ivory well designed

By subtlest hand subserving subtlest mind,

Ivory with flower of rose incarnadined

And kindling with some God therein revealed,

A light for grief to look on and be healed,

Stood Guenevere: and all beholding her

Were heartstruck even as earth at midsummer

With burning wonder, hardly to be borne.

So was that amorous glorious lady born,

A fiery memory for all storied years:

Nor might men call her sisters crowned her peers,

Her sister queens, put all by her to scorn:

She had such eyes as are not made to mourn;

But in her own a gleaming ghost of tears

Shone, and their glance was slower than Guenevere's,

And fitfuller with fancies grown of grief;

Shamed as a Mayflower shames an autumn leaf

Full well she wist it could not choose but be

If in that other's eyeshot standing she

Should lift her looks up ever: wherewithal

Like fires whose light fills heaven with festival

Flamed her eyes full on Tristram's; and he laughed

Answering, »What wile of sweet child-hearted craft

That children forge for children, to beguile

Eyes known of them not witless of the wile

But fain to seem for sport's sake self-deceived,

Wilt thou find out now not to be believed?

Or how shall I trust more than ouphe or elf

Thy truth to me-ward, who beliest thyself?«

»Nor elf nor ouphe or aught of airier kind,«

Quoth she, »though made of moonbeams moist and blind,

Is light if weighed with man's winged weightless mind.

Though thou keep somewise troth with me, God wot,

When thou didst wed, I doubt, thou thoughtest not

So charily to keep it.« »Nay,« said he,

»Yet am not I rebukable by thee

As Launcelot, erring, held me ere he wist

No mouth save thine of mine was ever kissed

Save as a sister's only, since we twain

Drank first the draught assigned our lips to drain

That Fate and Love with darkling hands commixt

Poured, and no power to part them came betwixt,

But either's will, howbeit they seem at strife,

Was toward us one, as death itself and life

Are one sole doom toward all men, nor may one

Behold not darkness, who beholds the sun.«

»Ah, then,« she said, »what word is this men hear

Of Merlin, how some doom too strange to fear

Was cast but late about him oversea,

Sweet recreant, in thy bridal Brittany?

Is not his life sealed fast on him with sleep,

By witchcraft of his own and love's, to keep

Till earth be fire and ashes?«

»Surely,« said

Her lover, »not as one alive or dead

The great good wizard, well beloved and well

Predestinate of heaven that casts out hell

For guerdon gentler far than all men's fate,

Exempt alone of all predestinate,

Takes his strange rest at heart of slumberland,

More deep asleep in green Broceliande

Than shipwrecked sleepers in the soft green sea

Beneath the weight of wandering waves: but he

Hath for those roofing waters overhead

Above him always all the summer spread

Or all the winter wailing: or the sweet

Late leaves marked red with autumn's burning feet,

Or withered with his weeping, round the seer

Rain, and he sees not, nor may heed or hear

The witness of the winter: but in spring

He hears above him all the winds on wing

Through the blue dawn between the brightening boughs,

And on shut eyes and slumber-smitten brows

Feels ambient change in the air and strengthening sun,

And knows the soul that was his soul at one

With the ardent world's, and in the spirit of earth

His spirit of life reborn to mightier birth

And mixed with things of elder life than ours;

With cries of birds, and kindling lamps of flowers,

And sweep and song of winds, and fruitful light

Of sunbeams, and the far faint breath of night,

And waves and woods at morning: and in all,

Soft as at noon the slow sea's rise and fall,

He hears in spirit a song that none but he

Hears from the mystic mouth of Nimue

Shed like a consecration; and his heart,

Hearing, is made for love's sake as a part

Of that far singing, and the life thereof

Part of that life that feeds the world with love:

Yea, heart in heart is molten, hers and his,

Into the world's heart and the soul that is

Beyond or sense or vision; and their breath

Stirs the soft springs of deathless life and death,

Death that bears life, and change that brings forth seed

Of life to death and death to life indeed,

As blood recircling through the unsounded veins

Of earth and heaven with all their joys and pains.

Ah, that when love shall laugh no more nor weep

We too, we too might hear that song and sleep!«

»Yea,« said Iseult, »some joy it were to be

Lost in the sun's light and the all-girdling sea,

Mixed with the winds and woodlands, and to bear

Part in the large life of the quickening air,

And the sweet earth's, our mother: yet to pass

More fleet than mirrored faces from the glass

Out of all pain and all delight, so far

That love should seem but as the furthest star

Sunk deep in trembling heaven, scarce seen or known,

As a dead moon forgotten, once that shone

Where now the sun shines – nay, not all things yet,

Not all things always, dying, would I forget.«

And Tristram answered amorously, and said:

»O heart that here art mine, O heavenliest head

That ever took men's worship here, which art

Mine, how shall death put out the fire at heart,

Quench in men's eyes the head's remembered light,

That time shall set but higher in more men's sight?

Think thou not much to die one earthly day,

Being made not in their mould who pass away

Nor who shall pass for ever.«

»Ah,« she said,

»What shall it profit me, being praised and dead?

What profit have the flowers of all men's praise?

What pleasure of our pleasure have the days

That pour on us delight of life and mirth?

What fruit of all our joy on earth has earth?

Nor am I – nay, my lover, am I one

To take such part in heaven's enkindling sun

And in the inviolate air and sacred sea

As clothes with grace that wondrous Nimue?

For all her works are bounties, all her deeds

Blessings; her days are scrolls wherein love reads

The record of his mercies; heaven above

Hath not more heavenly holiness of love

Than earth beneath, wherever pass or pause

Her feet that move not save by love's own laws,

In gentleness of godlike wayfaring

To heal men's hearts as earth is healed by spring

Of all such woes as winter: what am I,

Love, that have strength but to desire and die,

That have but grace to love and do thee wrong,

What am I that my name should live so long,

Save as the star that crossed thy star-struck lot,

With hers whose light was life to Launcelot?

Life gave she him, and strength, and fame to be

For ever: I, what gift can I give thee?

Peril and sleepless watches, fearful breath

Of dread more bitter for my sake than death

When death came nigh to call me by my name,

Exile, rebuke, remorse, and – O, not shame.

Shame only, this I gave thee not, whom none

May give that worst thing ever – no, not one.

Of all that hate, all hateful hearts that see

Darkness for light and hate where love should be,

None for my shame's sake may speak shame of thee.«

And Tristram answering ere he kissed her smiled:

»O very woman, god at once and child,

What ails thee to desire of me once more

The assurance that thou hadst in heart before?

For all this wild sweet waste of sweet vain breath,

Thou knowest I know thou hast given me life, not death.

The shadow of death, informed with shows of strife,

Was ere I won thee all I had of life.

Light war, light love, light living, dreams in sleep,

Joy slight and light, not glad enough to weep,

Filled up my foolish days with sound and shine,

Vision and gleam from strange men's cast on mine,

Reverberate light from eyes presaging thine

That shed but shadowy moonlight where thy face

Now sheds forth sunshine in the deep same place,

The deep live heart half dead and shallower then

Than summer fords which thwart not wandering men.

