On This Page:
Dead Love.
Tristram Of Lyonesse.
The Day Before The Trial.
Joyeuse Garden.
King Ban: A Fragment.
Dead Love PRAY a little for dead love! Put your hands up in a prayer, Kiss the lips that will not move, Smooth the ruffled plaits of hair, Then go forth, and bid me know That an old love ended so. Weep a little for poor love! Ere they bury him away, Stoop your face his face above, Let no other hear you pray. Then go forth and never know That your love was buried so. Is there any help for love? He is stricken to the heart, And his white face does not move And the lips are drawn apart. Nay, go forth that all may know This was love that ended so. Weep not any more for love That is dead and laid away. All the spring is green above, Men would laugh to hear you pray. It was in the time of snow That your love was buried so. Pray not any prayer for love, Plant no flowers about his bed, For the cold heart will not move Though you weep that love is dead. Sing new songs and bid me know That love's pain is ended so.
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Tristram Of Lyonesse 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 bross 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-face 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, Voice 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 one mouths 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 hear 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.
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The Day Before The Trial King Arthur says being alone. Now the day comes near and near I feel its hot breath, and see it clear, How strange it is and full of fear; And I grow old waiting here, Grow sick with pain of Guenevere, My wife, that loves not me. So strange it seems to me, so new To have such shame between us two, I dare not hold this Mador true Nor false, because his words ran thro' My blood with all the shame they drew And burnt me to the bone; I knew That some such tale would be For all these years she grew more fair, More sweet her low sweet speeches were, More long and heavy grew her hair, Not such as other women wear; But ever as I looked on her Her face seemed fierce and thin. I felt half sick, and on my head The gold crown seemed not gold but lead; Strange words I heard that no man said, Strange noises where all noise was dead; Was it pure blood that made her red From brows to rounded chin? Sometimes I knew she loved me not; Down to my hands the blood went hot In a dull hate of Launcelot For all the praise of her he got, Being so pure of sin. For he was clean as any maid, And on his head God's hand was laid As on a maiden's; so men said; But I, a woman's hands there weighed Instead of God's upon my head, No maid was I, to see The white Sangreal borne up in air, To touch at last God's body fair, To feel strange terror stir my hair As a slow light went past; but here I had to my honours year by year, I had the name of king to bear, And watch the eyes of Guenevere, My wife, who loves not me.
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Joyeuse Garden The sun was heavy; no more shade at all Than you might cover with a hollow cup There was in the south chamber; wall by wall, Slowly the hot noon filled the castle up. One hand among the rushes, one let play Where the loose gold began to swerve and droop From his fair mantle to the floor, she lay; Her face held up a little, for delight To feel his eyes upon it, one would say. Her grave shut lips were glad to be in sight Of Tristram's kisses; she had often turned Against her shifted pillows in the night To lessen the sore pain wherein they burned For want of Tristram; her great eyes had grown Less keen and sudden, and a hunger yearned Her sick face through, these wretched years agone. Here eyes said "Tristram" now, but her lips held The joy too close for any smile or moan To move them; she was patiently fulfilled With a slow pleasure that slid everwise Even into hands and feet, but could not build The house of its abinding in her eyes, Nor measure any music by her speech. Between the sunlight came a noise of flies To pain sleep from her, thick from peach to peach Upon the bare wall's hot red level, close Among the leaves too high for her to reach. So she drew in and set her feet, and rose Saying "Too late to sleep; I pray you speak To save me from the noises, lest I lose Some minute of this season; I am weak And cannot answer if you help me not, When the shame catches on my brow and cheek. "For in the speaking all her face grew hot, And her mouth altered with some pain, I deem Because her word had stung like a bad thought That makes us recollect some bitter dream. She bowed to let him kiss her, and went on: "All things are changed so, will this day not seem Most sad and evil when I sit alone Outside your eyes? will it not vex my prayer To think of laughter that is twin to moan, And happy words that make not holier? Nathless I had good will to say one thing, Though it seems pleasant in the late warm air To ride alone and see the last of spring. I cannot lose you, Tristram; (a weak smile Moved her lips and went out) men say the king Hath set keen spies about for many a mile, Quick hands to get them gold, sharp eyes to see Where your way swerves across them. This long while Hath Mark grown older with his hate of me, And now his hand for lust to smite at us Plucks the white hairs inside his beard that he This year made thicker. Seeing this he does I pray you not that we may meet with him At riding through the branches growth, and then Our wine grow bitter at the golden rim And taste of blood and tears, not sweet to drink As this new honey wherein juices swim Of fair red vintage." Her voice done, I think He had no heart to answer; yet some time The noon outside them seem to throb and sink, Wrought in the quiet to a rounded rhyme. Then "certes," said he, "this were harm to both If spears grew thick between the beech and lime, Or amid reeds that let the river south, Yet so I think you might get help of me. Had I not heart to smile, when Iseult's mouth Kissed Palomydes under a thick tree? For I remember, as the wind sets low, How all that peril ended quietly In a green place where heavy sunflowers blow."
