VI. Lancelot   
I   
     
GAWAINE, aware again of Lancelot      
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him;      
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms      
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed—      
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories           5   
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend?      
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said,      
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light      
Between the narrowing lids at which he gazed.      
“And who of us are they that name their friends?”          10   
Lancelot said. “They live that have not any.      
Why do they live, Gawaine? Ask why, and answer.”      
   
Two men of an elected eminence,      
They stood for a time silent. Then Gawaine,      
Acknowledging the ghost of what was gone,          15   
Put out his hand: “Rather, I say, why ask?      
If I be not the friend of Lancelot,      
May I be nailed alive along the ground      
And emmets eat me dead. If I be not      
The friend of Lancelot, may I be fried          20   
With other liars in the pans of hell.      
What item otherwise of immolation      
Your Darkness may invent, be it mine to endure      
And yours to gloat on. For the time between,      
Consider this thing you see that is my hand.          25   
If once, it has been yours a thousand times;      
Why not again? Gawaine has never lied      
To Lancelot; and this, of all wrong days—      
This day before the day when you go south      
To God knows what accomplishment of exile—          30   
Were surely an ill day for lies to find      
An issue or a cause or an occasion.      
King Ban your father and King Lot my father,      
Were they alive, would shake their heads in sorrow      
To see us as we are, and I shake mine          35   
In wonder. Will you take my hand, or no?      
Strong as I am, I do not hold it out      
For ever and on air. You see—my hand.”      
Lancelot gave his hand there to Gawaine,      
Who took it, held it, and then let it go,          40   
Chagrined with its indifference.      
  “Yes, Gawaine,      
I go tomorrow, and I wish you well;      
You and your brothers, Gareth, Gaheris,—      
And Agravaine; yes, even Agravaine,          45   
Whose tongue has told all Camelot and all Britain      
More lies than yet have hatched of Modred’s envy.      
You say that you have never lied to me,      
And I believe it so. Let it be so.      
For now and always. Gawaine, I wish you well.          50   
Tomorrow I go south, as Merlin went,      
But not for Merlin’s end. I go, Gawaine,      
And leave you to your ways. There are ways left.”      
“There are three ways I know, three famous ways,      
And all in Holy Writ,” Gawaine said, smiling:          55   
“The snake’s way and the eagle’s way are two,      
And then we have a man’s way with a maid—      
Or with a woman who is not a maid.      
Your late way is to send all women scudding,      
To the last flash of the last cramoisy,          60   
While you go south to find the fires of God.      
Since we came back again to Camelot      
From our immortal Quest—I came back first—      
No man has known you for the man you were      
Before you saw whatever ’t was you saw,          65   
To make so little of kings and queens and friends      
Thereafter. Modred? Agravaine? My brothers?      
And what if they be brothers? What are brothers,      
If they be not our friends, your friends and mine?      
You turn away, and my words are no mark          70   
On you affection or your memory?      
So be it then, if so it is to be.      
God save you, Lancelot; for by Saint Stephen,      
You are no more than man to save yourself.”      
   
“Gawaine, I do not say that you are wrong,          75   
Or that you are ill-seasoned in your lightness;      
You say that all you know is what you saw,      
And on your own averment you saw nothing.      
Your spoken word, Gawaine, I have not weighed      
In those unhappy scales of inference          80   
That have no beam but one made out of hates      
And fears, and venomous conjecturings;      
Your tongue is not the sword that urges me      
Now out of Camelot. Two other swords      
There are that are awake, and in their scabbards          85   
Are parching for the blood of Lancelot.      
Yet I go not away for fear of them,      
But for a sharper care. You say the truth,      
But not when you contend the fires of God      
Are my one fear,—for there is one fear more.          90   
Therefore I go. Gawaine, I wish you well.”      
   
“Well-wishing in a way is well enough;      
So, in a way, is caution; so, in a way,      
Are leeches, neatherds, and astrologers.      
Lancelot, listen. Sit you down and listen:          95   
You talk of swords and fears and banishment.      
Two swords, you say; Modred and Agravaine,      
You mean. Had you meant Gaheris and Gareth,      
Or willed an evil on them, I should welcome      
And hasten your farewell. But Agravaine         100   
Hears little what I say; his ears are Modred’s.      
The King is Modred’s father, and the Queen      
A prepossession of Modred’s lunacy.      
So much for my two brothers whom you fear,      
Not fearing for yourself. I say to you,         105   
Fear not for anything—and so be wise      
And amiable again as heretofore;      
Let Modred have his humor, and Agravaine      
His tongue. The two of them have done their worst,      
And having done their worst, what have they done?         110   
A whisper now and then, a chirrup or so      
In corners,—and what else? Ask what, and answer.”      
   
Still with a frown that had no faith in it,      
Lancelot, pitying Gawaine’s lost endeavour      
To make an evil jest of evidence,         115   
Sat fronting him with a remote forbearance—      
Whether for Gawaine blind or Gawaine false,      
Or both, or neither, he could not say yet,      
If ever; and to himself he said no more      
Than he said now aloud: “What else, Gawaine?         120   
What else, am I to say? Then ruin, I say;      
Destruction, dissolution, desolation,      
I say,—should I compound with jeopardy now.      
For there are more than whispers here, Gawaine:      
The way that we have gone so long together         125   
Has underneath our feet, without our will,      
Become a twofold faring. Yours, I trust,      
May lead you always on, as it has led you,      
To praise and to much joy. Mine, I believe,      
Leads off to battles that are not yet fought,         130   
And to the Light that once had blinded me.      
When I came back from seeing what I saw,      
I saw no place for me in Camelot.      
There is no place for me in Camelot.      
There is no place for me save where the Light         135   
May lead me; and to that place I shall go.      
Meanwhile I lay upon your soul no load      
Of counsel or of empty admonition;      
Only I ask of you, should strife arise      
In Camelot, to remember, if you may,         140   
That you’ve an ardor that outruns your reason,      
Also a glamour that outshines your guile;      
And you are a strange hater. I know that;      
And I’m in fortune that you hate not me.      
Yet while we have our sins to dream about,         145   
Time has done worse for time than in our making;      
Albeit there may be sundry falterings      
And falls against us in the Book of Man.”      
   
“Praise Adam, you are mellowing at last!      
I’ve always liked this world, and would so still;         150   
And if it is your new Light leads you on      
To such an admirable gait, for God’s sake,      
Follow it, follow it, follow it, Lancelot;      
Follow it as you never followed glory.      
Once I believed that I was on the way         155   
That you call yours, but I came home again      
To Camelot—and Camelot was right,      
For the world knows its own that knows not you;      
You are a thing too vaporous to be sharing      
The carnal feast of life. You mow down men         160   
Like elder-stems, and you leave women sighing      
For one more sight of you; but they do wrong.      
You are a man of mist, and have no shadow.      
God save you, Lancelot. If I laugh at you,      
I laugh in envy and in admiration.”         165   
   
The joyless evanescence of a smile,      
Discovered on the face of Lancelot      
By Gawaine’s unrelenting vigilance,      
Wavered, and with a sullen change went out;      
And then there was the music of a woman         170   
Laughing behind them, and a woman spoke:      
“Gawaine, you said ‘God save you, Lancelot.’      
Why should He save him any more to-day      
Than on another day? What has he done,      
Gawaine, that God should save him?” Guinevere,         175   
With many questions in her dark blue eyes      
And one gay jewel in her golden hair,      
Had come upon the two of them unseen,      
Till now she was a russet apparition      
At which the two arose—one with a dash         180   
Of easy leisure in his courtliness,      
One with a stately calm that might have pleased      
The Queen of a strange land indifferently.      
The firm incisive languor of her speech,      
Heard once, was heard through battles: “Lancelot,         185   
What have you done to-day that God should save you?      
What has he done, Gawaine, that God should save him?      
I grieve that you two pinks of chivalry      
Should be so near me in my desolation,      
And I, poor soul alone, know nothing of it.         190   
What has he done, Gawaine?”      
   
        With all her poise,      
To Gawaine’s undeceived urbanity      
She was less queen than woman for the nonce,      
And in her eyes there was a flickering         195   
Of a still fear that would not be veiled wholly      
With any mask of mannered nonchalance.      
“What has he done? Madam, attend your nephew;      
And learn from him, in your incertitude,      
That this inordinate man Lancelot,         200   
This engine of renown, this hewer down daily      
Of potent men by scores in our late warfare,      
Has now inside his head a foreign fever      
That urges him away to the last edge      
Of everything, there to efface himself         205   
In ecstasy, and so be done with us.      
Hereafter, peradventure certain birds      
Will perch in meditation on his bones,      
Quite as if they were some poor sailor’s bones,      
Or felon’s jettisoned, or fisherman’s,         210   
Or fowler’s bones, or Mark of Cornwall’s bones.      
In fine, this flower of men that was our comrade      
Shall be for us no more, from this day on,      
Than a much remembered Frenchman far away.      
Magnanimously I leave you now to prize         215   
Your final sight of him; and leaving you,      
I leave the sun to shine for him alone,      
Whiles I grope on to gloom. Madam, farewell;      
And you, contrarious Lancelot, farewell.”

   
VI. Lancelot   
II   
     
THE FLASH of oak leaves over Guinevere         220   
That afternoon, with the sun going down,      
Made memories there for Lancelot, although      
The woman who in silence looked at him      
Now seemed his inventory of the world      
That he must lose, or suffer to be lost         225   
For love of her who sat there in the shade,      
With oak leaves flashing in a golden light      
Over her face and over her golden hair.      
“Gawaine has all the graces, yet he knows;      
He knows enough to be the end of us,         230   
If so he would,” she said. “He knows and laughs      
And we are at the mercy of a man      
Who, if the stars went out, would only laugh.”      
She looked away at a small swinging blossom,      
And then she looked intently at her fingers,         235   
While a frown gathered slowly round her eyes,      
And wrinkled her white forehead.      
   
        Lancelot,      
Scarce knowing whether to himself he spoke      
Or to the Queen, said emptily: “As for Gawaine,         240   
My question is, if any curious hind      
Or knight that is alive in Britain breathing,      
Or prince, or king, knows more of us, or less,      
Than Gawaine, in his gay complacency,      
Knows or believes he knows. There’s over much         245   
Of knowing in this realm of many tongues,      
Where deeds are less to those who tell of them      
Than are the words they sow; and you and I      
Are like to yield a granary of such words,      
For God knows what next harvesting. Gawain         250   
I fear no more than Gareth, or Colgrevance;      
So far as it is his to be the friend      
Of any man, so far is he may friend—      
Till I have crossed him in some enterprise      
Unlikely and unborn. So fear not Gawaine         255   
But let your primal care be now for one      
Whose name is yours.”      
   
        The Queen, with her blue eyes      
Too bright for joy, still gazed on Lancelot,      
Who stared as if in angry malediction         260   
Upon the shorn grass growing at his feet.      
“Why do you speak as if the grass had ears      
And I had none? What are you saying now,      
So darkly to the grass, of knights and hinds?      
Are you the Lancelot who rode, long since,         265   
Away from me on that unearthly Quest,      
Which left no man the same who followed it—      
Or none save Gawaine, who came back so soon      
That we had hardly missed him?” Faintly then      
She smiled a little, more in her defence,         270   
He knew, than for misprision of a man      
Whom yet she feared: “Why do you set this day—      
This golden day, when all are not so golden—      
To tell me, with your eyes upon the ground,      
That idle words have been for idle tongues         275   
And ears a moment’s idle entertainment?      
Have I become, and all at once, a thing      
So new to courts, and to the buzz they make,      
That I should hear no murmur, see no sign?      
Where malice and ambition dwell with envy,         280   
They go the farthest who believe the least;      
So let them,—while I ask of you again,      
Why this day for all this? Was yesterday      
A day of ouphes and omens? Was it Friday?      
I don’t remember. Days are all alike         285   
When I have you to look on; when you go,      
There are no days but hours. You might say now      
What Gawaine said, and say it in our language.”      
The sharp light still was in her eyes, alive      
And anxious with a reminiscent fear.         290   
   
Lancelot, like a strong man stricken hard      
With pain, looked up at her unhappily;      
And slowly, on a low and final note,      
Said: “Gawaine laughs alike at what he knows,      
And at the loose convenience of his fancy;         295   
He sees in others what his humor needs      
To nourish it, and lives a merry life.      
Sometimes a random shaft of his will hit      
Nearer the mark than one a wise man aims      
With infinite address and reservation;         300   
So has it come to pass this afternoon.”      
   
Blood left the quivering cheeks of Guinevere      
As color leaves a cloud; and where white was      
Before, there was a ghostliness not white,      
But gray; and over it her shining hair         305   
Coiled heavily its mocking weight of gold.      
The pride of her forlorn light-heartedness      
Fled like a storm-blown feather; and her fear,      
Possessing her, was all that she possessed.      
She sought for Lancelot, but he seemed gone.         310   
There was a strong man glowering in a chair      
Before her, but he was not Lancelot,      
Or he would look at her and say to her      
That Gawaine’s words were less than chaff in the wind—      
A nonsense about exile, birds, and bones,         315   
Born of an indolence of empty breath.      
“Say what has come to pass this afternoon,”      
She said, “or I shall hear you all my life,      
Not hearing what it was you might have told.”      
   
He felt the trembling of her slow last words,         320   
And his were trembling as he answered them:      
“Why this day, why no other? So you ask,      
And so must I in honor tell you more—      
For what end, I have yet no braver guess      
Than Modred has of immortality,         325   
Or you of Gawaine. Could I have him alone      
Between me and the peace I cannot know,      
My life were like the sound of golden bells      
Over still fields at sunset, where no storm      
Should ever blast the sky with fire again,         330   
Or thunder follow ruin for you and me,—      
As like it will, if I for one more day,      
Assume that I see not what I have seen,      
See now, and shall see. There are no more lies      
Left anywhere now for me to tell myself         335   
That I have not already told myself,      
And overtold, until today I seem      
To taste them as I might the poisoned fruit      
That Patrise had of Mador, and so died.      
And that same apple of death was to be food         340   
For Gawaine; but he left it and lives on,      
To make his joy of living your confusion.      
His life is his religion; he loves life      
With such a manifold exuberance      
That poison shuns him and seeks out a way         345   
To wreak its evil upon innocence.      
There may be chance in this, there may be      
Be what there be, I do not fear Gawaine.”      
   
