And found a people there among their | A sharp quick thunder.' Afterwards & maid, Who kept our holy faith among her kin In secret, entering, loosed and let him go." To whom the monk: "And I remember now That pelican on the casque. Sir Bors it was Who spake so low and sadly at our board; And mighty reverent at our grace was he A square-set man and honest; and his eyes, An out-door sign of all the warmth within. Smiled with his lipsa smile beneath a cloud, But heaven had meant it for a sunny one : Ay, ay, Sir Bors, who else? But when ye reach'd The city, found ye all your knights return'd, Or was there sooth in Arthur's prophecy, Tell me, and what said each, and what the King?" Then answer'd Percivale: "And that can I, Brother, and truly; since the living words Of so great men as Lancelot and our King Pass not from door to door and out again, But sit within the house. O, when we And from the statue Merlin moulded for us Half-wrench'd a golden wing; but nowthe quest, This vision hast thou seen the Holy "So when I told him all thyself hast heard, Ambrosius, and my fresh but fixt resolve To pass away into the quiet life, He answer'd not, but, sharply turning, ask'd Of Gawain, 'Gawain, was this Quest for thee?' 666 Nay, lord,' said Gawain, not for Therefore I communed with a saintly man, For I was much awearied of the Quest: Tore my pavilion from the tenting-pin, ""Our mightiest!' answer'd Lancelot, with a groan; O King!' and when he paused, me- A dying fire of madness in his eyes - Slime of the ditch: but in me lived a sin Round that one sin, until the wholesome And poisonous grew together, each as each, Sware, I sware with them only in the hope To one most holy saint, who wept and said, My quest were but in vain; to whom I vow'd That I would work according as he will'd. To tear the twain asunder in my heart, "He ceased; and Arthur turn'd to There was I beaten down by little men, whom at first Mean knights, to whom the moving of grasses grew; But such a blast, my King, began to blow, And blackening in the sea-foam sway'd a And in my madness to myself I said, I heard the shingle grinding in the surge, And cover'd; and this quest was not for And felt the boat shock earth, and look me.' Brother, I need not tell thee foolish words, A reckless and irreverent knight was he, Now bolden'd by the silence of his King, Well, I will tell thee: O king, my liege,' he said, 'Hath Gawain fail'd in any quest of thine? When have I stinted stroke in foughten field? But as for thine, my good friend, Percivale, Thy holy nun and thou have driven men mad, Yea, made our mightiest madder than our least. But by mine eyes and by mine ears I swear, I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat, And thrice as blind as any noonday owl, To holy virgins in their ecstasies, Henceforward.' A golden circlet and a knightly sword, Cares but to pass into the silent life. "And some among you held, that if Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow: Not easily, seeing that the King must That which he rules, and is but as the hind Before his work be done; but, being done, footIn moments when he feels he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision, nor that One Who rose again ye have seen what ye have seen.' promised for him : and Arthur made him knight. And this new knight, Sir Pelleas of But lately come to his inheritance, and reel'd Almost to falling from his horse; but saw But for a mile all round was open space, drew To that dim day, then binding his good horse To a tree, cast himself down; and as he At random looking over the brown earth grove, It seem'd to Pelleas that the fern without Burnt as a living fire of emeralds, So that his eyes were dazzled looking at it. "So spake the king: I knew not all Then o'er it crost the dimness of a cloud he meant." Floating, and once the shadow of a bird Flying, and then a fawn; and his eyes | And pass and care no more. But while Suddenly waken'd with a sound of talk And laughter at the limit of the wood, And glancing thro' the hoary boles, he saw, Strange as to some old prophet might have seem'd A vision hovering on a sea of fire, Damsels in divers colors like the cloud Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them On horses, and the horses richly trapt Breast-high in that bright line of bracken stood: And all the damsels talk'd confusedly, And one was pointing this way, and one that, Because the way was lost. And Pelleas rose, And loosed his horse, and led him to the light. There she that seem'd the chief among them said, "In happy time behold our pilot-star! Youth, we are damsels-errant, and we ride, Arm'd as ye see, to tilt against the knights There at Caerleon, but have lost our way: To right? to left? straight forward? back again? Which? tell us quickly." And Pelleas gazing thought, "Is Guinevere herself so beautiful?" For large her violet eyes look'd, and her bloom A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens, And round her limbs, mature in womanhood, And slender was her hand and small her shape, And but for those large eyes, the haunts of scorn, She might have seem'd a toy to trifle with, he gazed The beauty of her flesh abash'd the boy, As tho' it were the beauty of her soul: For as the base man, judging of the good, Puts his own baseness in him by default Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend All the young beauty of his own soul to hers, Believing her; and when she spake to him, Stammer'd, and could not make her a reply. For out of the waste islands had he come, Where saving his own sisters he had known Scarce any but the women of his isles, Rough wives, that laugh'd and scream'd against the gulls, Makers of nets, and living from the sea. |