For how should I, signed sorrow's from my birth,

Kiss dumb the loud red laughing lips of mirth?

Or how, sealed thine to be, love less than heaven on earth?

My heart in me was held at restless rest,

Presageful of some prize beyond its quest,

Prophetic still with promise, fain to find the best.

For one was fond and one was blithe and one

Fairer than all save twain whose peers are none;

For third on earth is none that heaven hath seen

To stand with Guenevere beside my queen.

Not Nimue, girt with blessing as a guard:

Not the soft lures and laughters of Ettarde:

Not she, that splendour girdled round with gloom,

Crowned as with iron darkness of the tomb,

And clothed with clouding conscience of a monstrous doom,

Whose blind incestuous love brought forth a fire

To burn her ere it burn its darkling sire,

Her mother's son, King Arthur: yet but late

We saw pass by that fair live shadow of fate,

The queen Morgause of Orkney, like a dream

That scares the night when moon and starry beam

Sicken and swoon before some sorcerer's eyes

Whose wordless charms defile the saintly skies,

Bright still with fire and pulse of blood and breath,

Whom her own sons have doomed for shame to death.«

»Death – yea,« quoth she, »there is not said or heard

So oft aloud on earth so sure a word.

Death, and again death, and for each that saith

Ten tongues chime answer to the sound of death.

Good end God send us ever – so men pray.

But I – this end God send me, would I say,

To die not of division and a heart

Rent or with sword of severance cloven apart,

But only when thou diest and only where thou art,

O thou my soul and spirit and breath to me,

O light, life, love! yea, let this only be,

That dying I may praise God who gave me thee,

Let hap what will thereafter.«

So that day

They communed, even till even was worn away,

Nor aught they said seemed strange or sad to say,

But sweet as night's dim dawn to weariness.

Nor loved they life or love for death's sake less,

Nor feared they death for love's or life's sake more

And on the sounding soft funereal shore

They, watching till the day should wholly die,

Saw the far sea sweep to the far grey sky,

Saw the long sands sweep to the long grey sea.

And night made one sweet mist of moor and lea,

And only far off shore the foam gave light.

And life in them sank silent as the night.

VII

The Wife's Vigil

But all that year in Brittany forlorn,

More sick at heart with wrath than fear of scorn

And less in love with love than grief, and less

With grief than pride of spirit and bitterness,

Till all the sweet life of her blood was changed

And all her soul from all her past estranged

And all her will with all itself at strife

And all her mind at war with all her life,

Dwelt the white-handed Iseult, maid and wife,

A mourner that for mourning robes had on

Anger and doubt and hate of things foregone.

For that sweet spirit of old which made her sweet

Was parched with blasts of thought as flowers with heat

And withered as with wind of evil will;

Though slower than frosts or fires consume or kill

That bleak black wind vexed all her spirit still.

As ripples reddening in the roughening breath

Of the eager east when dawn does night to death,

So rose and stirred and kindled in her thought

Fierce barren fluctuant fires that lit not aught,

But scorched her soul with yearning keen as hate

And dreams that left her wrath disconsolate.

When change came first on that first heaven where all

Life's hours were flowers that dawn's light hand let fall,

The sun that smote her dewy cloud of days

Wrought from its showery folds his rainbow's rays,

For love the red, for hope the gentle green,

But yellow jealousy glared pale between.

Ere yet the sky grew heavier, and her head

Bent flowerwise, chill with change and fancies fled,

She saw but love arch all her heaven across with red,

A burning bloom that seemed to breathe and beat

And waver only as flame with rapturous heat

Wavers; and all the world therewith smelt sweet,

As incense kindling from the rose-red flame:

And when that full flush waned, and love became

Scarce fainter, though his fading horoscope

From certitude of sight receded, hope

Held yet her April-coloured light aloft

As though to lure back love, a lamp sublime and soft.

But soon that light paled as a leaf grows pale

And fluttered leaf-like in the gathering gale

And melted even as dew-flakes, whose brief sheen

The sun that gave despoils of glittering green;

Till harder shone 'twixt hope and love grown cold

A sallow light like withering autumn's gold,

The pale strong flame of jealous thought, that glows

More deep than hope's green bloom or love's enkindled rose:

As though the sunflower's faint fierce disk absorbed

The spirit and heart of starrier flowers disorbed.

That same full hour of twilight's doors unbarred

To let bright night behold in Joyous Gard

The glad grave eyes of lovers far away

Watch with sweet thoughts of death the death of day

Saw lonelier by the narrower opening sea

Sit fixed at watch Iseult of Brittany.

As darkness from deep valleys void and bleak

Climbs till it clothe with night the sunniest peak

Where only of all a mystic mountain-land

Day seems to cling yet with a trembling hand

And yielding heart reluctant to recede,

So, till her soul was clothed with night indeed,

Rose the slow cloud of envious will within

And hardening hate that held itself no sin,

Veiled heads of vision, eyes of evil gleam,

Dim thought on thought, and darkling dream on dream.

Far off she saw in spirit, and seeing abhorred,

The likeness wrought on darkness of her lord

Shine, and the imperial semblance at his side

Whose shadow from her seat cast down the bride,

Whose power and ghostly presence thrust her forth:

Beside that unknown other sea far north

She saw them, clearer than in present sight

Rose on her eyes the starry shadow of night;

And on her heart that heaved with gathering fate

Rose red with storm the starless shadow of hate;

And eyes and heart made one saw surge and swell

The fires of sunset like the fires of hell.

As though God's wrath would burn up sin with shame,

The incensed red gold of deepening heaven grew flame:

The sweet green spaces of the soft low sky

Faded, as fields that withering wind leaves dry:

The sea's was like a doomsman's blasting breath

From lips afoam with ravenous lust of death.

A night like desolation, sombre-starred,

Above the great walled girth of Joyous Gard

Spread forth its wide sad strength of shadow and gloom

Wherein those twain were compassed round with doom:

Hell from beneath called on them, and she heard

Reverberate judgment in the wild wind's word

Cry, till the sole sound of their names that rang

Clove all the sea-mist with a clarion's clang,

And clouds to clouds and flames to clustering flames

Beat back the dark noise of the direful names.

Fear and strong exultation caught her breath,

And triumph like the bitterness of death,

And rapture like the rage of hate allayed

With ruin and ravin that its might hath made;

And her heart swelled and strained itself to hear

What may be heard of no man's hungering ear,

And as a soil that cleaves in twain for drouth

Thirsted for judgment given of God's own mouth

Against them, till the strength of dark desire

Was in her as a flame of hell's own fire.

Nor seemed the wrath which held her spirit in stress

Aught else or worse than passionate holiness,

Nor the ardent hate which called on judgment's rod

More hateful than the righteousness of God.

»How long, till thou do justice, and my wrong

Stand expiate? O long-suffering judge, how long?

Shalt thou not put him in mine hand one day

Whom I so loved, to spare not but to slay?

Shalt thou not cast her down for me to tread,

Me, on the pale pride of her humbled head?