The Queen, with an indignant little foot,      
Struck viciously the unoffending grass         350   
And said: “Why not let Gawaine go his way?      
I’ll think of him no more, fear him no more,      
And hear of him no more. I’ll hear no more      
Of any now save one who is, or was,      
All men to me. And he said once to me         355   
That he would say why this day, of all days,      
Was more mysteriously felicitous      
For solemn commination than another.”      
Again she smiled, but her blue eyes were telling      
No more their story of old happiness.         360   
   
“For me today is not as other days,”      
He said, “because it is the first, I find,      
That has empowered my will to say to you      
What most it is that you must hear and heed.      
When Arthur, with a faith unfortified,         365   
Sent me alone, of all he might have sent,      
That May-day to Leodogran your father,      
I went away from him with a sore heart;      
For in my heart I knew that I should fail      
My King, who trusted me too far beyond         370   
The mortal outpost of experience.      
And this was after Merlin’s admonition,      
Which Arthur, in his passion, took for less      
Than his inviolable majesty.      
When I rode in between your father’s guards         375   
And heard his trumpets blown for my loud honor,      
I sent my memory back to Camelot,      
And said once to myself, ‘God save the king!’      
But the words tore my throat and were like blood      
Upon my tongue. Then a great shout went up         380   
From shining men around me everywhere;      
And I remember more fair women’s eyes      
Than there are stars in autumn, all of them      
Thrown on me for a glimpse of that high knight      
Sir Lancelot—Sir Lancelot of the Lake.         385   
I saw their faces and I saw not one      
To sever a tendril of my integrity;      
But I thought once again, to make myself      
Believe a silent lie, ‘God save the King’ …      
I saw your face, and there were no more kings.”         390   
   
The sharp light softened in the Queen’s blue eyes,      
And for a moment there was joy in them:      
“Was I so menacing to the peace, I wonder,      
Of anyone else alive? But why go back?      
I tell you that I fear Gawaine no more;         395   
And if you fear him not, and I fear not      
What you fear not, what have we then to fear?”      
Fatigued a little with her reasoning,      
She waited longer than a woman waits,      
Without a cloudy sign, for Lancelot’s         400   
Unhurried answer: “Whether or not you fear,      
Know always that I fear for me no stroke      
Maturing for the joy of any knave      
Who sees the world, with me alive in it,      
A place too crowded for the furtherance         405   
Of his inflammatory preparations.      
But Lot of Orkney had a wife, a dark one;      
And rumor says no man who gazed at her,      
Attentively, might say his prayers again      
Without a penance or an absolution.         410   
I know not about that; but the world knows      
That Arthur prayed in vain once, if he prayed,      
Or we should have no Modred watching us.      
Know then that what you fear to call my fear      
Is all for you; and what is all for you         415   
Is all for love, which were the same to me      
As life—had I not seen what I have seen.      
But first I am to tell you what I see,      
And what I mean by fear. It is yourself      
That I see now; and if I saw you only,         420   
I might forego again all other service,      
And leave to Time, who is Love’s almoner,      
The benefaction of what years or days      
Remaining might be found unchronicled      
For two that have not always watched or seen         425   
The sands of gold that flow for golden hours.      
If I saw you alone! But I know now      
That you are never more to be alone.      
The shape of one infernal foul attendant      
Will be for ever prowling after you,         430   
To leer at me like a damned thing whipped out      
Of the last cave in hell. You know his name.      
Over your shoulder I could see him now,      
Adventuring his misbegotten patience      
For one destroying word in the King’s ear—         435   
The word he cannot whisper there quite yet,      
Not having it yet to say. If he should say it,      
Then all this would be over, and our days      
Of life, your days and mine, be over with it.      
No day of mine that were to be for you         440   
Your last, would light for me a longer span      
Than for yourself; and there would be no twilight.”      
   
The Queen’s implacable calm eyes betrayed      
The doubt that had as yet for what he said      
No healing answer: “If I fear no more         445   
Gawaine, I fear your Modred even less.      
Your fear, you say, is for an end outside      
Your safety; and as much as that I grant you.      
And I believe in your belief, moreover,      
That some far-off unheard-of retribution         450   
Hangs over Camelot, even as this oak-bough,      
That I may almost reach, hangs overhead,      
All dark now. Only a small time ago      
The light was falling through it, and on me.      
Another light, a longer time ago,         455   
Was living in your eyes, and we were happy.      
Yet there was Modred then as he is now,      
As much a danger then as he is now,      
And quite as much a nuisance. Let his eyes      
Have all the darkness in them they may hold,         460   
And there will be less left of it outside      
For fear to grope and thrive in. Lancelot,      
I say the dark is not what you fear most.      
There is a Light that you fear more today      
Than all the darkness that has ever been;         465   
Yet I doubt not that your Light will burn on      
For some time yet without your ministration.      
I’m glad for Modred,—though I hate his eyes,—      
That he should hold me nearer to your thoughts      
Than I should hold myself, I fear, without him;         470   
I’m glad for Gawaine, also,—who, you tell me,      
Misled my fancy with his joy of living.”      
   
Incredulous of her voice and of her lightness,      
He saw now in the patience of her smile      
A shining quiet of expectancy         475   
That made as much of his determination      
As he had made of giants and Sir Peris.      
“But I have more to say than you have heard,”      
He faltered—“though God knows what you have heard      
Should be enough.”         480   
   
        “I see it now,” she said;      
“I see it now as always women must      
Who cannot hold what holds them any more.      
If Modred’s hate were now the only hazard—      
The only shadow between you and me—         485   
How long should I be saying all this to you,      
Or you be listening? No, Lancelot,—no.      
I knew it coming for a longer time      
Than you fared for the Grail. You told yourself,      
When first that wild light came to make men mad         490   
Round Arthur’s Table—as Gawaine told himself,      
And many another tired man told himself—      
That it was God, not something new, that called you.      
Well, God was something new to most of them,      
And so they went away. But you were changing         495   
Long before you, or Bors, or Percival,      
Or Galahad rode away—or poor Gawaine,      
Who came back presently; and for a time      
Before you went—albeit for no long time—      
I may have made for your too loyal patience         500   
A jealous exhibition of my folly—      
All for those two Elaines; and one of them      
Is dead, poor child, for you. How do you feel,      
You men, when women die for you? They do,      
Sometimes, you know. Not often, but sometimes.”         505   
   
Discomfiture, beginning with a scowl      
And ending in a melancholy smile,      
Crept over Lancelot’s face the while he stared,      
More like a child than like the man he was,      
At Guinevere’s demure serenity         510   
Before him in the shadow, soon to change      
Into the darkness of a darker night      
Than yet had been since Arthur was a king.      
“What seizure of an unrelated rambling      
Do you suppose it was that had you then?”         515   
He said; and with a frown that had no smile      
Behind it, he sat brooding.      
   
        The Queen laughed,      
And looked at him again with lucent eyes      
That had no sharpness in them; they were soft now,         520   
And a blue light, made wet with happiness,      
Distilled from pain into abandonment,      
Shone out of them and held him while she smiled,      
Although they trembled with a questioning      
Of what his gloom foretold: “All that I saw         525   
Was true, and I have paid for what I saw—      
More than a man may know. Hear me, and listen:      
You cannot put me or the truth aside,      
With half-told words that I could only wish      
No man had said to me; not you, of all men.         530   
If there were only Modred in the way,      
Should I see now, from here and in this light,      
So many furrows over your changed eyes?      
Why do you fear for me when all my fears      
Are for the needless burden you take on?         535   
To put me far away, and your fears with me,      
Were surely no long toil, had you the will      
To say what you have known and I have known      
Longer than I dare guess. Have little fear:      
Never shall I become for you a curse         540   
Laid on your conscience to be borne for ever;      
Nor shall I be a weight for you to drag      
On always after you, as a poor slave      
Drags iron at his heels. Therefore, today,      
These ominous reassurances of mine         545   
Would seem to me to be a waste of life,      
And more than life.”      
   
        Lancelot’s memory wandered      
Into the blue and wistful distances      
That her soft eyes unveiled. He knew their trick,         550   
As he knew the great love that fostered it,      
And the wild passionate fate that hid itself      
In all the perilous calm of white and gold      
That was her face and hair, and might as well      
Have been of gold and marble for the world,         555   
And for the King. Before he knew, she stood      
Behind him with her warm hands on his cheeks,      
And her lips on his lips; and though he heard      
Not half of what she told, he heard enough      
To make as much of it, or so it seemed,         560   
As man was ever told, or should be told,      
Or need be, until everything was told,      
And all the mystic silence of the stars      
Had nothing more to keep or to reveal.      
“If there were only Modred in the way,”         565   
She murmured, “would you come to me tonight?      
The King goes to Carleon or Carlisle,      
Or some place where there’s hunting. Would you come,      
If there were only Modred in the way?”      
She felt his hand on hers and laid her cheek         570   
Upon his forehead, where the furrows were:      
“All these must go away, and so must I—      
Before there are more shadows. You will come,      
And you may tell me everything you must      
That I must hear you tell me—if I must—         575   
Of bones and horrors and of horrid waves      
That break for ever on the world’s last edge.”

   
VI. Lancelot   
III   
     
LANCELOT looked about him, but he saw      
No Guinevere. The place where she had sat      
Was now an empty chair that might have been         580   
The shadowy throne of an abandoned world,      
But for the living fragrance of a kiss      
That he remembered, and a living voice      
That hovered when he saw that she was gone.      
There was too much remembering while he felt         585   
Upon his cheek the warm sound of her words;      
There was too much regret; there was too much      
Remorse. Regret was there for what had gone,      
Remorse for what had come. Yet there was time,      
That had not wholly come. There was time enough         590   
Between him and the night—as there were shoals      
Enough, no doubt, that in the sea somewhere      
Were not yet hidden by the drowning tide.      
“So there is here between me and the dark      
Some twilight left,” he said. He sighed, and said         595   
Again, “Time, tide, and twilight—and the dark;      
And then, for me, the Light. But what for her?      
I do not think of anything but life      
That I may give to her by going now;      
And if I look into her eyes again,         600   
Or feel her breath upon my face again,      
God knows if I may give so much as life;      
Or if the durance of her loneliness      
Would have it for the asking. What am I?      
What have I seen that I must leave behind         605   
So much of heaven and earth to burn itself      
Away in white and gold, until in time      
There shall be no more white and no more gold?      
I cannot think of such a time as that;      
I cannot—yet I must; for I am he         610   
That shall have hastened it and hurried on      
To dissolution all that wonderment—      
That envy of all women who have said      
She was a child of ice and ivory;      
And of all men, save one. And who is he?         615   
Who is this Lancelot that has betrayed      
His King, and served him with a cankered honor?      
Who is this Lancelot that sees the Light      
And waits now in the shadow for the dark?      
Who is this King, this Arthur, who believes         620   
That what has been, and is, will be for ever,—      
Who has no eyes for what he will not see,      
And will see nothing but what’s passing here      
In Camelot, which is passing? Why are we here?      
What are we doing—kings, queens, Camelots,         625   
And Lancelots? And what is this dim world      
That I would leave, and cannot leave tonight      
Because a Queen is in it and a King      
Has gone away to some place where there’s hunting—      
Carleon or Carlisle! Who is this Queen,         630   
This pale witch-wonder of white fire and gold,      
This Guinevere that I brought back with me      
From Cameliard for Arthur, who knew then      
What Merlin told, as he forgets it now      
And rides away from her—God watch the world!—         635   
To some place where there’s hunting! What are kings?      
And how much longer are there to be kings?      
When are the millions who are now like worms      
To know that kings are worms, if they are worms?      
When are the women who make toys of men         640   
To know that they themselves are less than toys      
When Time has laid upon their skins the touch      
Of his all-shrivelling fingers? When are they      
To know that men must have an end of them      
When men have seen the Light and left the world         645   
That I am leaving now. Yet, here I am,      
And all because a king has gone a-hunting….      
Carleon or Carlisle!”      
   
        So Lancelot      
Fed with a sullen rancor, which he knew         650   
To be as false as he was to the King,      
The passion and the fear that now in him      
Were burning like two slow infernal fires      
That only flight and exile far away      
From Camelot should ever cool again.         655   
“Yet here I am,” he said,—“and here I am.      
Time, tide, and twilight; and there is no twilight—      
And there is not much time. But there’s enough      
To eat and drink in; and there may be time      
For me to frame a jest or two to prove         660   
How merry a man may be who sees the Light.      
And I must get me up and go along,      
Before the shadows blot out everything,      
And leave me stumbling among skeletons.      
God, what a rain of ashes falls on him         665   
Who sees the new and cannot leave the old!”      
   
He rose and looked away into the south      
Where a gate was, by which he might go out,      
Now, if he would, while Time was yet there with him—      
Time that was tearing minutes out of life         670   
While he stood shivering in his loneliness,      
And while the silver lights of memory      
Shone faintly on a far-off eastern shore      
Where he had seen on earth for the last time      
The triumph and the sadness in the face         675   
Of Galahad, for whom the Light was waiting.      
Now he could see the face of him again,      
He fancied; and his flickering will adjured him      
To follow it and be free. He followed it      
Until it faded and there was no face,         680   
And there was no more light. Yet there was time      
That had not come, though he could hear it now      
Like ruining feet of marching conquerors      
That would be coming soon and were not men.      
Forlornly and unwillingly he came back         685   
To find the two dim chairs. In one of them      
Was Guinevere, and on her phantom face      
There fell a golden light that might have been      
The changing gleam of an unchanging gold      
That was her golden hair. He sprang to touch         690   
The wonder of it, but she too was gone,      
Like Galahad; he was alone again      
With shadows, and one face that he still saw.      
The world had no more faces now than one      
That for a moment, with a flash of pain,         695   
Had shown him what it is that may be seen      
In embers that break slowly into dust,      
Where for a time was fire. He saw it there      
Before him, and he knew it was not good      
That he should learn so late, and of this hour,         700   
What men may leave behind them in the eyes      
Of women who have nothing more to give,      
And may not follow after. Once again      
He gazed away to southward, but the face      
Of Galahad was not there. He turned, and saw         705   
Before him, in the distance, many lights      
In Arthur’s palace; for the dark had come      
To Camelot, while Time had come and gone.