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King Ban: A Fragment These three held flight upon the leaning lands At undern, past the skirt of misty camps Sewn thick from Benwick to the outer march-- King Ban, and, riding wrist by wrist, Ellayne, And caught up with his coloured swathing-bands Across her arm, a hindrance in the reins, A bauble slipt between the bridle-ties, The three months' trouble that was Launcelot. For Claudas leant upon the land, and smote This way and that way, as a pestilence Moves with vague patience in the unclean heat This way and that way; so the Gaulish war Smote, moving in the marches. Then King Ban Shut in one girdled waist of narrow stones His gold and all his men, and set on them A name, the name of perfect men at need, And over them a seneschal, the man Most inward and entailed upon his soul, That next his will and in his pulses moved As the close blood and purpose of his heart, And laid the place between his hands, and rode North to the wild rims of distempered sea That, crossed to Logres, his face might look red [sic] The face of Arthur, and therein light blood Even to the eyes and to the circled hair For shame of failure in so near a need, Failure in service of so near a man. Because that time King Arthur would not ride, But lay and let his hands weaken to white Among the stray gold of a lady's head. His hands unwedded: neither could bring help To Ban that helped to rend his land for him From the steel wrist of spoilers, but the time A sleep like yellow mould had overgrown, A pleasure sweet and sick as marsh-flowers. Therefore about his marches rode King Ban With eyes that fell between his hands to count The golden inches of the saddle-rim, Strange with rare stones; and in his face there rose A doubt that burnt it with red pain and fear All over it, and plucked upon his heart, The old weak heart that loss had eaten through, Remembering how the seneschal went back At coming out from Claudas in his tent; And how they bound together, chin by chin, Whispered and wagged, and made lean room for words, And a sharp mutter fed the ears of them. And he went in and set no thought thereon To waste; fear had not heart to fear indeed, The king being old, since any fear in such Is as a wound upon the fleshly sense That drains a parcel of his time thereout, Therefore he would not fear that as it fell This thing should fall. For Claudas the keen thief For some thin rounds and wretched stamps of gold Had bought the tower and men and seneschal, Body and breath and blood, yea, soul and shame. They knew not this, at halt upon a hill. Only surmise was dull upon the sense And thin conjecture sickened in the speech; So they fell silent, riding in the hills. There on a little terrace the good king Reined, and looked out. Far back the white lands lay; The wind went in them like a broken man, Lamely; the mist had set a bitter lip To the rimmed river, and the moon burnt blank. But outward from the castle of King Ban There blew a sound of trouble, and there clomb A fire that thrust an arm across the air, Shook a rent skirt of dragging flame, and blanched The grey flats to such cruel white as shone Iron against the shadow of the sky Blurred out with its blind stars; for as the sea Gathers to lengthen a bleached edge of foam Whole weights of windy water, and the green Brine flares and hisses as the heap makes up, Till the gaunt wave writhes, trying to breathe, Then turns, and all the whited rims of steel Lean over, and the hollowed round roars in And smites the pebble forward in the mud, And grinds the shingle in cool whirls of white, Clashed through and crossed with blank assault of foam, Filled with hard thunder and drenched dregs of sand-- So leant and leapt the many-mouthèd fire, So curled upon the walls, dipt, crawled, smote, clung, Caught like a beast that catches on the flesh, Waxed hoar with sick default, shivered across, Choked out, a snake unfed. Thereat King Ban Trembled for pain in all his blood, and death Under the heart caught him and made his breath Wince, as a worm does, wounded in the head; And fear began upon his flesh, and shook The chaste and inly sufferance of it Almost to ruin; a small fire and keen Eating in muscle and nerve and hinge of joint Perilous way; so bitter was the blow Made on his sense by treason and sharp loss. Then he fell weeping tears, with blood in them, Like that red sweat that stained Gethsemane With witness, when the deadly kiss had put Shame on the mouth of Judas; and he cried, Crying on God, and made out words and said: Fair lord, sweet lord, most pleasant to all men, To me so pleasant in clean days of mine That now are rained upon with heavy rain, Soiled with grey grime and with the dusty years, Because in all those tourneys and hot things I had to do with, in all riding times And noise of work, and on smooth holidays Sitting to see the smiting of hard spears, And spur-smiting of steeds and wrath of men, And gracious measure of the rounded game, I held you in true honour and kept white The hands of my allegiance as a maid's, Being whole of faith and perfect in the will. Therefore I pray you, O God marvellous, See me how I am stricken among men, And how the lip I fed with plenteousness And cooled with wine of liberal courtesy Turns a snake's life to poison me and clings--
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