Do I not well, being angry? doth not hell

Require them? yea, thou knowest that I do well.

Is not thy seal there set of bloodred light

For witness on the brows of day and night?

Who shall unseal it? what shall melt away

Thy signet from the doors of night and day?

No man, nor strength of any spirit above,

Nor prayer, nor ardours of adulterous love.

Thou art God, the strong lord over body and soul:

Hast thou not in the terrors of thy scroll

All names of all men written as with fire?

Thine only breath bids time and space respire:

And are not all things evil in them done

More clear in thine eyes than in ours the sun?

Hast thou not sight stretched wide enough to see

These that offend it, these at once and me?

Is thine arm shortened or thine hand struck down

As palsied? have thy brows not strength to frown?

Are thine eyes blind with film of withering age?

Burns not thine heart with righteousness of rage

Yet, and the royal rancour toward thy foes

Retributive of ruin? Time should close,

Thou said'st, and earth fade as a leaf grows grey,

Ere one word said of thine should pass away.

Was this then not thy word, thou God most high,

That sin shall surely bring forth death and die,

Seeing how these twain live and have joy of life,

His harlot and the man that made me wife?

For is it I, perchance, I that have sinned?

Me, peradventure, should thy wasting wind

Smite, and thy sun blast, and thy storms devour

Me with keen fangs of lightning? should thy power

Put forth on me the weight of its awakening hour?

Shall I that bear this burden bear that weight

Of judgment? is my sin against thee great,

If all my heart against them burn with all its hate?

Thine, and not mine, should hate be? nay, but me

They have spoiled and scoffed at, who can touch not thee.

Me, me, the fullness of their joy drains dry,

Their fruitfulness makes barren: thou, not I,

Lord, is it, whom their wrongdoing clothes with shame,

That all who speak shoot tongues out at thy name

As all who hear mock mine? Make me thy sword

At least, if even thou too be wronged, O Lord,

At all of these that wrong me: make mine hand

As lightning, or my tongue a fiery brand,

To burn or smite them with thy wrath: behold,

I have nought on earth save thee for hope or hold,

Fail me not thou: I have nought but this to crave,

Make me thy mean to give them to the grave,

Thy sign that all men seeing may speak thee just,

Thy word which turns the strengths of sin to dust,

Thy blast which burns up towers and thrones with fire.

Lord, is this gift, this grace that I require,

So great a gift, Lord, for thy grace to give

And bid me bear thy part retributive?

That I whom scorn makes mouths at, I might be

Thy witness if loud sin may mock at thee?

For lo, my life is as a barren ear

Plucked from the sheaf: dark days drive past me here

Downtrodden, while joy's reapers pile their sheaves,

A thing more vile than autumn's weariest leaves,

For these the sun filled once with sap of life.

O thou my lord that hadst me to thy wife,

Dost thou not fear at all, remembering me,

The love that bowed my whole soul down to thee?

Is this so wholly nought for man to dread,

Man, whose life walks between the quick and dead,

Naked, and warred about with wind and sea,

That one should love and hate as I do thee?

That one should live in all the world his foe

So mortal as the hate that loves him so?

Nought, is it nought, O husband, O my knight,

O strong man and indomitable in fight,

That one more weak than foam-bells on the sea

Should have in heart such thoughts as I of thee?

Thou art bound about with stately strengths for bands:

What strength shall keep thee from my strengthless hands?

Thou art girt about with goodly guards and great:

What fosse may fence thee round as deep as hate?

Thou art wise: will wisdom teach thee fear of me?

Thou art great of heart: shall this deliver thee?

What wall so massive, or what tower so high,

Shall be thy surety that thou shouldst not die,

If that which comes against thee be but I?

Who shall rise up of power to take thy part,

What skill find strength to save, what strength find art,

If that which wars against thee be my heart?

Not iron, nor the might of force afield,

Nor edge of sword, nor sheltering weight of shield,

Nor all thy fame since all thy praise began,

Nor all the love and laud thou hast of man,

Nor, though his noiseless hours with wool be shod,

Shall God's love keep thee from the wrath of God.

O son of sorrows, hast thou said at heart,

Haply, God loves thee, God shall take thy part,

Who hath all these years endured thee, since thy birth

From sorrow's womb bade sin be born on earth?

So long he hath cast his buckler over thee,

Shall he not surely guard thee even from me?

Yea, but if yet he give thee while I live

Into mine hands as he shall surely give,

Ere death at last bring darkness on thy face,

Call then on him, call not on me for grace,

Cast not away one prayer, one suppliant breath,

On me that commune all this while with death.

For I that was not and that was thy wife

Desire not but one hour of all thy life

Wherein to triumph till that hour be past;

But this mine hour I look for is thy last.«

So mused she till the fire in sea and sky

Sank, and the northwest wind spake harsh on high,

And like the sea's heart waxed her heart that heard,

Strong, dark, and bitter, till the keen wind's word

Seemed of her own soul spoken, and the breath

All round her not of darkness, but of death.

VIII

The Last Pilgrimage

Enough of ease, O Love, enough of light,

Enough of rest before the shadow of night.

Strong Love, whom death finds feebler; kingly Love,

Whom time discrowns in season, seeing thy dove

Spell-stricken by the serpent; for thy sake

These that saw light see night's dawn only break,

Night's cup filled up with slumber, whence men think

The draught more dread than thine was dire to drink.

O Love, thy day sets darkling: hope and fear

Fall from thee standing stern as death stands here.

For what have these to do with fear or hope

On whom the gates of outer darkness ope,

On whom the door of life's desire is barred?

Past like a cloud, their days in Joyous Gard

Gleam like a cloud the westering sun stains red

Till all the blood of day's blithe heart be bled

And all night's heart requickened; in their eyes

So flame and fade those far memorial skies,

So shines the moorland, so revives the sea,

Whereon they gazing mused of things to be

And wist not more of them than waters know

What wind with next day's change of tide shall blow.

Dark roll the deepening days whose waves divide

Unseasonably, with storm-struck change of tide,

Tristram from Iseult: nor may sorrow say

If better wind shall blow than yesterday

With next day risen or any day to come.

For ere the songs of summer's death fell dumb,

And autumn bade the imperial moorlands change

Their purples, and the bracken's bloom grow strange

As hope's green blossom touched with time's harsh rust,

Was all their joy of life shaken to dust,

And all its fire made ashes: by the strand

Where late they strayed and communed hand from hand

For the last time fell separate, eyes of eyes

Took for the last time leave, and saw the skies

Dark with their deep division. The last time –

The last that ever love's rekindling rhyme

Should keep for them life's days and nights in tune

With refluence of the morning and the moon

Alternative in music, and make one

The secrets of the stardawn and the sun

For these twain souls ere darkness held them fast;

The last before the labour marked for last

And toil of utmost knighthood, till the wage

Of rest might crown his crowning pilgrimage

Whereon forth faring must he take farewell,

With spear for staff and sword for scallop-shell

And scrip wherein close memory hoarded yet

Things holier held than death might well forget;

The last time ere the travel were begun

Whose goal is unbeholden of the sun,

The last wherewith love's eyes might yet be lit,

Came, and they could but dream they knew not it.