   
VI. Lancelot   
VI   
     
NOT having viewed Carleon or Carlisle,      
The King came home to Camelot after midnight,         710   
Feigning an ill not feigned; and his return      
Brought Bedivere, and after him Gawaine,      
To the King’s inner chamber, where they waited      
Through the grim light of dawn. Sir Bedivere,      
By nature stern to see, though not so bleak         715   
Within as to be frozen out of mercy,      
Sat with arms crossed and with his head weighed low      
In heavy meditation. Once or twice      
His eyes were lifted for a careful glimpse      
Of Gawaine at the window, where he stood         720   
Twisting his fingers feverishly behind him,      
Like one distinguishing indignantly,      
For swift eclipse and for offence not his,      
The towers and roofs and the sad majesty      
Of Camelot in the dawn, for the last time.         725   
   
Sir Bedivere, at last, with a long sigh      
That said less of his pain than of his pity,      
Addressed the younger knight who turned and heard      
His elder, but with no large eagerness:      
“So it has come, Gawaine; and we are here.         730   
I find when I see backward something farther,      
By grace of time, than you are given to see—      
Though you, past any doubt, see much that I      
See not—I find that what the colder speech      
Of reason most repeated says to us         735   
Of what is in a way to come to us      
Is like enough to come. And we are here.      
Before the unseeing sun is here to mock us,      
Or the King here to prove us, we are here.      
We are the two, it seems, that are to make         740   
Of words and of our presences a veil      
Between him and the sight of what he does.      
Little have I to say that I may tell him:      
For what I know is what the city knows,      
Not what it says,—for it says everything.         745   
The city says the first of all who met      
The sword of Lancelot was Colgrevance,      
Who fell dead while he wept—a brave machine,      
Cranked only for the rudiments of war.      
But some of us are born to serve and shift,         750   
And that’s not well. The city says, also,      
That you and Lancelot were in the garden,      
Before the sun went down.”      
   
        “Yes,” Gawaine groaned;      
“Yes, we were there together in the garden,         755   
Before the sun went down; and I conceive      
A place among the possibilities      
For me with other causes unforeseen      
Of what may shake down soon to grief and ashes      
This kingdom and this empire. Bedivere,         760   
Could I have given a decent seriousness      
To Lancelot while he said things to me      
That pulled his heart half out of him by the roots,      
And left him, I see now, half sick with pity      
For my poor uselessness to serve a need         765   
That I had never known, we might be now      
Asleep and easy in our beds at home,      
And we might hear no murmurs after sunrise      
Of what we are to hear. A few right words      
Of mine, if said well, might have been enough.         770   
That shall I never know. I shall know only      
That it was I who laughed at Lancelot      
When he said what lay heaviest on his heart.      
By now he might be far away from here,      
And farther from the world. But the Queen came;         775   
The Queen came, and I left them there together;      
And I laughed as I left them. After dark      
I met with Modred and said what I could,      
When I had heard him, to discourage him.      
His mother was my mother. I told Bors,         780   
And he told Lancelot; though as for that,      
My story would have been the same as his,      
And would have had the same acknowledgement:      
“Thanks, but no matter’—or to that effect.      
The Queen, of course, had fished him for his word,         785   
And had it on the hook when she went home;      
And after that, an army of red devils      
Could not have held the man away from her.      
And I’m to live as long as I’m to wonder      
What might have been, had I not been—myself.         790   
I heard him, and I laughed. Then the Queen came.”      
   
“Recriminations are not remedies,      
Gawaine; and though you cast them at yourself,      
And hurt yourself, you cannot end or swerve      
The flowing of these minutes that leave hours         795   
Behind us, as we leave our faded selves      
And yesterdays. The surest-visioned of us      
Are creatures of our dreams and inferences,      
And though it look to us a few go far      
For seeing far, the fewest and the farthest         800   
Of all we know go not beyond themselves.      
No, Gawaine, you are not the cause of this;      
And I have many doubts if all you said,      
Or in your lightness may have left unsaid,      
Would have unarmed the Queen. The Queen was there.”—         805   
Gawaine looked up, and then looked down again:      
“Good God, if I had only said—said something!”      
   
“Say nothing now, Gawaine.” Bedivere sighed,      
And shook his head: “Morning is not in the west.      
The sun is rising and the King is coming;         810   
Now you may hear him in the corridor,      
Like a sick landlord shuffling to the light      
For one last look-out on his mortgaged hills.      
But hills and valleys are not what he sees;      
He sees with us the fire—the sign—the law.         815   
The King that is the father of the law      
Is weaker than his child, except he slay it.      
Not long ago, Gawaine, I had a dream      
Of a sword over kings, and of a world      
Without them.”—“Dreams, dreams.”—“Hush, Gawaine.”         820   
   
        King Arthur      
Came slowly on till in the darkened entrance      
He stared and shivered like a sleep-walker,      
Brought suddenly awake where a cliff’s edge      
Is all he sees between another step         825   
And his annihilation. Bedivere rose,      
And Gawaine rose; and with instinctive arms      
They partly guided, partly carried him,      
To the King’s chair.      
   
  “I thank you, gentlemen,         830   
Though I am not so shaken, I dare say,      
As you would have me. This is not the hour      
When kings who do not sleep are at their best;      
And had I slept this night that now is over,      
No man should ever call me King again.”         835   
He pulled his heavy robe around him closer,      
And laid upon his forehead a cold hand      
That came down warm and wet. “You, Bedivere,      
And you, Gawaine, are shaken with events      
Incredible yesterday,—but kings are men.         840   
Take off their crowns and tear away their colors      
And let them see with my eyes what I see—      
Yes, they are men, indeed! If there’s a slave      
In Britain with a reptile at his heart      
Like mine that with his claws of ice and fire         845   
Tears out of me the fevered roots of mercy,      
Find him, and I will make a king of him!      
And then, so that his happiness may swell      
Tenfold, I’ll sift the beauty of all courts      
And capitals, to fetch the fairest woman         850   
That evil has in hiding; after that,      
That he may know the sovran one man living      
To be his friend, I’ll prune all chivalry      
To one sure knight. In this wise our new king      
Will have his queen to love, as I had mine,—         855   
His friend that he may trust, as I had mine,—      
And he will be as gay, if all goes well,      
As I have been: as fortunate in his love,      
And in his friend as fortunate—as I am!      
And what am I?… And what are you—you two!         860   
If you are men, why don’t you say I’m dreaming?      
I know men when I see them, I know daylight;      
And I see now the gray shine of our dreams.      
I tell you I’m asleep and in my bed!…      
But no—no… I remember. You are men.         865   
You are no dreams—but God, God, if you were!      
If I were strong enough to make you vanish      
And have you back again with yesterday—      
Before I lent myself to that false hunting,      
Which yet may stalk the hours of many more         870   
Than Lancelot’s unhappy twelve who died,—      
With a misguided Colgrevance to lead them,      
And Agravaine to follow and fall next,—      
Then should I know at last that I was King,      
And I should then be King. But kings are men,         875   
And I have gleaned enough these two years gone      
To know that queens are women. Merlin told me:      
“The love that never was.’ Two years ago      
He told me that: ‘The love that never was!’      
I saw—but I saw nothing. Like the bird         880   
That hides his head, I made myself see nothing.      
But yesterday I saw—and I saw fire.      
I think I saw it first in Modred’s eyes;      
Yet he said only truth—and fire is right.      
It is—it must be fire. The law says fire.         885   
And I, the King who made the law, say fire!      
What have I done—what folly have I said,      
Since I came here, of dreaming? Dreaming? Ha!      
I wonder if the Queen and Lancelot      
Are dreaming!… Lancelot! Have they found him yet?         890   
He slashed a way into the outer night—      
Somewhere with Bors. We’ll have him here anon,      
And we shall feed him also to the fire.      
There are too many faggots lying cold      
That might as well be cleansing, for our good,         895   
A few deferred infections of our state      
That honor should no longer look upon.      
Thank heaven, I man my drifting wits again!      
Gawaine, your brothers, Gareth and Gaheris,      
Are by our royal order there to see         900   
And to report. They went unwillingly,      
For they are new to law and young to justice;      
But what they are to see will harden them      
With wholesome admiration of a realm      
Where treason’s end is ashes. Ashes. Ashes!         905   
Now this is better. I am King again.      
Forget, I pray, my drowsy temporizing,      
For I was not then properly awake….      
What? Hark! Whose crass insanity is that!      
If I be King, go find the fellow and hang him         910   
Who beats into the morning on that bell      
Before there is a morning! This is dawn!      
What! Bedivere? Gawaine? You shake your heads?      
I tell you this is dawn!… What have I done?      
What have I said so lately that I flinch         915   
To think on! What have I sent those boys to see?      
I’ll put clouts on my eyes, and I’ll not see it!      
Her face, and hands, and little small white feet,      
And all her shining hair and her warm body—      
No—for the love of God, no!—it’s alive!         920   
She’s all alive, and they are burning her—      
The Queen—the love—the love that never was!      
Gawaine! Bedivere! Gawaine!—Where is Gawaine!      
Is he there in the shadow? Is he dead?      
Are we all dead? Are we in hell?—Gawaine!…         925   
I cannot see her now in the smoke. Her eyes      
Are what I see—and her white body is burning!      
She never did enough to make me see her      
Like that—to make her look at me like that!      
There’s not room in the world for so much evil         930   
As I see clamoring in her poor white face      
For pity. Pity her, God! God!… Lancelot!”

VI. Lancelot   
V   
     
GAWAINE, his body trembling and his heart      
Pounding as if he were a boy in battle,      
Sat crouched as far away from everything         935   
As walls would give him distance. Bedivere      
Stood like a man of stone with folded arms,      
And wept in stony silence. The King moved      
His pallid lips and uttered fitfully      
Low fragments of a prayer that was half sad,         940   
Half savage, and was ended in a crash      
Of distant sound that anguish lifted near      
To those who heard it. Gawaine sprang again      
To the same casement where the towers and roofs      
Had glimmered faintly a long hour ago,         945   
But saw no terrors yet—though now he heard      
A fiercer discord than allegiance rings      
To rouse a mourning city: blows, groans, cries,      
Loud iron struck on iron, horses trampling,      
Death-yells and imprecations, and at last         950   
A moaning silence. Then a murmuring      
Of eager fearfulness, which had a note      
Of exultation and astonishment,      
Came nearer, till a tumult of hard feet      
Filled the long corridor where late the King         955   
Had made a softer progress.      
   
        “Well then, Lucan,”      
The King said, urging an indignity      
To qualify suspense: “For what arrears      
Of grace are we in debt for this attention?         960   
Why all this early stirring of our sentries,      
And their somewhat unseasoned innovation,      
To bring you at this unappointed hour?      
Are we at war with someone or another,      
Without our sanction or intelligence?         965   
Are Lucius and the Romans here to greet us,      
Or was it Lucius we saw dead?”      
   
        Sir Lucan      
Bowed humbly in amazed acknowledgment      
Of his intrusion, meanwhile having scanned         970   
What three grief-harrowed faces were revealing:      
“Praise God, sir, there are tears in the King’s eyes,      
And in his friends’. Having regarded them,      
And having ventured an abrupt appraisal      
Of what I translate….”         975   
   
        “Lucan,” the King said,      
“No matter what procedure or persuasion      
Gave you an entrance—tell us what it is      
That you have come to tell us, and no more.      
There was a most uncivil sound abroad         980   
Before you came. Who riots in the city?”      
   
“Sir, will your patience with a element ear,      
Attend the confirmation of events,      
I will, with all available precision,      
Say what this morning has inaugurated.         985   
No preface or prolonged exordium      
Need aggravate the narrative, I venture.      
The man of God, requiring of the Queen      
A last assoiling prayer for her salvation,      
Heard what none else did hear save God the Father.         990   
Then a great hush descended on a scene      
Where stronger men than I fell on their knees,      
And wet with tears their mail of shining iron      
That soon was to be cleft unconscionably      
Beneath a blast of anguish as intense         995   
And fabulous in ardor and effect      
As Jove’s is in his lightning. To be short,      
They led the Queen—and she went bravely to it,      
Or so she was configured in the picture—      
A brief way more; and we who did see that,         1000   
Believed we saw the last of all her sharing      
In this conglomerate and perplexed existence.      
But no—and here the prodigy comes in—      
The penal flame had hardly bit the faggot,      
When, like an onslaught out of Erebus,         1005   
There came a crash of horses, and a flash      
Of axes, and a hewing down of heroes,      
Not like to any in its harsh, profound,      
Unholy, and uneven execution.      
I felt the breath of one horse on my neck,         1010   
And of a sword that all but left a chasm      
Where still, praise be to God, I have intact      
A face, if not a fair one. I achieved      
My flight, I trust, with honorable zeal,      
Not having arms, or mail, or preservation         1015   
In any phase of necessary iron.      
I found a refuge; and there saw the Queen,      
All white, and in a swound of woe uplifted      
By Lionel, while a dozen fought about him,      
And Lancelot, who seized her while he struck,         1020   
And with his insane army galloped away,      
Before the living, whom he left amazed,      
Were sure they were alive among the dead.      
Not even in the legendary mist      
Of wars that none today may verify,         1025   
Did ever men annihilate their kind      
With a more vicious inhumanity,      
Or a more skilful frenzy. Lancelot      
And all his heated adjuncts are by now      
Too far, I fear, for such immediate         1030   
Reprisal as your majesty perchance…”      
“O’ God’s name, Lucan,” the King cried, “be still!”      
He gripped with either sodden hand an arm      
Of his unyielding chair, while his eyes blazed      
In anger, wonder, and fierce hesitation.         1035   
Then with a sigh that may have told unheard      
Of an unwilling gratitude, he gazed      
Upon his friends who gazed again at him;      
But neither King nor friend said anything      
Until the King turned once more to Sir Lucan:         1040   
“Be still, or publish with a shorter tongue      
The names of our companions who are dead.      
Well, were you there? Or did you run so fast      
That you were never there? You must have eyes,      
Or you could not have run to find us here.”         1045   
   
Then Lucan, with a melancholy glance      
At Gawaine, who stood glaring his impatience,      
Addressed again the King: “I will be short, sir;      
Too brief to measure with finality      
The scope of what I saw with indistinct         1050   
Amazement and incredulous concern.      
Sir Tor, Sir Griflet, and Sir Aglovale      
Are dead. Sir Gillimer, he is dead. Sir—Sir—      
But should a living error be detailed      
In my account, how should I meet your wrath         1055   
For such a false addition to your sorrow?”      
He turned again to Gawaine, who shook now      
As if the fear in him were more than fury.—      
The King, observing Gawaine, beat his foot      
In fearful hesitancy on the floor:         1060   
“No, Lucan; if so kind an error lives      
In your dead record, you need have no fear.      
My sorrow has already, in the weight      
Of this you tell, too gross a task for that.”      
“Then I must offer you cold naked words,         1065   
Without the covering warmth of even one      
Forlorn alternative,” said Lucan, slowly:      
“Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris—are dead.”      
   
The rage of a fulfilled expectancy,      
Long tortured on a rack of endless moments,         1070   
Flashed out of Gawaine’s overflowing eyes      
While he flew forward, seizing Lucan’s arms,      
And hurled him while he held him.—“Stop, Gawaine,”      
The King said grimly. “Now is no time for that.      
If Lucan, in a too bewildered heat         1075   
Of observation or sad reckoning,      
Has added life to death, our joy therefor      
Will be the larger. You have lost yourself.”      
   
