Yet tears they shed: they had their part The still affection of the heart Became an outward breathing type, That into stillness past again, 225 And left a want unknown before; Although the loss that brought us pain, That loss but made us love the more, 230 With farther lookings on. The kiss, The woven arms, seem but to be Weak symbols of the settled bliss, The comfort, I have found in thee: But that God bless thee, dear who wrought 235 With blessings beyond hope or thought, With blessings which no words can find, Arise, and let us wander forth, To yon old mill across the wolds; THE PASSING OF ARTHUR. THAT story which the bold Sir Bedivere, For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King: 240 245 5 I found Him in the shining of the stars, Or else as if the world were wholly fair, But that these eyes of men are dense and dim, Then, ere that last weird battle in the west And fainter onward, like wild birds that change Their season in the night and wail their way From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream 40 Far in the moonlit haze among the hills, As of some lonely city sack'd by night, 45 Thine, Gawain, was the voice are these dim cries This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and spake : 50 55 Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou for dreams from him, but rise I hear the steps of Modred in the west, And with him many of thy people and knights 60 Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: Far other is this battle in the west 65 Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth, 70 To war against my people and my knights. And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way 75 Thro' this blind haze, which ever since I saw One lying in the dust at Almesbury, Hath folded in the passes of the world.' Then rose the king and moved his host by night, And ever push'd Sir Modred, league by league, 80 Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; 85 And he that fled no further fly the king; And there, that day when the great light of heaven 90 Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year, On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed. Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west. 95 100 Look in upon the battle; and in the mist 105 And chance and craft and strength in single fights, Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn Last, as by some one deathbed after wail Of suffering, silence follows, or thro' death Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore, 110 115 120 Save for some whisper of the seething seas, A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew 125 Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave 130 Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome, And rolling far along the gloomy shores The voice of days of old and days to be. 135 Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere, And whiter than the mist that all day long Had held the field of battle was the King: Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world, And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move, 140 And beats upon the faces of the dead, My dead, as tho' they had not died for me? O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fall'n 145 Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: My King, King everywhere! and so the dead have kings, There also will I worship thee as king. Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live 150 Who love thee; but who hates thee, he that brought Modred, unharm'd, the traitor of thine house.' 6 Then spake the King: My house hath been my doom. But call not thou this traitor of my house 155 |