For Tristram parting from her wist at heart

How well she wist they might not choose but part,

And he pass forth a pilgrim, when there came

A sound of summons in the high king's name

For succour toward his vassal Triamour,

King in wild Wales, now spoiled of all his power,

As Tristram's father ere his fair son's birth,

By one the strongest of the sons of earth,

Urgan, an iron bulk of giant mould:

And Iseult in Tintagel as of old

Sat crowned with state and sorrow: for her lord

At Arthur's hand required her back restored,

And willingly compelled against her will

She yielded, saying within her own soul still

Some season yet of soft or stormier breath

Should haply give her life again or death:

For now nor quick nor dead nor bright nor dark

Were all her nights and days wherein King Mark

Held haggard watch upon her, and his eyes

Were cloudier than the gradual wintering skies

That closed about the wan wild land and sea.

And bitter toward him waxed her heart: but he

Was rent in twain betwixt harsh love and hate

With pain and passion half compassionate

That yearned and laboured to be quit of shame,

And could not: and his life grew smouldering flame.

And hers a cloud full-charged with storm and shower,

Though touched with trembling gleams of fire's bright flower

That flashed and faded on its fitful verge,

As hope would strive with darkness and emerge

And sink, a swimmer strangled by the swallowing surge.

But Tristram by dense hills and deepening vales

Rode through the wild glad wastes of glorious Wales,

High-hearted with desire of happy fight

And strong in soul with merrier sense of might

Than since the fair first years that hailed him knight:

For all his will was toward the war, so long

Had love repressed and wrought his glory wrong,

So far the triumph and so fair the praise

Seemed now that kindled all his April days.

And here in bright blown autumn, while his life

Was summer's yet for strength toward love or strife,

Blithe waxed his hope toward battle, and high desire

To pluck once more as out of circling fire

Fame, the broad flower whose breath makes death more sweet

Than roses crushed by love's receding feet.

But all the lovely land wherein he went

The blast of ruin and ravenous war had rent;

And black with fire the fields where homesteads were,

And foul with festering dead the high soft air,

And loud with wail of women many a stream

Whose own live song was like love's deepening dream,

Spake all against the spoiler: wherefore still

Wrath waxed with pity, quickening all his will,

In Tristram's heart for every league he rode

Through the aching land so broad a curse bestrode

With so supreme a shadow: till one dawn

Above the green bloom of a gleaming lawn,

High on the strait steep windy bridge that spanned

A glen's deep mouth, he saw that shadow stand

Visible, sword on thigh and mace in hand

Vast as the mid bulk of a roof-tree's beam.

So, sheer above the wild wolf-haunted stream,

Dire as the face disfeatured of a dream,

Rose Urgan: and his eyes were night and flame;

But like the fiery dawn were his that came

Against him, lit with more sublime desire

Than lifts toward heaven the leaping heart of fire:

And strong in vantage of his perilous place

The huge high presence, red as earth's first race,

Reared like a reed the might up of his mace,

And smote: but lightly Tristram swerved, and drove

Right in on him, whose void stroke only clove

Air, and fell wide, thundering athwart: and he

Sent forth a stormier cry than wind or sea

When midnight takes the tempest for her lord;

And all the glen's throat seemed as hell's that roared;

But high like heaven's light over hell shone Tristram's sword,

Falling, and bright as storm shows God's bare brand

Flashed as it shore sheer off the huge right hand

Whose strength was as the shadow of death on all that land.

And like the trunk of some grim tree sawn through

Reeled Urgan, as his left hand grasped and drew

A steel by sorcerers tempered: and anew

Raged the red wind of fluctuant fight, till all

The cliffs were thrilled as by the clangorous call

Of storm's blown trumpets from the core of night,

Charging: and even as with the storm-wind's might

On Tristram's helm that sword crashed: and the knight

Fell, and his arms clashed, and a wide cry brake

From those far off that heard it, for his sake

Soul-stricken: and that bulk of monstrous birth

Sent forth again a cry more dire for mirth:

But ere the sunbright arms were soiled of earth

They flashed again, re-risen: and swift and loud

Rang the strokes out as from a circling cloud,

So dense the dust wrought over them its drifted shroud.

Strong strokes, within the mist their battle made,

Each hailed on other through the shifting shade

That clung about them hurtling as the swift fight swayed:

And each between the jointed corslet saw

Break forth his foe's bright blood at each grim flaw

Steel made in hammered iron: till again

The fiend put forth his might more strong for pain

And cleft the great knight's glittering shield in twain,

Laughing for very wrath and thirst to kill,

A beast's broad laugh of blind and wolfish will,

And smote again ere Tristram's lips drew breath

Panting, and swept as by the sense of death,

That surely should have touched and sealed them fast

Save that the sheer stroke shrilled aside, and passed

Frustrate: but answering Tristram smote anew,

And thrust the brute breast as with lightning through

Clean with one cleaving stroke of perfect might:

And violently the vast bulk leapt upright,

And plunged over the bridge, and fell: and all

The cliffs reverberate from his monstrous fall

Rang: and the land by Tristram's grace was free.

So with high laud and honour thence went he,

And southward set his sail again, and passed

The lone land's ending, first beheld and last

Of eyes that look on England from the sea:

And his heart mourned within him, knowing how she

Whose heart with his was fatefully made fast

Sat now fast bound, as though some charm were cast

About her, such a brief space eastward thence,

And yet might soul not break the bonds of sense

And bring her to him in very life and breath

More than had this been even the sea of death

That washed between them, and its wide sweet light

The dim strait's darkness of the narrowing night

That shuts about men dying whose souls put forth

To pierce its passage through: but south and north

Alike for him were other than they were:

For all the northward coast shone smooth and fair,

And off its iron cliffs the keen-edged air

Blew summer, kindling from her mute bright mouth;

But winter breathed out of the murmuring south,

Where, pale with wrathful watch on passing ships,

The lone wife lay in wait with wan dumb lips.

Yet, sailing where the shoreward ripple curled

Of the most wild sweet waves in all the world,

His soul took comfort even for joy to see

The strong deep joy of living sun and sea,

The large deep love of living sea and land,

As past the lonely lion-guarded strand

Where that huge warder lifts his couchant sides,

Asleep, above the sleepless lapse of tides,

The light sail swept, and past the unsounded caves

Unsearchable, wherein the pulse of waves

Throbs through perpetual darkness to and fro,

And the blind night swims heavily below

While heavily the strong noon broods above,

Even to the very bay whence very Love,

Strong daughter of the giant gods who wrought

Sun, earth, and sea out of their procreant thought,

Most meetly might have risen, and most divine

Beheld and heard things round her sound and shine

From floors of foam and gold to walls of serpentine.

For splendid as the limbs of that supreme

Incarnate beauty through men's visions gleam,

Whereof all fairest things are even but shadow or dream,

And lovely like as Love's own heavenliest face,

Gleams there and glows the presence and the grace

Even of the mother of all, in perfect pride of place.