“More than myself it is that I have lost,”      
Gawaine said, with a choking voice that faltered:         1080   
“Forgive me, Lucan; I was a little mad.      
Gareth?—and Gaheris? Do you say their names,      
And then say they are dead! They had no arms—      
No armor. They were like you—and you live!      
Why do you live when they are dead! You ran,         1085   
You say? Well, why were they not running—      
If they ran only for a pike to die with?      
I knew my brothers, and I know your tale      
Is not all told. Gareth?—and Gaheris?      
Would they stay there to die like silly children?         1090   
Did they believe the King would have them die      
For nothing? There are dregs of reason, Lucan,      
In lunacy itself. My brothers, Lucan,      
Were murdered like two dogs. Who murdered them?      
   
Lucan looked helplessly at Bedivere,         1095   
The changeless man of stone, and then at Gawaine:      
“I cannot use the word that you have used,      
Though yours must have an answer. Your two brothers      
Would not have squandered or destroyed themselves      
In a vain show of action. I pronounce it,         1100   
If only for their known obedience      
To the King’s instant wish. Know then your brothers      
Were caught and crowded, this way and then that,      
With men and horses raging all around them;      
And there were swords and axes everywhere         1105   
That heads of men were. Armored and unarmored,      
They knew the iron alike. In so great press,      
Discrimination would have had no pause      
To name itself; and therefore Lancelot      
Saw not—or seeing, he may have seen too late—         1110   
On whom his axes fell.”      
   
        “Why do you flood      
The name of Lancelot with words enough      
To drown him and his army—and his axes!…      
His axes?—or his axe! Which, Lucan? Speak!         1115   
Speak, or by God you’ll never speak again!…      
Forgive me, Lucan; I was a little mad.      
You, sir, forgive me; and you, Bedivere.      
There are too many currents in this ocean      
Where I’m adrift, and I see no land yet.         1120   
Men tell of a great whirlpool in the north      
Where ships go round until the men aboard      
Go dizzy, and are dizzy when they’re drowning.      
But whether I’m to drown or find the shore,      
There is one thing—and only one thing now—         1125   
For me to know…. His axes? or his axe!      
Say, Lucan, or I—O Lucan, speak—speak—speak!      
Lucan, did Lancelot kill my two brothers?”      
   
“I say again that in all human chance      
He knew not upon whom his axe was falling.”         1130   
“So! Then it was his axe and not his axes.      
It was his hell-begotten self that did it,      
And it was not his men. Gareth! Gaheris!      
You came too soon. There was no place for you      
Where there was Lancelot. My folly it was,         1135   
Not yours, to take for true the inhuman glamour      
Of his high-shining fame for that which most      
Was not the man. The truth we see too late      
Hides half its evil in our stupidity;      
And we gape while we groan for what we learn.         1140   
An hour ago and I was all but eager      
To mourn with Bedivere for grief I had      
That I did not say something to this villain—      
To this true, gracious, murderous friend of mine—      
To comfort him and urge him out of this,         1145   
While I was half a fool and half believed      
That he was going. Well, there is this to say:      
The world that has him will not have him long.      
You see how calm I am, now I have said it?      
And you, sir, do you see how calm I am?         1150   
And it was I who told of shipwrecks—whirlpools—      
Drowning! I must have been a little mad,      
Not having occupation. Now I have one.      
And I have now a tongue as many-phrased      
As Lucan’s. Gauge it, Lucan, if you will;         1155   
Or take my word. It’s all one thing to me—      
All one, all one! There’s only one thing left …      
Gareth and Gaheris! Gareth!… Lancelot!”      
   
“Look, Bedivere,” the King said: “look to Gawaine.      
Now lead him, you and Lucan, to a chair—         1160   
As you and Gawaine led me to this chair      
Where I am sitting. We may all be led,      
If there be coming on for Camelot      
Another day like this. Now leave me here,      
Alone with Gawaine. When a strong man goes         1165   
Like that, it makes him sick to see his friends      
Around him. Leave us, and go now. Sometimes      
I’ll scarce remember that he’s not my son,      
So near he seems. I thank you, gentlemen.”      
   
The King, alone with Gawaine, who said nothing,         1170   
Had yet no heart for news of Lancelot      
Or Guinevere. He saw them on their way      
To Joyous Gard, where Tristram and Isolt      
Had islanded of old their stolen love,      
While Mark of Cornwall entertained a vengeance         1175   
Envisaging an ending of all that;      
And he could see the two of them together      
As Mark had seen Isolt there, and her knight,—      
Though not, like Mark, with murder in his eyes.      
He saw them as if they were there already,         1180   
And he were a lost thought long out of mind;      
He saw them lying in each other’s arms,      
Oblivious of the living and the dead      
They left in Camelot. Then he saw the dead      
That lay so quiet outside the city walls,         1185   
And wept, and left the Queen to Lancelot—      
Or would have left her, had the will been his      
To leave or take; for now he could acknowledge      
An inrush of a desolate thanksgiving      
That she, with death around her, had not died.         1190   
The vision of a peace that humbled him,      
And yet might save the world that he had won,      
Came slowly into view like something soft      
And ominous on all-fours, without a spirit      
To make it stand upright. “Better be that,         1195   
Even that, than blood,” he sighed, “if that be peace.”      
But looking down on Gawaine, who said nothing,      
He shook his head: “The King has had his world,      
And he shall have no peace. With Modred here,      
And Agravaine with Gareth, who is dead         1200   
With Gaheris, Gawaine will have no peace.      
Gawaine or Modred—Gawaine with his hate,      
Or Modred with his anger for his birth,      
And the black malady of his ambition—      
Will make of my Round Table, where was drawn         1205   
The circle of a world, a thing of wreck      
And yesterday—a furniture forgotten;      
And I, who loved the world as Merlin did,      
May lose it as he lost it, for a love      
That was not peace, and therefore was not love.”         1210

VI. Lancelot   
VI   
     
THE DARK of Modred’s hour not yet availing,      
Gawaine it was who gave the King no peace;      
Gawaine it was who goaded him and drove him      
To Joyous Gard, where now for long his army,      
Disheartened with unprofitable slaughter,         1215   
Fought for their weary King and wearily      
Died fighting. Only Gawaine’s hate it was      
That held the King’s knights and his warrior slaves      
Close-hived in exile, dreaming of old scenes      
Where Sorrow, and her demon sister Fear,         1220   
Now shared the dusty food of loneliness,      
From Orkney to Cornwall. There was no peace,      
Nor could there be, so Gawaine told the King,      
And so the King in anguish told himself,      
Until there was an end of one of them—         1225   
Of Gawaine or the King, or Lancelot,      
Who might have had an end, as either knew,      
Long since of Arthur and of Gawaine with him.      
One evening in the moonlight Lancelot      
And Bors, his kinsman, and the loyalest,         1230   
If least assured, of all who followed him,      
Sat gazing from an ivy-cornered casement      
In angry silence upon Arthur’s horde,      
Who in the silver distance, without sound,      
Were dimly burying dead men. Sir Bors,         1235   
Reiterating vainly what was told      
As wholesome hearing for unhearing ears,      
Said now to Lancelot: “And though it be      
For no more now than always, let me speak:      
You have a pity for the King, you say,         1240   
That is not hate; and for Gawaine you have      
A grief that is not hate. Pity and grief!      
And the Queen all but shrieking out her soul      
That morning when we snatched her from the faggots      
That were already crackling when we came!         1245   
Why, Lancelot, if in you is an answer,      
Have you so vast a charity for the King,      
And so enlarged a grief for his gay nephew,      
Whose tireless hate for you has only one      
Disastrous appetite? You know for what—         1250   
For your slow blood. I knew you, Lancelot,      
When all this would have been a merry fable      
For smiling men to yawn at and forget,      
As they forget their physic. Pity and grief      
Are in your eyes. I see them well enough;         1255   
And I saw once with you, in a far land,      
The glimmering of a Light that you saw nearer—      
Too near for your salvation or advantage,      
If you be what you seem. What I saw then      
Made life a wilder mystery than ever,         1260   
And earth a new illusion. You, maybe,      
Saw pity and grief. What I saw was a Gleam,      
To fight for or to die for—till we know      
Too much to fight or die. Tonight you turn      
A page whereon your deeds are to engross         1265   
Inexorably their story of tomorrow;      
And then tomorrow. How many of these tomorrows      
Are coming to ask unanswered why this war      
Was fought and fought for the vain sake of slaughter?      
Why carve a compost of a multitude,         1270   
When only two, discriminately despatched,      
Would sum the end of what you know is ending      
And leave to you the scorch of no more blood      
Upon your blistered soul? The Light you saw      
Was not for this poor crumbling realm of Arthur,         1275   
Nor more for Rome; but for another state      
That shall be neither Rome nor Camelot,      
Nor one that we may name. Why longer, then,      
Are you and Gawaine to anoint with war,      
That even in hell would be superfluous,         1280   
A reign already dying, and ripe to die?      
I leave you to your last interpretation      
Of what may be the pleasure of your madness.”      
   
Meanwhile a mist was hiding the dim work      
Of Arthur’s men; and like another mist,         1285   
All gray, came Guinevere to Lancelot,      
Whom Bors had left, not having had of him      
The largess of a word. She laid her hands      
Upon his hair, vexing him to brief speech:      
“And you—are you like Bors?”         1290   
   
        “I may be so,”      
She said; and she saw faintly where she gazed,      
Like distant insects of a shadowy world,      
Dim clusters here and there of shadowy men      
Whose occupation was her long abhorrence:         1295   
“If he came here and went away again,      
And all for nothing, I may be like Bors.      
Be glad, at least, that I am not like Mark      
Of Cornwall, who stood once behind a man      
And slew him without saying he was there.         1300   
Not Arthur, I believe, nor yet Gawaine,      
Would have done quite like that; though only God      
May say what there’s to come before this war      
Shall have an end—unless you are to see,      
As I have seen so long, a way to end it.”         1305   
   
He frowned, and watched again the coming mist      
That hid with a cold veil of augury      
The stillness of an empire that was dying:      
“And are you here to say that if I kill      
Gawaine and Arthur we shall both be happy?”         1310   
   
“Is there still such a word as happiness?      
I come to tell you nothing, Lancelot,      
That folly and waste have not already told you.      
Were you another man than Lancelot,      
I might say folly and fear. But no,—no fear,         1315   
As I know fear, was yet composed and wrought,      
By man, for your delay and your undoing.      
God knows how cruelly and how truly now      
You might say, that of all who breathe and suffer      
There may be others who are not so near         1320   
To you as I am, and so might say better      
What I say only with a tongue not apt      
Or guarded for much argument. A woman,      
As men have known since Adam heard the first      
Of Eve’s interpreting of how it was         1325   
In Paradise, may see but one side only—      
Where maybe there are two, to say no more.      
Yet here, for you and me, and so for all      
Caught with us in this lamentable net,      
I see but one deliverance: I see none,         1330   
Unless you cut for us a clean way out,      
So rending these hate-woven webs of horror      
Before they mesh the world. And if the world      
Or Arthur’s name be now a dying glory,      
Why bleed it for the sparing of a man         1335   
Who hates you, and a King that hates himself?      
If war be war—and I make only blood      
Of your red writing—why dishonor Time      
For torture longer drawn in your slow game      
Of empty slaughter? Tomorrow it will be         1340   
The King’s move, I suppose, and we shall have      
One more magnificent waste of nameless pawns,      
And of a few more knights. God, how you love      
This game!—to make so loud a shambles of it,      
When you have only twice to lift your finger         1345   
To signal peace, and give to this poor drenched      
And clotted earth a time to heal itself.      
Twice over I say to you, if war be war,      
Why play with it? Why look a thousand ways      
Away from what it is, only to find         1350   
A few stale memories left that would requite      
Your tears with your destruction? Tears, I say,      
For I have seen your tears; I see them now,      
Although the moon is dimmer than it was      
Before I came. I wonder if I dimmed it.         1355   
I wonder if I brought this fog here with me      
To make you chillier even than you are      
When I am not so near you…. Lancelot,      
There must be glimmering yet somewhere within you      
The last spark of a little willingness         1360   
To tell me why it is this war goes on.      
Once I believed you told me everything;      
And what you may have hidden was no matter,      
For what you told was all I needed then.      
But crumbs that are a festival for joy         1365   
Make a dry fare for sorrow; and the few      
Spared words that were enough to nourish faith,      
Are for our lonely fears a frugal poison.      
So, Lancelot, if only to bring back      
For once the ghost of a forgotten mercy,         1370   
Say now, even though you strike me to the floor      
When you have said it, for what untold end      
All this goes on. Am I not anything now?      
Is Gawaine, who would feed you to wild swine,      
And laugh to see them tear you, more than I am?         1375   
Is Arthur, at whose word I was dragged out      
To wear for you the fiery crown itself      
Of human torture, more to you than I am?      
Am I, because you saw death touch me once,      
Too gross a trifle to be longer prized?         1380   
Not many days ago, when you lay hurt      
And aching on your bed, and I cried out      
Aloud on heaven that I should bring you there,      
You said you would have paid the price of hell      
To save me that foul morning from the fire.         1385   
You paid enough: yet when you told me that,      
With death going on outside the while you said it,      
I heard the woman in me asking why.      
Nor do I wholly find an answer now      
In any shine of any far-off Light         1390   
You may have seen. Knowing the world, you know      
How surely and how indifferently that Light      
Shall burn through many a war that is to be,      
To which this war were no more than a smear      
On circumstance. The world has not begun.         1395   
The Light you saw was not the Light of Rome,      
Or Time, though you seem battling here for time,      
While you are still at war with Arthur’s host      
And Gawaine’s hate. How many thousand men      
Are going to their death before Gawaine         1400   
And Arthur go to theirs—and I to mine?”      
Lancelot, looking off into the fog,      
In which his fancy found the watery light      
Of a dissolving moon, sighed without hope      
Of saying what the Queen would have him say:         1405   
“I fear, my lady, my fair nephew Bors,      
Whose tongue affords a random wealth of sound,      
May lately have been scattering on the air      
For you a music less oracular      
Than to your liking…. Say, then, you had split         1410   
The uncovered heads of two men with an axe,      
Not knowing whose heads—if that’s a palliation—      
And seen their brains fly out and splash the ground      
As they were common offal, and then learned      
That you had butchered Gaheris and Gareth—         1415   
Gareth, who had for me a greater love      
Than any that has ever trod the ways      
Of a gross world that early would have crushed him,—      
Even you, in your quick fever of dispatch,      
Might hesitate before you drew the blood         1420   
Of him that was their brother, and my friend.      
Yes, he was more my friend, was I to know,      
Than I had said or guessed; for it was Gawaine      
Who gave to Bors the word that might have saved us,      
And Arthur’s fading empire, for the time         1425   
Till Modred had in his dark wormy way      
Crawled into light again with a new ruin      
At work in that occult snake’s brain of his.      
And even in your prompt obliteration      
Of Arthur from a changing world that rocks         1430   
Itself into a dizziness around him,      
A moment of attendant reminiscence      
Were possible, if not likely. Had he made      
A knight of you, scrolling your name with his      
Among the first of men—and in his love         1435   
Inveterately the first—and had you then      
Betrayed his fame and honor to the dust      
That now is choking him, you might in time—      
You might, I say—to my degree succumb.      
Forgive me, if my lean words are for yours         1440   
Too bare an answer, and ascribe to them      
No tinge of allegation or reproach.      
What I said once to you I said for ever—      
That I would pay the price of hell to save you.      
As for the Light, leave that for me alone;         1445   
Or leave as much of it as yet for me      
May shine. Should I, through any unforeseen      
Remote effect of awkwardness or chance,      
Be done to death or durance by the King,      
I leave some writing wherein I beseech         1450   
For you the clemency of afterthought.      
Were I to die and he to see me dead,      
My living prayer, surviving the cold hand      
That wrote, would leave you in his larger prudence,      
If I have known the King, free and secure         1455   
To bide the summoning of another King      
More great than Arthur. But all this is language;      
And I know more than words have yet the scope      
To show of what’s to come. Go now to rest;      
And sleep, if there be sleep. There was a moon;         1460   
And now there is no sky where the moon was.      
Sometimes I wonder if this be the world      
We live in, or the world that lives in us.”      
   
