Then she stretch'd out her arms and cried aloud 'Oh Arthur!' there her voice brake suddenly, Then as a stream that spouting from a cliff Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale Went on in passionate utterance: 'Gone-my lord! Gone thro' my sin to slay and to be slain ! And he forgave me, and I could not speak. Farewell? I should have answer'd his farewell. His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord the King, My own true lord! how dare I call him mine? The shadow of another cleaves to me, The months will add themselves and make the years, The years will roll into the centuries, Except he mock'd me when he spake of hope; His hope he call'd it; but he never mocks, For mockery is the fume of little hearts. And blessed be the King, who hath for given My wickedness to him, and left me hope That in mine own heart I can live down sin And be his mate hereafter in the heavens Before high God. Ah great and gentle lord, Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint > 'Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke The vast design and purpose of the King. O shut me round with narrowing nunnerywalls, Meek maidens, from the voices crying "shame." I must not scorn myself: he loves me still. Let no one dream but that he loves me still. So let me, if you do not shudder at me, Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you; Wear black and white, and be a nun like you, Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts; Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys, But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites; Pray and be pray'd for; lie before your shrines; Do each low office of your holy house; Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole To poor sick people, richer in His eyes Who ransom'd us, and haler too than I; What might I not have made of thy fair And treat their loathsome hurts and heal THE PASSING OF ARTHUR. THAT story which the bold Sir Bedivere, First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds. For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King: 'I found Him in the shining of the stars, I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. And have not power to see it as it is: close ; In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown Along a wandering wind, and past his ear Went shrilling, Hollow, hollow all delight! Hail, King! to-morrow thou shalt pass away. Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee. And I am blown along a wandering wind, And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.' 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 Shrill'd; but in going mingled with dim cries Far in the moonlit haze among the hills, As of some lonely city sack'd by night, When all is lost, and wife and child with wail Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and call'd, 'Who spake? A dream. the wind, O light upon Thine, Gawain, was the voice—are these dim cries Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild For I, being simple, thought to work His Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?' will, And have but stricken with the sword in vain ; And all whereon I lean'd in wife and friend Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm Reels back into the beast, and is no more. My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death: Nay-God my Christ-I pass but shall not die.' This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and spake : 'O me, my King, let pass whatever will, But in their stead thy name and glory cling Then, ere that last weird battle in the Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man ; west, There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain kill'd 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 Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee. Right well in heart they know thee for the King. Arise, go forth and conquer as of old.' Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi vere : 'Far other is this battle in the west Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth, And brake the petty kings, and fought with Rome, Or thrust the heathen from the Roman wall, And shook him thro' the north. Ill doom is mine To war against my people and my knights. The king who fights his people fights himself. And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke That strikes them dead is as my death to me. Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way 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, Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse- And the long mountains ended in a coast 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. A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea: Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold With formless fear; and ev'n on Arthur fell Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought. For friend and foe were shadows in the mist, And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew ; And some had visions out of golden youth, And some beheld the faces of old ghosts Look in upon the battle; and in the mist Was many a noble deed, many a base, And chance and craft and strength in single fights, And ever and anon with host to host Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn, Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash Of battleaxes on shatter'd helms, and shrieks After the Christ, of those who falling down Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist; And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights, Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies, Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs In that close mist, and cryings for the light, Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead. Last, as by some one deathbed after wail Of suffering, silence follows, or thro' death me King. Of battle but no man was moving there; Yea, even while they brake them, own'd Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And well for thee, saying in my dark hour, That quick or dead thou holdest me for King am I, whatsoever be their cry; And shiver'd brands that once had fought And one last act of kinghood shalt thou Yet, ere I pass.' And uttering this the Made at the man: then Modred smote Hard on that helm which many a heathen And whiter than the mist that all day long blow, 'Hearest thou this great voice that Striking the last stroke with Excalibur, Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell. shakes the world, And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move, And beats upon the faces of the dead, O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fall'n Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere : 'My King, So all day long the noise of battle roll'd The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, King everywhere! and so the dead have | Lay a great water, and the moon was full. kings, There also will I worship thee as King. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi vere : 'The sequel of to-day unsolders all |