For otherwhere beneath our world-wide sky

There may not be beheld of men that die

Aught else like this that dies not, nor may stress

Of ages that bow down men's works make less

The exultant awe that clothes with power its loveliness.

For who sets eye thereon soever knows

How since these rocks and waves first rolled and rose

The marvel of their many-coloured might

Hath borne this record sensible to sight,

The witness and the symbol of their own delight,

The gospel graven of life's most heavenly law,

Joy, brooding on its own still soul with awe,

A sense of godlike rest in godlike strife,

The sovereign conscience of the spirit of life.

Nor otherwhere on strand or mountain tower

Hath such fair beauty shining forth in flower

Put on the imperial robe of such imperious power.

For all the radiant rocks from depth to height

Burn with vast bloom of glories blossom-bright

As though the sun's own hand had thrilled them through with light

And stained them through with splendour: yet from thence

Such awe strikes rapture through the spirit of sense

From all the inaccessible sea-wall's girth,

That exultation, bright at heart as mirth,

Bows deeper down before the beauty of earth

Than fear may bow down ever: nor shall one

Who meets at Alpine dawn the mounting sun

On heights too high for many a wing to climb

Be touched with sense of aught seen more sublime

Than here smiles high and sweet in face of heaven and time.

For here the flower of fire, the soft hoar bloom

Of springtide olive-woods, the warm green gloom

Of clouded seas that swell and sound with dawn of doom,

The keen thwart lightning and the wan grey light

Of stormy sunrise crossed and vexed with night,

Flash, loom, and laugh with divers hues in one

From all the curved cliff's face, till day be done,

Against the sea's face and the gazing sun.

And whensoever a strong wave, high in hope,

Sweeps up some smooth slant breadth of stone aslope,

That glowed with duskier fire of hues less bright,

Swift as it sweeps back springs to sudden sight

The splendour of the moist rock's fervent light,

Fresh as from dew of birth when time was born

Out of the world-conceiving womb of morn.

All its quenched flames and darkling hues divine

Leap into lustrous life and laugh and shine

And darken into swift and dim decline

For one brief breath's space till the next wave run

Right up, and ripple down again, undone,

And leave it to be kissed and kindled of the sun.

And all these things, bright as they shone before

Man first set foot on earth or sail from shore,

Rose not less radiant than the sun sees now

When the autumn sea was cloven of Tristram's prow,

And strong in sorrow and hope and woful will

That hope might move not nor might sorrow kill

He held his way back toward the wild sad shore

Whence he should come to look on these no more,

Nor ever, save with sunless eyes shut fast,

Sail home to sleep in home-born earth at last.

And all these things fled fleet as light or breath

Past, and his heart waxed cold and dull as death,

Or swelled but as the tides of sorrow swell,

To sink with sullen sense of slow farewell.

So surely seemed the silence even to sigh

Assurance of inveterate prophecy,

»Thou shalt not come again home hither ere thou die.«

And the wind mourned and triumphed, and the sea

Wailed and took heart and trembled; nor might he

Hear more of comfort in their speech, or see

More certitude in all the waste world's range

Than the only certitude of death and change.

And as the sense and semblance fluctuated

Of all things heard and seen alive or dead

That smote far off upon his ears or eyes

Or memory mixed with forecasts fain to rise

And fancies faint as ghostliest prophecies,

So seemed his own soul, changefully forlorn,

To shrink and triumph and mount up and mourn;

Yet all its fitful waters, clothed with night,

Lost heart not wholly, lacked not wholly light,

Seeing over life and death one star in sight

Where evening's gates as fair as morning's ope,

Whose name was memory, but whose flame was hope.

For all the tides of thought that rose and sank

Felt its fair strength wherefrom strong sorrow shrank

A mightier trust than time could change or cloy,

More strong than sorrow, more secure than joy.

So came he, nor content nor all unblest,

Back to the grey old land of Merlin's rest.

But ere six paces forth on shore he trod

Before him stood a knight with feet unshod,

And kneeling called upon him, as on God

Might sick men call for pity, praying aloud

With hands held up and head made bare and bowed;

»Tristram, for God's love and thine own dear fame,

I Tristram that am one with thee in name

And one in heart with all that praise thee – I,

Most woful man of all that may not die

For heartbreak and the heavier scourge of shame,

By all thy glory done our woful name

Beseech thee, called of all men gentlest knight,

Be now not slow to do my sorrows right.

I charge thee for thy fame's sake through this land,

I pray thee by thine own wife's fair white hand,

Have pity of me whose love is borne away

By one that makes of poor men's lives his prey,

A felon masked with knighthood: at his side

Seven brethren hath he night or day to ride

With seven knights more that wait on all his will:

And here at hand, ere yet one day fulfil

Its flight through light and darkness, shall they fare

Forth, and my bride among them, whom they bear

Through these wild lands his prisoner; and if now

I lose her, and my prayer be vain, and thou

Less fain to serve love's servants than of yore,

Then surely shall I see her face no more.

But if thou wilt, for love's sake of the bride

Who lay most loved of women at thy side,

Strike with me, straight then hence behoves us ride

And rest between the moorside and the sea

Where we may smite them passing: but for me,

Poor stranger, me not worthy scarce to touch

Thy kind strong hand, how shouldst thou do so much?

For now lone left this long time waits thy wife

And lacks her lord and light of wedded life

Whilst thou far off art famous: yet thy fame,

If thou take pity on me that bear thy name

Unworthily, but by that name implore

Thy grace, how shall not even thy fame grow more?

But be thy will as God's among us done,

Who art far in fame above us as the sun:

Yet only of him have all men help and grace.«

And all the lordly light of Tristram's face

Was softened as the sun's in kindly spring.

»Nay, then may God send me as evil a thing

When I give ear not to such prayers,« he said,

»And make my place among the nameless dead

When I put back one hour the time to smite

And do the unrighteous griefs of good men right.

Behold, I will not enter in nor rest

Here in mine own halls till this piteous quest

Find end ere noon to-morrow: but do thou,

Whose sister's face I may not look on now,

Go, Ganhardine, with tiding of the vow

That bids me turn aside for one day's strife

Or live dishonoured all my days of life,

And greet for me in brother's wise my wife,

And crave her pardon that for knighthood's sake

And womanhood's, whose bands may no man break

And keep the bands of bounden honour fast,

I seek not her till two nights yet be past

And this my quest accomplished, so God please

By me to give this young man's anguish ease

And on his wrongdoer's head his wrong requite.«

And Tristram with that woful thankful knight

Rode by the seaside moorland wastes away

Between the quickening night and darkening day

Ere half the gathering stars had heart to shine.

And lightly toward his sister Ganhardine

Sped, where she sat and gazed alone afar

Above the grey sea for the sunset star,

And lightly kissed her hand and lightly spake

His tiding of that quest for knighthood's sake.