The new day, with a cleansing crash of rain      
That washed and sluiced the soiled and hoof-torn field         1465   
Of Joyous Gard, prepared for Lancelot      
And his wet men the not unwelcome scene      
Of a drenched emptiness without an army.      
“Our friend the foe is given to dry fighting,”      
Said Lionel, advancing with a shrug,         1470   
To Lancelot, who saw beyond the rain.      
And later Lionel said, “What fellows are they,      
Who are so thirsty for their morning ride      
That swimming horses would have hardly time      
To eat before they swam? You, Lancelot,         1475   
If I see rather better than a blind man,      
Are waiting on three pilgrims who must love you,      
To voyage a flood like this. No friend have I,      
To whisper not of three, on whom to count      
For such a loyal wash. The King himself         1480   
Would entertain a kindly qualm or so,      
Before he suffered such a burst of heaven      
To splash even three musicians.”      
   
        “Good Lionel,      
I thank you, but you need afflict your fancy         1485   
No longer for my sake. For these who come,      
If I be not immoderately deceived,      
Are bearing with them the white flower of peace—      
Which I could hope might never parch or wither,      
Were I a stranger to this ravening world         1490   
Where we have mostly a few rags and tags      
Between our skins and those that wrap the flesh      
Of less familiar brutes we feed upon      
That we may feed the more on one another.”      
   
“Well, now that we have had your morning grace         1495   
Before our morning meat, pray tell to me      
The why and whence of this anomalous      
Horse-riding offspring of the Fates. Who are they?”      
   
“I do not read their features or their names;      
But if I read the King, they are from Rome,         1500   
Spurred here by the King’s prayer for no delay;      
And I pray God aloud that I say true.”      
And after a long watching, neither speaking,      
“You do,” said Lionel; “for by my soul,      
I see no other than my lord the Bishop,         1505   
Who does God’s holy work in Rochester.      
Since you are here, you may as well abide here,      
While I go foraging.”      
   
        Now in the gateway,      
The Bishop, who rode something heavily,         1510   
Was glad for rest though grim in his refusal      
At once of entertainment or refection:      
“What else you do, Sir Lancelot, receive me      
As one among the honest when I say      
That my voluminous thanks were less by cantos         1515   
Than my damp manner feels. Nay, hear my voice:      
If once I’m off this royal animal,      
How o’ God’s name shall I get on again?      
Moreover, the King waits. With your accord,      
Sir Lancelot, I’ll dry my rainy face,         1520   
While you attend what’s herein written down,      
In language of portentous brevity,      
For the King’s gracious pleasure and for yours,      
Whereof the burden is the word of Rome,      
Requiring your deliverance of the Queen         1525   
Not more than seven days hence. The King returns      
Anon to Camelot; and I go with him,      
Praise God, if what he waits now is your will      
To end an endless war. No recrudescence,      
As you may soon remark, of what is past         1530   
Awaits the Queen, or any doubt soever      
Of the King’s mercy. Have you more to say      
Than Rome has written, or do I perceive      
Your tranquil acquiescence? Is it so?      
Then be it so! Venite. Pax vobiscum.”         1535   
“To end an endless war with ‘pax vobiscum’      
Would seem a ready schedule for a bishop;      
Would God that I might see the end of it!”      
Lancelot, like a statue in the gateway,      
Regarded with a qualified rejoicing         1540   
The fading out of his three visitors      
Into the cold and swallowing wall of storm      
Between him and the battle-wearied King      
And the unwearying hatred of Gawaine.      
To Bors his nephew, and to Lionel,         1545   
He glossed a tale of Roman intercession,      
Knowing that for a time, and a long time,      
The sweetest fare that he might lay before them      
Would hold an evil taste of compromise.      
To Guinevere, who questioned him at noon         1550   
Of what by then had made of Joyous Gard      
A shaken hive of legend-heavy wonder,      
He said what most it was the undying Devil,      
Who ruled him when he might, would have him say:      
“Your confident arrangement of the board         1555   
For this day’s game was notably not to be;      
Today was not for the King’s move or mine,      
But for the Bishop’s; and the board is empty.      
The words that I have waited for more days      
Than are to now my tallage of gray hairs         1560   
Have come at last, and at last you are free.      
So, for a time, there will be no more war;      
And you are going home to Camelot.”      
   
“To Camelot?”…      
  “To Camelot.” But his words         1565   
Were said for no queen’s hearing. In his arms      
He caught her when she fell; and in his arms      
He carried her away. The word of Rome      
Was in the rain. There was no other sound.

VI. Lancelot   
VII   
     
ALL day the rain came down on Joyous Gard,         1570   
Where now there was no joy, and all that night      
The rain came down. Shut in for none to find him      
Where an unheeded log-fire fought the storm      
With upward swords that flashed along the wall      
Faint hieroglyphs of doom not his to read,         1575   
Lancelot found a refuge where at last      
He might see nothing. Glad for sight of nothing,      
He saw no more. Now and again he buried      
A lonely thought among the coals and ashes      
Outside the reaching flame and left it there,         1580   
Quite as he left outside in rainy graves      
The sacrificial hundreds who had filled them.      
“They died, Gawaine,” he said, “and you live on,      
You and the King, as if there were no dying;      
And it was I, Gawaine, who let you live—         1585   
You and the King. For what more length of time,      
I wonder, may there still be found on earth      
Foot-room for four of us? We are too many      
For one world, Gawaine; and there may be soon,      
For one or other of us, a way out.         1590   
As men are listed, we are men for men      
To fear; and I fear Modred more than any.      
But even the ghost of Modred at the door—      
The ghost I should have made him—would employ      
For time as hard as this a louder knuckle,         1595   
Assuredly now, than that. And I would see      
No mortal face till morning…. Well, are you well      
Again? Are you as well again as ever?”      
   
He led her slowly on with a cold show      
Of care that was less heartening for the Queen         1600   
Than anger would have been, into the firelight,      
And there he gave her cushions. “Are you warm?”      
He said; and she said nothing. “Are you afraid?”      
He said again; “are you still afraid of Gawaine?      
As often as you think of him and hate him,         1605   
Remember too that he betrayed his brothers      
To us that he might save us. Well, he saved us;      
And Rome, whose name to you was never music,      
Saves you again, with heaven alone may tell      
What others who might have their time to sleep         1610   
In earth out there, with the rain falling on them,      
And with no more to fear of wars tonight      
Than you need fear of Gawaine or of Arthur.      
The way before you is a safer way      
For you to follow than when I was in it.         1615   
We children who forget the whips of Time,      
To live within the hour, are slow to see      
That all such hours are passing. They were past      
When you came here with me.”      
   
        She looked away,         1620   
Seeming to read the firelight on the walls      
Before she spoke: “When I came here with you,      
And found those eyes of yours, I could have wished      
And prayed it were the end of hours, and years.      
What was it made you save me from the fire,         1625   
If only out of memories and forebodings      
To build around my life another fire      
Of slower faggots? If you had let me die,      
Those other faggots would be ashes now,      
And all of me that you have ever loved         1630   
Would be a few more ashes. If I read      
The past as well as you have read the future      
You need say nothing of ingratitude,      
For I say only lies. My soul, of course,      
It was you loved. You told me so yourself.         1635   
And that same precious blue-veined cream-white soul      
Will soon be safer, if I understand you,      
In Camelot, where the King is, than elsewhere      
On earth. What more, in faith, have I to ask      
Of earth or heaven than that! Although I fell         1640   
When you said Camelot, are you to know,      
Surely, the stroke you gave me then was not      
The measure itself of ecstasy? We women      
Are such adept inveterates in our swooning      
That we fall down for joy as easily         1645   
As we eat one another to show our love.      
Even horses, seeing again their absent masters,      
Have wept for joy; great dogs have died of it.”      
Having said as much as that, she frowned and held      
Her small white hands out for the fire to warm them.         1650   
Forward she leaned, and forward her thoughts went—      
To Camelot. But they were not there long,      
Her thoughts; for soon she flashed her eyes again,      
And he found in them what he wished were tears      
Of angry sorrow for what she had said.         1655   
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked;      
And all her old incisiveness came back,      
With a new thrust of malice, which he felt      
And feared. “What are you going to do with me?      
What does a child do with a worn-out doll?         1660   
I was a child once; and I had a father.      
He was a king; and, having royal ways,      
He made a queen of me—King Arthur’s queen.      
And if that happened, once upon a time,      
Why may it not as well be happening now         1665   
That I am not a queen? Was I a queen      
When first you brought me here with one torn rag      
To cover me? Was I overmuch a queen      
When I sat up at last, and in a gear      
That would have made a bishop dance to Cardiff         1670   
To see me wearing it? Was I Queen then?”      
   
“You were the Queen of Christendom,” he said,      
Not smiling at her, “whether now or not      
You deem it an unchristian exercise      
To vilipend the wearing of the vanished.         1675   
The women may have reasoned, insecurely,      
That what one queen had worn would please another.      
I left them to their ingenuities.”      
   
Once more he frowned away a threatening smile,      
But soon forgot the memory of all smiling         1680   
While he gazed on the glimmering face and hair      
Of Guinevere—the glory of white and gold      
That had been his, and were, for taking of it,      
Still his, to cloud, with an insidious gleam      
Of earth, another that was not of earth,         1685   
And so to make of him a thing of night—      
A moth between a window and a star,      
Not wholly lured by one or led by the other.      
The more he gazed upon her beauty there,      
The longer was he living in two kingdoms,         1690   
Not owning in his heart the king of either,      
And ruling not himself. There was an end      
Of hours, he told her silent face again,      
In silence. On the morning when his fury      
Wrenched her from that foul fire in Camelot,         1695   
Where blood paid irretrievably the toll      
Of her release, the whips of Time had fallen      
Upon them both. All this to Guinevere      
He told in silence and he told in vain.      
   
Observing her ten fingers variously,         1700   
She sighed, as in equivocal assent,      
“No two queens are alike.”      
   
  “Is that the flower      
Of all your veiled invention?” Lancelot said,      
Smiling at last: “If you say, saying all that,         1705   
You are not like Isolt—well, you are not.      
Isolt was a physician, who cured men      
Their wounds, and sent them rowelling for more;      
Isolt was too dark, and too versatile;      
She was too dark for Mark, if not for Tristram.         1710   
Forgive me; I was saying that to myself,      
And not to make you shiver. No two queens—      
Was that it?—are alike? A longer story      
Might have a longer telling and tell less.      
Your tale’s as brief as Pelleas with his vengeance         1715   
On Gawaine, whom he swore that he would slay      
At once for stealing of the lady Ettard.”      
   
“Treasure my scantling wits, if you enjoy them;      
Wonder a little, too, that I conserve them      
Through the eternal memory of one morning,         1720   
And in these years of days that are the death      
Of men who die for me. I should have died.      
I should have died for them.”      
  “You are wrong,” he said;      
   
“They died because Gawaine went mad with hate         1725   
For loss of his two brothers and set the King      
On fire with fear, the two of them believing      
His fear was vengeance when it was in fact      
A royal desperation. They died because      
Your world, my world, and Arthur’s world is dying,         1730   
As Merlin said it would. No blame is yours;      
For it was I who led you from the King—      
Or rather, to say truth, it was your glory      
That led my love to lead you from the King—      
By flowery ways, that always end somewhere,         1735   
To fire and fright and exile, and release.      
And if you bid your memory now to blot      
Your story from the book of what has been,      
Your phantom happiness were a ghost indeed,      
And I the least of weasels among men,—         1740   
Too false to manhood and your sacrifice      
To merit a niche in hell. If that were so,      
I’d swear there was no light for me to follow,      
Save your eyes to the grave; and to the last      
I might not know that all hours have an end;         1745   
I might be one of those who feed themselves      
By grace of God, on hopes dryer than hay,      
Enjoying not what they eat, yet always eating.      
The Vision shattered, a man’s love of living      
Becomes at last a trap and a sad habit,         1750   
More like an ailing dotard’s love of liquor      
That ails him, than a man’s right love of woman,      
Or of his God. There are men enough like that,      
And I might come to that. Though I see far      
Before me now, could I see, looking back,         1755   
A life that you could wish had not been lived,      
I might be such a man. Could I believe      
Our love was nothing mightier then than we were,      
I might be such a man—a living dead man,      
One of these days.”         1760   
   
