The Dread Voyage: Poems :: SIR LANCELOT.

SIR LANCELOT.

He rode, a king, amid the armoured knights, The glory of day tossing on helm and shield, And all the glory of his youth and joy, In the strong, wine-like splendour of his face. He rode among them, the one man of men, Their lordliest, loveliest, he who might have been, Because of very human breadth of love, And his glad, winning sympathy for earth, Greater than even Arthur under heaven.

Kindlier than the morning was his face, Swift, like the lightning, was his eagle glance, No bit of beauty earth had ever held, Of child or flower or dream of woman’s face, Or noble, passing godliness of mood, In man toward man, but garnered in his eye, As in some mere that gathereth all earth’s face, And foldeth it in beauty to its breast.

He rode among them, Arthur’s own right hand, Arthur, whom he loved as John loved Christ, And watched each day with joy that lofty brow Lift up its lonely splendour, isolate, Half god-like, o’er that serried host of spears, And knew his love the kingliest, holiest thing, ’Twixt man and man upon this glowing earth.

So passed those days of splendour and of peace, When all men loved his majesty and strength And kindliness of spirit which the king, Great Arthur, with his lofty coldness lacked. ’Twas Lancelot fought the mightiest in the lists, And beat with thunders back the brazen shields, And stormed the fastness of the farthest isles, Slaying the grizzly warriors of the meres, And winning all men’s fealty and love, And worship of fair women in the towers, Who laid their distaffs down to watch him pass; And made the hot blood mantle each fair cheek, With sweet sense of his presence, till all men Called Arthur half a god, and Lancelot The greatest heart that beat in his great realm.

Then came that fatal day that brake his life, When he, being sent of Arthur, all unknowing, Saw Guinevere, like some fair flower of heaven, As men may only see in dreams the gods Do send to kill the common ways of earth, And make all else but drear and dull and bleak; Such magic she did work upon his soul, Till Arthur, God and all the Table Round, Were but a nebulous mist before his eyes, In which the splendour of her beauty shone.

Henceforth the years would rise and wane and die, And glory come and glory pass away, And battles pass as in a troubled dream, And Arthur be a ghost, and his knights ghosts;— The castles and the lists and the mad fights, Sacking of cities, scourging of country-sides, All dreams before his eyes;—all, save her love.

So girded she her magic round his heart, And meshed him in a golden mesh of love, And marred his sense of all earth’s splendour there.

But in the after-days when brake the end, And she had fled to Glastonbury’s cells, With all the world one clamour at her sin; And Arthur like a storm-smit pine-tree stood, Alone amid his kingdom’s blackened ruins;— Then Lancelot knew his life an evil dream, And thought him of the friendship of their youth, And all the days that they had been together, And “Arthur, Arthur,” spake from all the meres, And “Arthur, Arthur,” moaned from days afar. And Lancelot grieved him of his woeful sin:— “And this the hand that smote mine Arthur down, That brake his glory, ruined his great hope Of one vast kingdom built on noble deeds, And truth and peace for many days to be. This hand that should have been his truest strength, Next to that high honour which he held.” And all the torrents of his sorrow brake For his own Arthur, Arthur standing lone, Like some unriven pine that towers alone Amid the awful ruins of a world. And then a woeful longing smote him there, To ride by murk and moon, by mere and waste, To where the king made battle with his foes, And look, unknown, upon his face, and die.

So thinking this he fled, and the queen’s wraith, A memory, in the moonlight fled with him. But stronger with him fled his gladder youth And all the memories of the splendid past, Until his heart yearned for the days that were, And that great, noble soul who fought alone.

Then coming by cock-crow and the glimmering dawn, He reached the grey-walled castle of the land, Where the king tarried ere he went to fight The last dread battle of the Table Round. And the grim sentinels who guarded there, Thinking only of him as Arthur’s friend, And knowing not the Lancelot scandal named, And judging by the sorrow of his face, Deemed him some knight who came to aid the king, And pointing past the waning beacon fires, Said, “There he sleeps as one who hath no woes.”

And Lancelot passing silent left them there, And entering the old abbey, (’twas some ruin Of piety and worship of past days,) Saw in the flicker of a dying hearth, Mingled with faint glimmering of the dawn, The great king sleeping, where a mighty cross Threw its dread shadow o’er his moving breast.

And Lancelot knew the same strong, god-like face That he had worshipped in the days no more, And all their olden gladness smote him now, And he had wept, but that his awful sin, That made a wall of flame betwixt them there, Had seared the very fountains of his soul. Whereat he moaned, “O, noble, saintly heart, Couldst thou but know amidst thine innocent sleep, Save for the awful sin that flames between, That here doth stand the Lancelot of old days, The one of all the wo

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