And the white-handed Iseult, bowing her head,

Gleamed on him with a glance athwart, and said,

»As God's on earth and far above the sun,

So toward his handmaid be my lord's will done.«

And doubts too dim to question or divine

Touched as with shade the spirit of Ganhardine,

Hearing; and scarce for half a doubtful breath

His bright light heart held half a thought of death

And knew not whence this darkling thought might be,

But surely not his sister's work: for she

Was ever sweet and good as summer air,

And soft as dew when all the night is fair,

And gracious as the golden maiden moon

When darkness craves her blessing: so full soon

His mind was light again as leaping waves,

Nor dreamed that hers was like a field of graves

Where no man's foot dares swerve to left or right,

Nor ear dares hearken, nor dares eye take sight

Of aught that moves and murmurs there at night.

But by the sea-banks where at morn their foes

Might find them, lay those knightly name-fellows,

One sick with grief of heart and sleepless, one

With heart of hope triumphant as the sun

Dreaming asleep of love and fame and fight:

But sleep at last wrapped warm the wan young knight;

And Tristram with the first pale windy light

Woke ere the sun spake summons, and his ear

Caught the sea's call that fired his heart to hear,

A noise of waking waters: for till dawn

The sea was silent as a mountain lawn

When the wind speaks not, and the pines are dumb,

And summer takes her fill ere autumn come

Of life more soft than slumber: but ere day

Rose, and the first beam smote the bounding bay,

Up sprang the strength of the dark East, and took

With its wide wings the waters as they shook,

And hurled them huddling on aheap, and cast

The full sea shoreward with a great glad blast,

Blown from the heart of morning: and with joy

Full-souled and perfect passion, as a boy

That leaps up light to wrestle with the sea

For pure heart's gladness and large ecstasy,

Up sprang the might of Tristram; and his soul

Yearned for delight within him, and waxed whole

As a young child's with rapture of the hour

That brought his spirit and all the world to flower,

And all the bright blood in his veins beat time

To the wind's clarion and the water's chime

That called him and he followed it and stood

On the sand's verge before the grey great flood

Where the white hurtling heads of waves that met

Rose unsaluted of the sunrise yet.

And from his heart's root outward shot the sweet

Strong joy that thrilled him to the hands and feet,

Filling his limbs with pleasure and glad might,

And his soul drank the immeasurable delight

That earth drinks in with morning, and the free

Limitless love that lifts the stirring sea

When on her bare bright bosom as a bride

She takes the young sun, perfect in his pride,

Home to his place with passion: and the heart

Trembled for joy within the man whose part

Was here not least in living; and his mind

Was rapt abroad beyond man's meaner kind

And pierced with love of all things and with mirth

Moved to make one with heaven and heavenlike earth

And with the light live water. So awhile

He watched the dim sea with a deepening smile,

And felt the sound and savour and swift flight

Of waves that fled beneath the fading night

And died before the darkness, like a song

With harps between and trumpets blown along

Through the loud air of some triumphant day,

Sink through his spirit and purge all sense away

Save of the glorious gladness of his hour

And all the world about to break in flower

Before the sovereign laughter of the sun;

And he, ere night's wide work lay all undone,

As earth from her bright body casts off night,

Cast off his raiment for a rapturous fight

And stood between the sea's edge and the sea.

Naked, and godlike of his mould as he

Whose swift foot's sound shook all the towers of Troy;

So clothed with might, so girt upon with joy

As, ere the knife had shorn to feed the fire

His glorious hair before the unkindled pyre

Whereon the half of his great heart was laid,

Stood, in the light of his live limbs arrayed,

Child of heroic earth and heavenly sea,

The flower of all men: scarce less bright than he,

If any of all men latter-born might stand,

Stood Tristram, silent, on the glimmering strand.

Not long: but with a cry of love that rang

As from a trumpet golden-mouthed, he sprang,

As toward a mother's where his head might rest

Her child rejoicing, toward the strong sea's breast

That none may gird nor measure: and his heart

Sent forth a shout that bade his lips not part,

But triumphed in him silent: no man's voice,

No song, no sound of clarions that rejoice,

Can set that glory forth which fills with fire

The body and soul that have their whole desire

Silent, and freer than birds or dreams are free

Take all their will of all the encountering sea.

And toward the foam he bent and forward smote,

Laughing, and launched his body like a boat

Full to the sea-breach, and against the tide

Struck strongly forth with amorous arms made wide

To take the bright breast of the wave to his

And on his lips the sharp sweet minute's kiss

Given of the wave's lip for a breath's space curled

And pure as at the daydawn of the world.

And round him all the bright rough shuddering sea

Kindled, as though the world were even as he,

Heart-stung with exultation of desire:

And all the life that moved him seemed to aspire,

As all the sea's life toward the sun: and still

Delight within him waxed with quickening will

More smooth and strong and perfect as a flame

That springs and spreads, till each glad limb became

A note of rapture in the tune of life,

Live music mild and keen as sleep and strife:

Till the sweet change that bids the sense grow sure

Of deeper depth and purity more pure

Wrapped him and lapped him round with clearer cold,

And all the rippling green grew royal gold

Between him and the far sun's rising rim.

And like the sun his heart rejoiced in him,

And brightened with a broadening flame of mirth:

And hardly seemed its life a part of earth,

But the life kindled of a fiery birth

And passion of a new-begotten son

Between the live sea and the living sun.

And mightier grew the joy to meet full-faced

Each wave, and mount with upward plunge, and taste

The rapture of its rolling strength, and cross

Its flickering crown of snows that flash and toss

Like plumes in battle's blithest charge, and thence

To match the next with yet more strenuous sense;

Till on his eyes the light beat hard and bade

His face turn west and shoreward through the glad

Swift revel of the waters golden-clad,

And back with light reluctant heart he bore

Across the broad-backed rollers in to shore;

Strong-spirited for the chance and cheer of fight,

And donned his arms again, and felt the might

In all his limbs rejoice for strength, and praised

God for such life as that whereon he gazed,

And wist not surely its joy was even as fleet

As that which laughed and lapsed against his feet,

The bright thin grey foam-blossom, glad and hoar,

That flings its flower along the flowerless shore

On sand or shingle, and still with sweet strange snows

As where one great white storm-dishevelled rose

May rain her wild leaves on a windy land,

Strews for long leagues the sounding slope of strand,

And flower on flower falls flashing, and anew

A fresh light leaps up whence the last flash flew,

And casts its brief glad gleam of life away

To fade not flowerwise but as drops the day

Storm-smitten, when at once the dark devours

Heaven and the sea and earth with all their flowers;

No star in heaven, on earth no rose to see,

But the white blown brief blossoms of the sea,

That make her green gloom starrier than the sky,

Dance yet before the tempest's tune, and die.

And all these things he glanced upon, and knew

How fair they shone, from earth's least flake of dew

To stretch of seas and imminence of skies,

Unwittingly, with unpresageful eyes,

For the last time. The world's half heavenly face,

The music of the silence of the place,

The confluence and the refluence of the sea,

The wind's note ringing over wold and lea,

Smote once more through him keen as fire that smote,

Rang once more through him one reverberate note,

That faded as he turned again and went,

Fulfilled by strenuous joy with strong content,

To take his last delight of labour done

That yet should be beholden of the sun

Or ever give man comfort of his hand.