        Guinevere looked at him,      
And all that any woman has not said      
Was in one look: “Why do you stab me now      
With such a needless ‘then’? If I am going—      
And I suppose I am—are the words all lost         1765   
That men have said before to dogs and children      
To make them go away? Why use a knife,      
When there are words enough without your ‘then’      
To cut as deep as need be? What I ask you      
Is never more to ask me if my life         1770   
Be one that I could wish had not been lived—      
And that you never torture it again,      
To make it bleed and ache as you do now,      
Past all indulgence or necessity.      
Were you to give a lonely child who loved you         1775   
One living thing to keep—a bird, may be—      
Before you went away from her forever,      
Would you, for surety not to be forgotten,      
Maim it and leave it bleeding on her fingers?      
And would you leave the child alone with it—         1780   
Alone, and too bewildered even to cry,      
Till you were out of sight? Are you men never      
To know what words are? Do you doubt sometimes      
A Vision that lets you see so far away      
That you forget so lightly who it was         1785   
You must have cared for once to be so kind—      
Or seem so kind—when she, and for that only,      
Had that been all, would throw down crowns and glories      
To share with you the last part of the world?      
And even the queen in me would hardly go         1790   
So far off as to vanish. If I were patched      
And scrapped in what the sorriest fisher-wife      
In Orkney might give mumbling to a beggar,      
I doubt if oafs and yokels would annoy me      
More than I willed they should. Am I so old         1795   
And dull, so lean and waning, or what not,      
That you must hurry away to grasp and hoard      
The small effect of time I might have stolen      
From you and from a Light that where it lives      
Must live for ever? Where does history tell you         1800   
The Lord himself would seem in so great haste      
As you for your perfection? If our world—      
Your world and mine and Arthur’s as you say—      
Is going out now to make way for another,      
Why not before it goes, and I go with it,         1805   
Have yet one morsel more of life together,      
Before death sweeps the table and our few crumbs      
Of love are a few last ashes on a fire      
That cannot hurt your Vision, or burn long?      
You cannot warm your lonely fingers at it         1810   
For a great waste of time when I am dead:      
When I am dead you will be on your way,      
With maybe not so much as one remembrance      
Of all I was, to follow you and torment you.      
Some word of Bors may once have given color         1815   
To some few that I said, but they were true—      
Whether Bors told them first to me, or whether      
I told them first to Bors. The Light you saw      
Was not the Light of Rome; the word you had      
Of Rome was not the word of God—though Rome         1820   
Has refuge for the weary and heavy-laden.      
Were I to live too long I might seek Rome      
Myself, and be the happier when I found it.      
Meanwhile, am I to be no more to you      
Than a moon-shadow of a lonely stranger         1825   
Somewhere in Camelot? And is there no region      
In this poor fading world of Arthur’s now      
Where I may be again what I was once—      
Before I die? Should I live to be old,      
I shall have been long since too far away         1830   
For you to hate me then; and I shall know      
How old I am by seeing it in your eyes.”      
Her misery told itself in a sad laugh,      
And in a rueful twisting of her face      
That only beauty’s perilous privilege         1835   
Of injury would have yielded or suborned      
As hope’s infirm accessory while she prayed      
Through Lancelot to heaven for Lancelot.      
She looked away: “If I were God,” she said,      
“I should say, ‘Let them be as they have been.         1840   
A few more years will heap no vast account      
Against eternity, and all their love      
Was what I gave them. They brought on the end      
Of Arthur’s empire, which I wrought through Merlin      
For the world’s knowing of what kings and queens         1845   
Are made for; but they knew not what they did—      
Save as a price, and as a fear that love      
Might end in fear. It need not end that way,      
And they need fear no more for what I gave them;      
For it was I who gave them to each other.’         1850   
If I were God, I should say that to you.”      
He saw tears quivering in her pleading eyes,      
But through them she could see, with a wild hope,      
That he was fighting. When he spoke, he smiled—      
Much as he might have smiled at her, she thought,         1855   
Had she been Gawaine, Gawaine having given      
To Lancelot, who yet would have him live,      
An obscure wound that would not heal or kill.      
   
“My life was living backward for the moment,”      
He said, still burying in the coals and ashes         1860   
Thoughts that he would not think. His tongue was dry,      
And each dry word he said was choking him      
As he said on: “I cannot ask of you      
That you be kind to me, but there’s a kindness      
That is your proper debt. Would you cajole         1865   
Your reason with a weary picturing      
On walls or on vain air of what your fancy,      
Like firelight, makes of nothing but itself?      
Do you not see that I go from you only      
Because you go from me?—because our path         1870   
Led where at last it had an end in havoc,      
As long we knew it must—as Arthur too,      
And Merlin knew it must?—as God knew it must?      
A power that I should not have said was mine—      
That was not mine, and is not mine—avails me         1875   
Strangely tonight, although you are here with me;      
And I see much in what has come to pass      
That is to be. The Light that I have seen,      
As you say true, is not the light of Rome,      
Albeit the word of Rome that set you free         1880   
Was more than mine or the King’s. To flout that word      
Would sound the preparation of a terror      
To which a late small war on our account      
Were a king’s pastime and a queen’s annoyance;      
And that, for the good fortune of a world         1885   
As yet not over-fortuned, may not be.      
There may be war to come when you are gone,      
For I doubt yet Gawaine; but Rome will hold you,      
Hold you in Camelot. If there be more war,      
No fire of mine shall feed it, nor shall you         1890   
Be with me to endure it. You are free;      
And free, you are going home to Camelot.      
There is no other way than one for you,      
Nor is there more than one for me. We have lived,      
And we shall die. I thank you for my life.         1895   
Forgive me if I say no more tonight.”      
He rose, half blind with pity that was no longer      
The servant of his purpose or his will,      
To grope away somewhere among the shadows      
For wine to drench his throat and his dry tongue,         1900   
That had been saying he knew not what to her      
For whom his life-devouring love was now      
A scourge of mercy.      
   
        Like a blue-eyed Medea      
Of white and gold, broken with grief and fear         1905   
And fury that shook her speechless while she waited,      
Yet left her calm enough for Lancelot      
To see her without seeing, she stood up      
To breathe and suffer. Fury could not live long,      
With grief and fear like hers and love like hers,         1910   
When speech came back: “No other way now than one?      
Free? Do you call me free? Do you mean by that      
There was never woman alive freer to live      
Than I am free to die? Do you call me free      
Because you are driven so near to death yourself         1915   
With weariness of me, and the sight of me,      
That you must use a crueller knife than ever,      
And this time at my heart, for me to watch      
Before you drive it home? For God’s sake, drive it!      
Drive it as often as you have the others,         1920   
And let the picture of each wound it makes      
On me be shown to women and men for ever;      
And the good few that know—let them reward you.      
I hear them, in such low and pitying words      
As only those who know, and are not many,         1925   
Are used to say: ‘The good knight Lancelot      
It was who drove the knife home to her heart,      
Rather than drive her home to Camelot.’      
Home! Free! Would you let me go there again—      
To be at home?—be free? To be his wife?         1930   
To live in his arms always, and so hate him      
That I could heap around him the same faggots      
That you put out with blood? Go home, you say?      
Home?—where I saw the black post waiting for me      
That morning?—saw those good men die for me—         1935   
Gareth and Gaheris, Lamorak’s brother Tor,      
And all the rest? Are men to die for me      
For ever? Is there water enough, do you think.      
Between this place and that for me to drown in?”      
   
“There is time enough, I think, between this hour         1940   
And some wise hour tomorrow, for you to sleep in.      
When you are safe again in Camelot,      
The King will not molest you or pursue you;      
The King will be a suave and chastened man.      
In Camelot you shall have no more to dread         1945   
Than you shall hear then of this rain that roars      
Tonight as if it would be roaring always.      
I do not ask you to forgive the faggots,      
Though I would have you do so for your peace.      
Only the wise who know may do so much,         1950   
And they, as you say truly, are not many.      
And I would say no more of this tonight.”      
   
“Then do not ask me for the one last thing      
That I shall give to God! I thought I died      
That morning. Why am I alive again,         1955   
To die again? Are you all done with me?      
Is there no longer something left of me      
That made you need me? Have I lost myself      
So fast that what a mirror says I am      
Is not what is, but only what was once?         1960   
Does half a year do that with us, I wonder,      
Or do I still have something that was mine      
That afternoon when I was in the sunset,      
Under the oak, and you were looking at me?      
Your look was not all sorrow for your going         1965   
To find the Light and leave me in the dark—      
But I am the daughter of Leodogran,      
And you are Lancelot,—and have a tongue      
To say what I may not…. Why must I go      
To Camelot when your kinsmen hold all France?         1970   
Why is there not some nook in some old house      
Where I might hide myself—with you or not?      
Is there no castle, or cabin, or cave in the woods?      
Yes, I could love the bats and owls, in France,      
A lifetime sooner than I could the King         1975   
That I shall see in Camelot, waiting there      
For me to cringe and beg of him again      
The dust of mercy, calling it holy bread.      
I wronged him, but he bought me with a name      
Too large for my king-father to relinquish—         1980   
Though I prayed him, and I prayed God aloud,      
To spare that crown. I called it crown enough      
To be my father’s child—until you came.      
And then there were no crowns or kings or fathers      
Under the sky. I saw nothing but you.         1985   
And you would whip me back to bury myself      
In Camelot, with a few slave maids and lackeys      
To be my grovelling court; and even their faces      
Would not hide half the story. Take me to France—      
To France or Egypt,—anywhere else on earth         1990   
Than Camelot! Is there not room in France      
For two more dots of mortals?—or for one?—      
For me alone? Let Lionel go with me—      
Or Bors. Let Bors go with me into France,      
And leave me there. And when you think of me,         1995   
Say Guinevere is in France, where she is happy;      
And you may say no more of her than that …      
Why do you not say something to me now—      
Before I go? Why do you look—and look?      
Why do you frown as if you thought me mad?         2000   
I am not mad—but I shall soon be mad,      
If I go back to Camelot where the King is.      
Lancelot!… Is there nothing left of me?      
Nothing of what you called your white and gold,      
And made so much of? Has it all gone by?         2005   
He must have been a lonely God who made      
Man in his image and then made only a woman!      
Poor fool she was! Poor Queen! Poor Guinevere!      
There were kings and bishops once, under her window      
Like children, and all scrambling for a flower.         2010   
Time was!—God help me, what am I saying now!      
Does a Queen’s memory wither away to that?      
Am I so dry as that? Am I a shell?      
Have I become so cheap as this?… I wonder      
Why the King cared!” She fell down on her knees         2015   
Crying, and held his knees with hungry fear.      
   
Over his folded arms, as over the ledge      
Of a storm-shaken parapet, he could see,      
Below him, like a tumbling flood of gold,      
The Queen’s hair with a crumpled foam of white         2020   
Around it: “Do you ask, as a child would,      
For France because it has a name? How long      
Do you conceive the Queen of the Christian world      
Would hide herself in France were she to go there?      
How long should Rome require to find her there?         2025   
And how long, Rome or not, would such a flower      
As you survive the unrooting and transplanting      
That you commend so ingenuously tonight?      
And if we shared your cave together, how long,      
And in the joy of what obscure seclusion,         2030   
If I may say it, were Lancelot of the Lake      
And Guinevere an unknown man and woman,      
For no eye to see twice? There are ways to France,      
But why pursue them for Rome’s interdict,      
And for a longer war? Your path is now         2035   
As open as mine is dark—or would be dark,      
Without the Light that once had blinded me      
To death, had I seen more. I shall see more,      
And I shall not be blind. I pray, moreover,      
That you be not so now. You are a Queen,         2040   
And you may be no other. You are too brave      
And kind and fair for men to cheer with lies.      
We cannot make one world of two, nor may we      
Count one life more than one. Could we go back      
To the old garden, we should not stay long;         2045   
The fruit that we should find would all be fallen,      
And have the taste of earth.”      
   
        When she looked up,      
A tear fell on her forehead. “Take me away!”      
She cried. “Why do you do this? Why do you say this?         2050   
If you are sorry for me, take me away      
From Camelot! Send me away—drive me away—      
Only away from there! The King is there—      
And I may kill him if I see him there.      
Take me away—take me away to France!         2055   
And if I cannot hide myself in France,      
Then let me die in France!”      
   
        He shook his head,      
Slowly, and raised her slowly in his arms,      
Holding her there; and they stood long together.         2060   
And there was no sound then of anything,      
Save a low moaning of a broken woman,      
And the cold roaring down of that long rain.      
   
All night the rain came down on Joyous Gard;      
And all night, there before the crumbling embers         2065   
That faded into feathery death-like dust,      
Lancelot sat and heard it. He saw not      
The fire that died, but he heard rain that fell      
On all those graves around him and those years      
Behind him; and when dawn came, he was cold.         2070   
At last he rose, and for a time stood seeing      
The place where she had been. She was not there;      
He was not sure that she had ever been there;      
He was not sure there was a Queen, or a King,      
Or a world with kingdoms on it. He was cold.         2075   
He was not sure of anything but the Light—      
The Light he saw not. “And I shall not see it,”      
He thought, “so long as I kill men for Gawaine.      
If I kill him, I may as well kill myself;      
And I have killed his brothers.” He tried to sleep,         2080   
But rain had washed the sleep out of his life,      
And there was no more sleep. When he awoke,      
He did not know that he had been asleep;      
And the same rain was falling. At some strange hour      
It ceased, and there was light. And seven days after,         2085   
With a cavalcade of silent men and women,      
The Queen rode into Camelot, where the King was,      
And Lancelot rode grimly at her side.      
   
When he rode home again to Joyous Gard,      
The storm in Gawaine’s eyes and the King’s word         2090   
Of banishment attended him. “Gawaine      
Will give the King no peace,” Lionel said;      
And Lancelot said after him, “Therefore      
The King will have no peace.”—And so it was      
That Lancelot, with many of Arthur’s knights         2095   
That were not Arthur’s now, sailed out one day      
From Cardiff to Bayonne, where soon Gawaine,      
The King, and the King’s army followed them,      
For longer sorrow and for longer war.

VI. Lancelot   
VIII   
     
FOR longer war they came, and with a fury         2100   
That only Modred’s opportunity,      
Seized in the dark of Britain, could have hushed      
And ended in a night. For Lancelot,      
When he was hurried amazed out of his rest      
Of a gray morning to the scarred gray wall         2105   
Of Benwick, where he slept and fought, and saw      
Not yet the termination of a strife      
That irked him out of utterance, found again      
Before him a still plain without an army.      
What the mist hid between him and the distance         2110   
He knew not, but a multitude of doubts      
And hopes awoke in him, and one black fear,      
At sight of a truce-waving messenger      
In whose approach he read, as by the Light      
Itself, the last of Arthur. The man reined         2115   
His horse outside the gate, and Lancelot,      
Above him on the wall, with a sick heart,      
Listened: “Sir Gawaine to Sir Lancelot      
Sends greeting; and this with it, in his hand.      
The King has raised the siege, and you in France         2120   
He counts no longer with his enemies.      
His toil is now for Britain, and this war      
With you, Sir Lancelot, is an old war,      
If you will have it so.”—“Bring the man in,”      
Said Lancelot, “and see that he fares well.”         2125   
   
All through the sunrise, and alone, he sat      
With Gawaine’s letter, looking toward the sea      
That flowed somewhere between him and the land      
That waited Arthur’s coming, but not his.      
“King Arthur’s war with me is an old war,         2130   
If I will have it so,” he pondered slowly;      
“And Gawaine’s hate for me is an old hate,      
If I will have it so. But Gawaine’s wound      
Is not a wound that heals; and there is Modred—      
Inevitable as ruin after flood.         2135   
The cloud that has been darkening Arthur’s empire      
May now have burst, with Arthur still in France,      
Many hours away from Britain, and a world      
Away from me. But I read this in my heart.      
If in the blot of Modred’s evil shadow,         2140   
Conjecture views a cloudier world than is,      
So much the better, then, for clouds and worlds,      
And kings. Gawaine says nothing yet of this,      
But when he tells me nothing he tells all.      
Now he is here, fordone and left behind,         2145   
Pursuant of his wish; and there are words      
That he would say to me. Had I not struck him      
Twice to the earth, unwillingly, for my life,      
My best eye then, I fear, were best at work      
On what he has not written. As it is,         2150   
If I go seek him now, and in good faith,      
My faith may dig my grave. If so, then so.      
If I know only with my eyes and ears,      
I may as well not know.”      
   
        Gawaine, having scanned         2155   
His words and sent them, found a way to sleep—      
And sleeping, to forget. But he remembered      
Quickly enough when he woke up to meet      
With his the shining gaze of Lancelot      
Above him in a shuttered morning gloom,         2160   
Seeming at first a darkness that had eyes.      
Fear for a moment seized him, and his heart,      
Long whipped and driven with fever, paused and flickered,      
As like to fail too soon. Fearing to move,      
He waited; fearing to speak, he waited; fearing         2165   
To see too clearly or too much, he waited;      
For what, he wondered—even the while he knew      
It was for Lancelot to say something.      
And soon he did: “Gawaine, I thought at first      
No man was here.”         2170   
   
        “No man was, till you came.      
Sit down; and for the love of God who made you,      
Say nothing to me now of my three brothers.      
Gareth and Gaheris and Agravaine      
Are gone; and I am going after them;         2175   
Of such is our election. When you gave      
That ultimate knock on my revengeful head,      
You did a piece of work.”      
   
        “May God forgive,”      
Lancelot said, “I did it for my life,         2180   
Not yours.”      
   
        “I know, but I was after yours;      
Had I been Lancelot, and you Gawaine,      
You might be dead.”      
   
        “Had you been Lancelot,         2185   
And I Gawaine, my life had not been yours—      
Not willingly. Your brothers are my debt      
That I shall owe to sorrow and to God,      
For whatsoever payment there may be.      
What I have paid is not a little, Gawaine.”         2190   
   
“Why leave me out? A brother more or less      
Would hardly be the difference of a shaving.      
My loose head would assure you, saying this,      
That I have no more venom in me now      
On their account than mine, which is not much.         2195   
There was a madness feeding on us all,      
As we fed on the world. When the world sees,      
The world will have in turn another madness;      
And so, as I’ve a glimpse, ad infinitum.      
But I’m not of the seers: Merlin it was         2200   
Who turned a sort of ominous early glimmer      
On my profane young life. And after that      
He falls himself, so far that he becomes      
One of our most potential benefits—      
Like Vivian, or the mortal end of Modred.         2205   
Why could you not have taken Modred also,      
And had the five of us? You did your best,      
We know, yet he’s more poisonously alive      
Than ever; and he’s a brother, of a sort,      
Or half of one, and you should not have missed him.         2210   
A gloomy curiosity was our Modred,      
From his first intimation of existence.      
God made him as He made the crocodile,      
To prove He was omnipotent. Having done so,      
And seeing then that Camelot, of all places         2215   
Ripe for annihilation, most required him,      
He put him there at once, and there he grew.      
And there the King would sit with him for hours,      
Admiring Modred’s growth; and all the time      
His evil it was that grew, the King not seeing         2220   
In Modred the Almighty’s instrument      
Of a world’s overthrow. You, Lancelot,      
And I, have rendered each a contribution;      
And your last hard attention on my skull      
Might once have been a benison on the realm,         2225   
As I shall be, too late, when I’m laid out      
With a clean shroud on—though I’d liefer stay      
A while alive with you to see what’s coming.      
But I was not for that; I may have been      
For something, but not that. The King, my uncle,         2230   
Has had for all his life so brave a diet      
Of miracles, that his new fare before him      
Of late has ailed him strangely; and of all      
Who loved him once he needs you now the most—      
Though he would not so much as whisper this         2235   
To me or to my shadow. He goes alone      
To Britain, with an army brisk as lead,      
To battle with his Modred for a throne      
That waits, I fear, for Modred—should your France      
Not have it otherwise. And the Queen’s in this,         2240   
For Modred’s game and prey. God save the Queen,      
If not the King! I’ve always liked this world;      
And I would a deal rather live in it      
Than leave it in the middle of all this music.      
If you are listening, give me some cold water.”         2245   
   
Lancelot, seeing by now in dim detail      
What little was around him to be seen,      
Found what he sought and held a cooling cup      
To Gawaine, who, with both hands clutching it,      
Drank like a child. “I should have had that first,”         2250   
He said, with a loud breath, “before my tongue      
Began to talk. What was it saying? Modred?      
All through the growing pains of his ambition      
I’ve watched him; and I might have this and that      
To say about him, if my hours were days.         2255   
Well, if you love the King and hope to save him,      
Remember his many infirmities of virtue—      
Considering always what you have in Modred,      
For ever unique in his iniquity.      
My truth might have a prejudicial savor         2260   
To strangers, but we are not strangers now.      
Though I have only one spoiled eye that sees,      
I see in yours we are not strangers now.      
I tell you, as I told you long ago—      
When the Queen came to put my candles out         2265   
With her gold head and her propinquity—      
That all your doubts that you had then of me,      
When they were more than various imps and harpies      
Of your inflamed invention, were sick doubts:      
King Arthur was my uncle, as he is now;         2270   
But my Queen-aunt, who loved him something less      
Than cats love rain, was not my only care.      
Had all the women who came to Camelot      
Been aunts of mine, I should have been, long since,      
The chilliest of all unwashed eremites         2275   
In a far land alone. For my dead brothers,      
Though I would leave them where I go to them,      
I read their story as I read my own,      
And yours, and—were I given the eyes of God—      
As I might yet read Modred’s. For the Queen,         2280   
May she be safe in London where she’s hiding      
Now in the Tower. For the King, you only—      
And you but hardly—may deliver him yet      
From that which Merlin’s vision long ago,      
If I made anything of Merlin’s words,         2285   
Foretold of Arthur’s end. And for ourselves,      
And all who died for us, or now are dying      
Like rats around us of their numerous wounds      
And ills and evils, only this do I know—      
And this you know: The world has paid enough         2290   
For Camelot. It is the world’s turn now—      
Or so it would be if the world were not      
The world. ‘Another Camelot,’ Bedivere says;      
‘Another Camelot and another King’—      
Whatever he means by that. With a lineal twist,         2295   
I might be king myself; and then, my lord,      
Time would have sung my reign—I say not how.      
Had I gone on with you, and seen with you      
Your Gleam, and had some ray of it been mine,      
I might be seeing more and saying less.         2300   
Meanwhile, I liked this world; and what was on      
The Lord’s mind when He made it is no matter.      
Be lenient, Lancelot; I’ve a light head.      
Merlin appraised it once when I was young,      
Telling me then that I should have the world         2305   
To play with. Well, I’ve had it, and played with it;      
And here I’m with you now where you have sent me      
Neatly to bed, with a towel over one eye;      
And we were two of the world’s ornaments.      
Praise all you are that Arthur was your King;         2310   
You might have had no Gleam had I been King,      
Or had the Queen been like some queens I knew.      
King Lot, my father—”      
   
        Lancelot laid a finger      
On Gawaine’s lips: “You are too tired for that.”—         2315   
“Not yet,” said Gawaine, “though I may be soon.      
Think you that I forget this Modred’s mother      
Was mine as well as Modred’s? When I meet      
My mother’s ghost, what shall I do—forgive?      
When I’m a ghost, I’ll forgive everything …         2320   
It makes me cold to think what a ghost knows.      
Put out the bonfire burning in my head,      
And light one at my feet. When the King thought      
The Queen was in the flames, he called on you:      
‘God, God,’ he said, and ‘Lancelot.’ I was there,         2325   
And so I heard him. That was a bad morning      
For kings and queens, and there are to be worse.      
Bedivere had a dream, once on a time:      
‘Another Camelot and another King,’      
He says when he’s awake; but when he dreams,         2330   
There are no kings. Tell Bedivere, some day,      
That he saw best awake. Say to the King      
That I saw nothing vaster than my shadow,      
Until it was too late for me to see;      
Say that I loved him well, but served him ill—         2335   
If you two meet again. Say to the Queen …      
Say what you may say best. Remember me      
To Pelleas, too, and tell him that his lady      
Was a vain serpent. He was dying once      
For love of her, and had me in his eye         2340   
For company along the dusky road      
Before me now. But Pelleas lived, and married.      
Lord God, how much we know!—What have I done?      
Why do you scowl? Well, well,—so the earth clings      
To sons of earth; and it will soon be clinging,         2345   
To this one son of earth you deprecate,      
Closer than heretofore. I say too much,      
Who should be thinking all a man may think      
When he has no machine. I say too much—      
Always. If I persuade the devil again         2350   
That I’m asleep, will you espouse the notion      
For a small hour or so? I might be glad—      
Not to be here alone.” He gave his hand      
Slowly, in hesitation. Lancelot shivered,      
Knowing the chill of it. “Yes, you say too much,”         2355   
He told him, trying to smile. “Now go to sleep;      
And if you may, forget what you forgive.”      
   
Lancelot, for slow hours that were as long      
As leagues were to the King and his worn army,      
Sat waiting,—though not long enough to know         2360   
From any word of Gawaine, who slept on,      
That he was glad not to be there alone.—      
“Peace to your soul, Gawaine,” Lancelot said,      
And would have closed his eyes. But they were closed.

VI. Lancelot   
IX   
     
SO Lancelot, with a world’s weight upon him,         2365   
Went heavily to that heaviest of all toil,      
Which of itself tells hard in the beginning      
Of what the end shall be. He found an army      
That would have razed all Britain, and found kings      
For generals; and they all went to Dover,         2370   
Where the white cliffs were ghostlike in the dawn,      
And after dawn were deathlike. For the word      
Of the dead King’s last battle chilled the sea      
Before a sail was down; and all who came      
With Lancelot heard soon from little men,         2375   
Who clambered overside with larger news,      
How ill had fared the great. Arthur was dead,      
And Modred with him, each by the other slain;      
And there was no knight left of all who fought      
On Salisbury field save one, Sir Bedivere,         2380   
Of whom the tale was told that he had gone      
Darkly away to some far hermitage,      
To think and die. There were tales told of a ship.      
   
Anon, by further sounding of more men,      
Each with a more delirious involution         2385   
Than his before him, he believed at last      
The Queen was yet alive—if it were life      
To draw now the Queen’s breath, or to see Britain      
With the Queen’s eyes—and that she fared somewhere      
To westward out of London, where the Tower         2390   
Had held her, as once Joyous Gard had held her,      
For dolorous weeks and months a prisoner there,      
With Modred not far off, his eyes afire      
For her and for the King’s avenging throne,      
That neither King nor son should see again.         2395   
“‘The world had paid enough for Camelot,’      
Gawaine said; and the Queen had paid enough,      
God knows,” said Lancelot. He saw Bors again      
And found him angry—angry with his tears,      
And with his fate that was a reason for them:         2400   
“Could I have died with Modred on my soul,      
And had the King lived on, then had I lived      
On with him; and this played-out world of ours      
Might not be for the dead.”      
   
        “A played-out world,         2405   
Although that world be ours, had best be dead,”      
Said Lancelot: “There are worlds enough to follow.      
‘Another Camelot and another King,’      
Bedivere said. And where is Bedivere now?      
And Camelot?”         2410   
   
        “There is no Camelot,”      
Bors answered. “Are we going back to France,      
Or are we to tent here and feed our souls      
On memories and on ruins till even our souls      
Are dead? Or are we to set free for sport         2415   
An idle army for what comes of it?”      
   
“Be idle till you hear from me again,      
Or for a fortnight. Then, if you have no word,      
Go back; and I may follow you alone,      
In my own time, in my own way.”         2420   
   
        “Your way      
Of late, I fear, has been too much your own;      
But what has been, has been, and I say nothing.      
For there is more than men at work in this;      
And I have not your eyes to find the Light,         2425   
Here in the dark—though some day I may see it.”      
   
“We shall all see it, Bors,” Lancelot said,      
With his eyes on the earth. He said no more.      
Then with a sad farewell, he rode away,      
Somewhere into the west. He knew not where.         2430   
   
“We shall all see it, Bors,” he said again.      
Over and over he said it, still as he rode,      
And rode, away to the west, he knew not where,      
Until at last he smiled unhappily      
At the vain sound of it. “Once I had gone         2435   
Where the Light guided me, but the Queen came,      
And then there was no Light. We shall all see—”      
He bit the words off short, snapping his teeth,      
And rode on with his memories before him,      
Before him and behind. They were a cloud         2440   
For no Light now to pierce. They were a cloud      
Made out of what was gone; and what was gone      
Had now another lure than once it had,      
Before it went so far away from him—      
To Camelot. And there was no Camelot now—         2445   
Now that no Queen was there, all white and gold,      
Under an oaktree with another sunlight      
Sifting itself in silence on her glory      
Through the dark leaves above her where she sat,      
Smiling at what she feared, and fearing least         2450   
What most there was to fear. Ages ago      
That must have been; for a king’s world had faded      
Since then, and a king with it. Ages ago,      
And yesterday, surely it must have been      
That he had held her moaning in the firelight         2455   
And heard the roaring down of that long rain,      
As if to wash away the walls that held them      
Then for that hour together. Ages ago,      
And always, it had been that he had seen her,      
As now she was, floating along before him,         2460   
Too far to touch and too fair not to follow,      
Even though to touch her were to die. He closed      
His eyes, only to see what he had seen      
When they were open; and he found it nearer,      
Seeing nothing now but the still white and gold         2465   
In a wide field of sable, smiling at him,      
But with a smile not hers until today—      
A smile to drive no votary from the world      
To find the Light. “She is not what it is      
That I see now,” he said: “No woman alive         2470   
And out of hell was ever like that to me.      
What have I done to her since I have lost her?      
What have I done to change her? No, it is I—      
I who have changed. She is not one who changes.      
The Light came, and I did not follow it;         2475   
Then she came, knowing not what thing she did,      
And she it was I followed. The gods play      
Like that, sometimes; and when the gods are playing,      
Great men are not so great as the great gods      
Had led them once to dream. I see her now         2480   
Where now she is alone. We are all alone,      
We that are left; and if I look too long      
Into her eyes… I shall not look too long.      
Yet look I must. Into the west, they say,      
She went for refuge. I see nuns around her;         2485   
But she, with so much history tenanting      
Her eyes, and all that gold over her eyes,      
Were not yet, I should augur, out of them.      
If I do ill to see her, then may God      
Forgive me one more trespass. I would leave         2490   
The world and not the shadow of it behind me.”      
   