Beside a wood's edge in the broken land

An hour at wait the twain together stood,

Till swift between the moorside and the wood

Flashed the spears forward of the coming train;

And seeing beside the strong chief spoiler's rein

His wan love riding prisoner in the crew,

Forth with a cry the young man leapt, and flew

Right on that felon sudden as a flame;

And hard at hand the mightier Tristram came,

Bright as the sun and terrible as fire:

And there had sword and spear their soul's desire,

And blood that quenched the spear's thirst as it poured

Slaked royally the hunger of the sword,

Till the fierce heart of steel could scarce fulfil

Its greed and ravin of insatiate will.

For three the fiery spear of Tristram drove

Down ere a point of theirs his harness clove

Or its own sheer mid shaft splintered in twain;

And his heart bounded in him, and was fain

As fire or wind that takes its fill by night

Of tempest and of triumph: so the knight

Rejoiced and ranged among them, great of hand,

Till seven lay slain upon the heathery sand

Or in the dense breadth of the woodside fern.

Nor did his heart not mightier in him burn

Seeing at his hand that young knight fallen, and high

The red sword reared again that bade him die.

But on the slayer exulting like the flame

Whose foot foreshines the thunder Tristram came

Raging, for piteous wrath had made him fire;

And as a lion's look his face was dire

That flashed against his foeman ere the sword

Lightened, and wrought the heart's will of its lord,

And clove through casque and crown the wrongdoer's head.

And right and left about their dark chief dead

Hurtled and hurled those felons to and fro,

Till as a storm-wind scatters leaves and snow

His right hand ravening scattered them; but one

That fled with sidelong glance athwart the sun

Shot, and the shaft flew sure, and smote aright,

Full in the wound's print of his great first fight

When at his young strength's peril he made free

Cornwall, and slew beside its bordering sea

The fair land's foe, who yielding up his breath

Yet left him wounded nigh to dark slow death.

And hardly with long toil thence he won home

Between the grey moor and the glimmering foam,

And halting fared through his own gate, and fell,

Thirsting: for as the sleepless fire of hell

The fire within him of his wound again

Burned, and his face was dark as death for pain,

And blind the blithe light of his eyes: but they

Within that watched and wist not of the fray

Came forth and cried aloud on him for woe.

And scarce aloud his thanks fell faint and slow

As men reared up the strong man fallen and bore

Down the deep hall that looked along the shore,

And laid him soft abed, and sought in vain

If herb or hand of leech might heal his pain.

And the white-handed Iseult hearkening heard

All, and drew nigh, and spake no wifely word,

But gazed upon him doubtfully, with eyes

Clouded; and he in kindly knightly wise

Spake with scant breath, and smiling: »Surely this

Is penance for discourteous lips to kiss

And feel the brand burn through them, here to lie

And lack the strength here to do more than sigh

And hope not hence for pardon.« Then she bowed

Her head, still silent as a stooping cloud,

And laid her lips against his face; and he

Felt sink a shadow across him as the sea

Might feel a cloud stoop toward it: and his heart

Darkened as one that wastes by sorcerous art

And knows not whence it withers: and he turned

Back from her emerald eyes his own, and yearned

All night for eyes all golden: and the dark

Hung sleepless round him till the loud first lark

Rang record forth once more of darkness done,

And all things born took comfort from the sun.

IX

The Sailing of the Swan

Fate, that was born ere spirit and flesh were made,

The fire that fills man's life with light and shade;

The power beyond all godhead which puts on

All forms of multitudinous unison,

A raiment of eternal change inwrought

With shapes and hues more subtly spun than thought,

Where all things old bear fruit of all things new

And one deep chord throbs all the music through,

The chord of change unchanging, shadow and light

Inseparable as reverberate day from night;

Fate, that of all things save the soul of man

Is lord and God since body and soul began;

Fate, that keeps all the tune of things in chime;

Fate, that breathes power upon the lips of time;

That smites and soothes with heavy and healing hand

All joys and sorrows born in life's dim land,

Till joy be found a shadow and sorrow a breath

And life no discord in the tune with death,

But all things fain alike to die and live

In pulse and lapse of tides alternative,

Through silence and through sound of peace and strife,

Till birth and death be one in sight of life;

Fate, heard and seen of no man's eyes or ears,

To no man shown through light of smiles or tears,

And moved of no man's prayer to fold its wings;

Fate, that is night and light on worldly things;

Fate, that is fire to burn and sea to drown,

Strength to build up and thunder to cast down;

Fate, shield and screen for each man's lifelong head,

And sword at last or dart that strikes it dead;

Fate, higher than heaven and deeper than the grave,

That saves and spares not, spares and doth not save;

Fate, that in gods' wise is not bought and sold

For prayer or price of penitence or gold;

Whose law shall live when life bids earth farewell,

Whose justice hath for shadows heaven and hell;

Whose judgment into no god's hand is given,

Nor is its doom not more than hell or heaven:

Fate, that is pure of love and clean of hate,

Being equal-eyed as nought may be but fate;

Through many and weary days of foiled desire

Leads life to rest where tears no more take fire;

Through many and weary dreams of quenched delight

Leads life through death past sense of day and night.

Nor shall they feel or fear, whose date is done,

Aught that made once more dark the living sun

And bitterer in their breathing lips the breath

Than the dark dawn and bitter dust of death.

For all the light, with fragrance as of flowers,

That clothes the lithe live limbs of separate hours,

More sweet to savour and more clear to sight

Dawns on the soul death's undivided night.

No vigils has that perfect night to keep,

No fever-fits of vision shake that sleep.

Nor if they wake, and any place there be

Wherein the soul may feel her wings beat free

Through air too clear and still for sound or strife

If life were haply death, and death be life;

If love with yet some lovelier laugh revive,

And song relume the light it bore alive,

And friendship, found of all earth's gifts most good,

Stand perfect in perpetual brotherhood;

If aught indeed at all of all this be,

Though none might say nor any man might see,

Might he that sees the shade thereof not say

This dream were trustier than the truth of day.

Nor haply may not hope, with heart more clear,

Burn deathward, and the doubtful soul take cheer,

Seeing through the channelled darkness yearn a star

Whose eyebeams are not as the morning's are,

Transient, and subjugate of lordlier light,

But all unconquerable by noon or night,

Being kindled only of life's own inmost fire,

Truth, stablished and made sure by strong desire,

Fountain of all things living, source and seed,

Force that perforce transfigures dream to deed,

God that begets on time, the body of death,

Eternity: nor may man's darkening breath,

Albeit it stain, disfigure or destroy

The glass wherein the soul sees life and joy

Only, with strength renewed and spirit of youth,

And brighter than the sun's the body of Truth

Eternal, unimaginable of man,

Whose very face not Thought's own eyes may scan,

But see far off his radiant feet at least,

Trampling the head of Fear, the false high priest,

Whose broken chalice foams with blood no more,

And prostrate on that high priest's chancel floor,

Bruised, overthrown, blind, maimed, with bloodless rod,

The miscreation of his miscreant God.

That sovereign shadow cast of souls that dwell

In darkness and the prison-house of hell

Whose walls are built of deadly dread, and bound

The gates thereof with dreams as iron round,

And all the bars therein and stanchions wrought

Of shadow forged like steel and tempered thought

And words like swords and thunder-clouded creeds

And faiths more dire than sin's most direful deeds:

That shade accursed and worshipped, which hath made

The soul of man that brought it forth a shade

Black as the womb of darkness, void and vain,

A throne for fear, a pasturage for pain,

Impotent, abject, clothed upon with lies,

A foul blind fume of words and prayers that rise,

Aghast and harsh, abhorrent and abhorred,

Fierce as its God, blood-saturate as its Lord;

With loves and mercies on its lips that hiss

Comfort, and kill compassion with a kiss,

And strike the world black with their blasting breath;

That ghost whose core of life is very death

And all its light of heaven a shadow of hell,

Fades, falls, wanes, withers by none other spell

But theirs whose eyes and ears have seen and heard

Not the face naked, not the perfect word,

But the bright sound and feature felt from far

Of life which feeds the spirit and the star,

Thrills the live light of all the suns that roll,

And stirs the still sealed springs of every soul.

Three dim days through, three slumberless nights long,

Perplexed at dawn, oppressed at evensong,

The strong man's soul now sealed indeed with pain,

And all its springs half dried with drought, had lain

Prisoner within the fleshly dungeon-dress

Sore chafed and wasted with its weariness.

And fain it would have found the star, and fain

Made this funereal prison-house of pain

A watch-tower whence its eyes might sweep, and see

If any place for any hope might be

Beyond the hells and heavens of sleep and strife,

Or any light at all of any life

Beyond the dense false darkness woven above,

And could not, lacking grace to look on love,

And in the third night's dying hour he spake,

Seeing scarce the seals that bound the dayspring break

And scarce the daystar burn above the sea:

»O Ganhardine, my brother true to me,

I charge thee by those nights and days we knew

No great while since in England, by the dew

That bathed those nights with blessing, and the fire

That thrilled those days as music thrills a lyre,

Do now for me perchance the last good deed

That ever love may crave or life may need

Ere love lay life in ashes: take to thee

My ship that shows aloft against the sea

Carved on her stem the semblance of a swan,

And ere the waves at even again wax wan

Pass, if it may be, to my lady's land,

And give this ring into her secret hand,

And bid her think how hard on death I lie,

And fain would look upon her face and die.

But as a merchant's laden be the bark

With royal ware for fraughtage, that King Mark

May take for toll thereof some costly thing;

And when this gift finds grace before the king,

Choose forth a cup, and put therein my ring

Where sureliest only of one it may be seen,

And bid her handmaid bear it to the queen

For earnest of thine homage: then shall she

Fear, and take counsel privily with thee,

To know what errand there is thine from me

And what my need in secret of her sight.

But make thee two sails, one like sea-foam white

To spread for signal if thou bring her back,

And if she come not see the sail be black,

That I may know or ever thou take land

If these my lips may die upon her hand

Or hers may never more be mixed with mine.«

And his heart quailed for grief in Ganhardine,

Hearing; and all his brother bade he swore

Surely to do, and straight fare forth from shore.

But the white-handed Iseult hearkening heard

All, and her heart waxed hot, and every word

Thereon seemed graven and printed in her thought

As lines with fire and molten iron wrought.

And hard within her heavy heart she cursed

Both, and her life was turned to fiery thirst,

And all her soul was hunger, and its breath

Of hope and life a blast of raging death.

For only in hope of evil was her life.

So bitter burned within the unchilded wife

A virgin lust for vengeance, and such hate

Wrought in her now the fervent work of fate.

Then with a south west wind the Swan set forth,

And over wintering waters bore to north,

And round the wild land's windy westward end

Up the blown channel bade her bright way bend

East on toward high Tintagel: where at dark

Landing, fair welcome found they of King Mark,

And Ganhardine with Brangwain as of old

Spake, and she took the cup of chiselled gold

Wherein lay secret Tristram's trothplight ring,

And bare it unbeholden of the king

Even to her lady's hand, which hardly took

A gift whereon a queen's eyes well might look,

With grace forlorn of weary gentleness.

But, seeing, her life leapt in her, keen to guess

The secret of the symbol: and her face

Flashed bright with blood whence all its grief-worn grace

Took fire and kindled to the quivering hair.

And in the dark soft hour of starriest air

Thrilled through with sense of midnight, when the world

Feels the wide wings of sleep about it furled,

Down stole the queen, deep-muffled to her wan

Mute restless lips, and came where yet the Swan

Swung fast at anchor: whence by starlight she

Hoised snowbright sails, and took the glimmering sea.

But all the long night long more keen and sore

His wound's grief waxed in Tristram evermore,

And heavier always hung his heart asway

Between dim fear and clouded hope of day.

And still with face and heart at silent strife

Beside him watched the maiden called his wife,

Patient, and spake not save when scarce he spake,

Murmuring with sense distraught and spirit awake

Speech bitterer than the words thereof were sweet:

And hatred thrilled her to the hands and feet,

Listening: for alway back reiterate came

The passionate faint burden of her name.

Nor ever through the labouring lips astir

Came any word of any thought of her.

But the soul wandering struggled and clung hard

Only to dreams of joy in Joyous Gard

Or wildwood nights beside the Cornish strand,

Or Merlin's holier sleep here hard at hand

Wrapped round with deep soft spells in dim Broceliande.

And with such thirst as joy's drained wine-cup leaves

When fear to hope as hope to memory cleaves

His soul desired the dewy sense of leaves,

The soft green smell of thickets drenched with dawn.

The faint slot kindling on the fiery lawn

As day's first hour made keen the spirit again

That lured and spurred on quest his hound Hodain,

The breeze, the bloom, the splendour and the sound,

That stung like fire the hunter and the hound,

The pulse of wind, the passion of the sea,

The rapture of the woodland: then would he

Sigh, and as one that fain would all be dead

Heavily turn his heavy-laden head

Back, and close eyes for comfort, finding none.

And fain he would have died or seen the sun,

Being sick at heart of darkness: yet afresh

Began the long strong strife of spirit and flesh

And branching pangs of thought whose branches bear

The bloodred fruit whose core is black, despair.

And the wind slackened and again grew great,

Palpitant as men's pulses palpitate

Between the flowing and ebbing tides of fate

That wash their lifelong waifs of weal and woe

Through night and light and twilight to and fro.

Now as a pulse of hope its heartbeat throbbed,

Now like one stricken shrank and sank and sobbed,

Then, yearning as with child of death, put forth

A wail that filled the night up south and north

With woful sound of waters: and he said,

»So might the wind wail if the world were dead

And its wings wandered over nought but sea.

I would I knew she would not come to me,

For surely she will come not: then should I,

Once knowing I shall not look upon her, die.

I knew not life could so long breathe such breath

As I do.