Time brought his weary search to a dusty end      
One afternoon in Almesbury, where he left,      
With a glad sigh, his horse in an innyard;      
And while he ate his food and drank his wine,         2495   
Thrushes, indifferent in their loyalty      
To Arthur dead and to Pan never dead,      
Sang as if all were now as all had been.      
Lancelot heard them till his thoughts came back      
To freeze his heart again under the flood         2500   
Of all his icy fears. What should he find?      
And what if he should not find anything?      
“Words, after all,” he said, “are only words;      
And I have heard so many in these few days      
That half my wits are sick.”         2505   
   
  He found the queen,      
But she was not the Queen of white and gold      
That he had seen before him for so long.      
There was no gold; there was no gold anywhere.      
The black hood, and the white face under it,         2510   
And the blue frightened eyes, were all he saw—      
Until he saw more black, and then more white.      
Black was a foreign foe to Guinevere;      
And in the glimmering stillness where he found her      
Now, it was death; and she Alcestis-like,         2515   
Had waited unaware for the one hand      
Availing, so he thought, that would have torn      
Off and away the last fell shred of doom      
That was destroying and dishonoring      
All the world held of beauty. His eyes burned         2520   
With a sad anger as he gazed at hers      
That shone with a sad pity. “No,” she said;      
“You have not come for this. We are done with this.      
For there are no queens here; there is a Mother.      
The Queen that was is only a child now,         2525   
And you are strong. Remember you are strong,      
And that your fingers hurt when they forget      
How strong they are.”      
   
        He let her go from him      
And while he gazed around him, he frowned hard         2530   
And long at the cold walls: “Is this the end      
Of Arthur’s kingdom and of Camelot?”—      
She told him with a motion of her shoulders      
All that she knew of Camelot or of kingdoms;      
And then said: “We are told of other States         2535   
Where there are palaces, if we should need them,      
That are not made with hands. I thought you knew.”      
   
Dumb, like a man twice banished, Lancelot      
Stood gazing down upon the cold stone floor;      
And she, demurely, with a calm regard         2540   
That he met once and parried, stood apart,      
Appraising him with eyes that were no longer      
Those he had seen when first they had seen his.      
They were kind eyes, but they were not the eyes      
Of his desire; and they were not the eyes         2545   
That he had followed all the way from Dover.      
“I feared the Light was leading you,” she said,      
“So far by now from any place like this      
That I should have your memory, but no more.      
Might not that way have been the wiser way?         2550   
There is no Arthur now, no Modred now,—      
No Guinevere.” She paused, and her voice wandered      
Away from her own name: “There is nothing now      
That I can see between you and the Light      
That I have dimmed so long. If you forgive me,         2555   
And I believe you do—though I know all      
That I have cost, when I was worth so little—      
There is no hazard that I see between you      
And all you sought so long, and would have found      
Had I not always hindered you. Forgive me—         2560   
I could not let you go. God pity men      
When women love too much—and women more.”      
He scowled and with an iron shrug he said:      
“Yes, there is that between me and the light.”      
He glared at her black hood as if to seize it;         2565   
Their eyes met, and she smiled: “No, Lancelot;      
We are going by two roads to the same end;      
Or let us hope, at least, what knowledge hides,      
And so believe it. We are going somewhere.      
Why the new world is not for you and me,         2570   
I cannot say; but only one was ours.      
I think we must have lived in our one world      
All that earth had for us. You are good to me,      
Coming to find me here for the last time;      
For I should have been lonely many a night,         2575   
Not knowing if you cared. I do know now;      
And there is not much else for me to know      
That earth may tell me. I found in the Tower,      
With Modred watching me, that all you said      
That rainy night was true. There was time there         2580   
To find out everything. There were long days,      
And there were nights that I should not have said      
God would have made a woman to endure.      
I wonder if a woman lives who knows      
All she may do.”         2585   
   
        “I wonder if one woman      
Knows one thing she may do,” Lancelot said,      
With a sad passion shining out of him      
While he gazed on her beauty, palled with black      
That hurt him like a sword. The full blue eyes         2590   
And the white face were there, and the red lips      
Were there, but there was no gold anywhere.      
“What have you done with your gold hair?” he said;      
“I saw it shining all the way from Dover,      
But here I do not see it. Shall I see it?”—         2595   
Faintly again she smiled: “Yes, you may see it      
All the way back to Dover; but not here.      
There’s not much of it here, and what there is      
Is not for you to see.”      
   
        “Well, if not here,”         2600   
He said at last, in a low voice that shook,      
“Is there no other place left in the world?”      
   
“There is not even the world left, Lancelot,      
For you and me.”      
   
        “There is France left,” he said.         2605   
His face flushed like a boy’s, but he stood firm      
As a peak in the sea and waited.      
   
  “How many lives      
Must a man have in one to make him happy?”      
She asked, with a wan smile of recollection         2610   
That only made the black that was around      
Her calm face more funereal: “Was it you,      
Or was it Gawaine who said once to me,      
‘We cannot make one world of two, nor may we      
Count one life more than one. Could we go back         2615   
To the old garden’… Was it you who said it,      
Or was it Bors? He was always saying something.      
It may have been Bors.” She was not looking then      
At Lancelot; she was looking at her fingers      
In her old way, as to be sure again         2620   
How many of them she had.      
   
        He looked at her,      
Without the power to smile, and for the time      
Forgot that he was Lancelot: “Is it fair      
For you to drag that back, out of its grave,         2625   
And hold it up like this for the small feast      
Of a small pride?”      
   
        “Yes, fair enough for a woman,”      
Guinevere said, not seeing his eyes. “How long      
Do you conceive the Queen of the Christian world         2630   
Would hide herself in France…”      
   
        “Why do you pause?      
I said it; I remember when I said it;      
And it was not today. Why in the name      
Of grief should we hide anywhere? Bells and banners         2635   
Are not for our occasion, but in France      
There may be sights and silences more fair      
Than pageants. There are seas of difference      
Between this land and France, albeit to cross them      
Were no immortal voyage, had you an eye         2640   
For France that you had once.”      
   
        “I have no eye      
Today for France, I shall have none tomorrow;      
And you will have no eye for France tomorrow.      
Fatigue and loneliness, and your poor dream         2645   
Of what I was, have led you to forget.      
When you have had your time to think and see      
A little more, then you will see as I do;      
And if you see France, I shall not be there,      
Save as a memory there. We are done, you and I,         2650   
With what we were. ‘Could we go back again,      
The fruit that we should find’—but you know best      
What we should find. I am sorry for what I said;      
But a light word, though it cut one we love,      
May save ourselves the pain of a worse wound.         2655   
We are all women. When you see one woman—      
When you see me—before you in your fancy,      
See me all white and gold, as I was once.      
I shall not harm you then; I shall not come      
Between you and the Gleam that you must follow,         2660   
Whether you will or not. There is no place      
For me but where I am; there is no place      
For you save where it is that you are going.      
If I knew everything as I know that,      
I should know more than Merlin, who knew all,         2665   
And long ago, that we are to know now.      
What more he knew he may not then have told      
The King, or anyone,—maybe not even himself;      
Though Vivian may know something by this time      
That he has told her. Have you wished, I wonder,         2670   
That I was more like Vivian, or Isolt?      
The dark ones are more devious and more famous,      
And men fall down more numerously before them—      
Although I think more men get up again,      
And go away again, than away from us.         2675   
If I were dark, I might say otherwise.      
Try to be glad, even if you are sorry,      
That I was not born dark; for I was not.      
For me there was no dark until it came      
When the King came, and with his heavy shadow         2680   
Put out the sun that you made shine again      
Before I was to die. So I forgive      
The faggots; I can do no more than that—      
For you, or God.” She looked away from him      
And in the casement saw the sunshine dying:         2685   
“The time that we have left will soon be gone;      
When the bell rings, it rings for you to go,      
But not for me to go. It rings for me      
To stay—and pray. I, who have not prayed much,      
May as well pray now. I have not what you have         2690   
To make me see, though I shall have, sometime,      
A new light of my own. I saw in the Tower,      
When all was darkest and I may have dreamed,      
A light that gave to men the eyes of Time      
To read themselves in silence. Then it faded,         2695   
And the men faded. I was there alone.      
I shall not have what you have, or much else—      
In this place. I shall see in other places      
What is not here. I shall not be alone.      
And I shall tell myself that you are seeing         2700   
All that I cannot see. For the time now,      
What most I see is that I had no choice,      
And that you came to me. How many years      
Of purgatory shall I pay God for saying      
This to you here?” Her words came slowly out,         2705   
And her mouth shook.      
   
  He took her two small hands      
That were so pale and empty, and so cold:      
“Poor child, I said too much and heard too little      
Of what I said. But when I found you here,         2710   
So different, so alone, I would have given      
My soul to be a chattel and a gage      
For dicing fiends to play for, could so doing      
Have brought one summer back.”      
   
        “When they are gone,”         2715   
She said, with grateful sadness in her eyes,      
“We do not bring them back, or buy them back,      
Even with our souls. I see now it is best      
We do not buy them back, even with our souls.”      
   
A slow and hollow bell began to sound         2720   
Somewhere above them, and the world became      
For Lancelot one wan face—Guinevere’s face.      
“When the bell rings, it rings for you to go,”      
She said; “and you are going… I am not.      
Think of me always as I used to be,         2725   
All white and gold—for that was what you called me.      
You may see gold again when you are gone;      
And I shall not be there.”—He drew her nearer      
To kiss the quivering lips that were before him      
For the last time. “No, not again,” she said;         2730   
“I might forget that I am not alone …      
I shall not see you in this world again,      
But I am not alone. No,… not alone.      
We have had all there was, and you were kind—      
Even when you tried so hard once to be cruel.         2735   
I knew it then… or now I do. Good-bye.”      
He crushed her cold white hands and saw them falling      
Away from him like flowers into a grave.      
When she looked up to see him, he was gone;      
And that was all she saw till she awoke         2740   
In her white cell, where the nuns carried her      
With many tears and many whisperings.      
“She was the Queen, and he was Lancelot,”      
One said. “They were great lovers. It is not good      
To know too much of love. We who love God         2745   
Alone are happiest. Is it not so, Mother?”—      
“We who love God alone, my child, are safest,”      
The Mother replied; “and we are not all safe      
Until we are all dead. We watch, and pray.”      
   
Outside again, Lancelot heard the sound         2750   
Of reapers he had seen. With lighter tread      
He walked away to them to see them nearer;      
He walked and heard again the sound of thrushes      
Far off. He saw below him, stilled with yellow,      
A world that was not Arthur’s, and he saw         2755   
The convent roof; and then he could see nothing      
But a wan face and two dim lonely hands      
That he had left behind. They were down there,      
Somewhere, her poor white face and hands, alone.      
“No man was ever alone like that,” he thought,         2760   
Not knowing what last havoc pity and love      
Had still to wreak on wisdom. Gradually,      
In one long wave it whelmed him, and then broke—      
Leaving him like a lone man on a reef,      
Staring for what had been with him, but now         2765   
Was gone and was a white face under the sea,      
Alive there, and alone—always alone.      
He closed his eyes, and the white face was there,      
But not the gold. The gold would not come back.      
There were gold fields of corn that lay around him,         2770   
But they were not the gold of Guinevere—      
Though men had once, for sake of saying words,      
Prattled of corn about it. The still face      
Was there, and the blue eyes that looked at him      
Through all the stillness of all distances;         2775   
And he could see her lips, trying to say      
Again, “I am not alone.” And that was all      
His life had said to him that he remembered      
While he sat there with his hands over his eyes,      
And his heart aching. When he rose again         2780   
The reapers had gone home. Over the land      
Around him in the twilight there was rest.      
There was rest everywhere; and there was none      
That found his heart. “Why should I look for peace      
When I have made the world a ruin of war?”         2785   
He muttered; and a Voice within him said:      
“Where the Light falls, death falls; a world has died      
For you, that a world may live. There is no peace.      
Be glad no man or woman bears for ever      
The burden of first days. There is no peace.”         2790   
   
A word stronger than his willed him away      
From Almesbury. All alone he rode that night,      
Under the stars, led by the living Voice      
That would not give him peace. Into the dark      
He rode, but not for Dover. Under the stars,         2795   
Alone, all night he rode, out of a world      
That was not his, or the King’s; and in the night      
He felt a burden lifted as he rode,      
While he prayed he might bear it for the sake      
Of a still face before him that was fading,         2800   
Away in a white loneliness. He made,      
Once, with groping hand as if to touch it,      
But a black branch of leaves was all he found.      
   
Now the still face was dimmer than before,      
And it was not so near him. He gazed hard,         2805   
But through his tears he could not see it now;      
And when the tears were gone he could see only      
That all he saw was fading, always fading;      
And she was there alone. She was the world      
That he was losing; and the world he sought         2810   
Was all a tale for those who had been living,      
And had not lived. Once even he turned his horse,      
And would have brought his army back with him      
To make her free. They should be free together.      
But the Voice within him said: “You are not free.         2815   
You have come to the world’s end, and it is best      
You are not free. Where the Light falls, death falls;      
And in the darkness comes the Light.” He turned      
Again; and he rode on, under the stars,      
Out of the world, into he knew not what,         2820   
Until a vision chilled him and he saw,      
Now as in Camelot, long ago in the garden,      
The face of Galahad who had seen and died,      
And was alive, now in a mist of gold.      
He rode on into the dark, under the stars,         2825   
And there were no more faces. There was nothing.      
But always in the darkness he rode on,      
Alone; and in the darkness came the Light.


THE END

VII. The Three Taverns   
1. The Valley of the Shadow   
     
THERE were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,      
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;      
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,      
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.      
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation           5   
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,      
They were lost and unacquainted—till they found themselves in others,      
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.      
   
There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions      
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;          10   
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,      
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.      
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,      
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:      
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow,          15   
Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.      
   
There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken,      
Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes,      
Which had been, before the cradle, Time’s inexorable tenants      
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father’s dreams.          20   
There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood,      
Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago:      
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow,      
The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know.      
   
And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them,          25   
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth;      
And they were going forward only farther into darkness,      
Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth;      
And among them, giving always what was not for their possession,      
There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes;          30   
There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow,      
Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.      
   
There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches,      
Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves—      
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember          35   
Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves.      
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation,      
While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:      
There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow,      
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there.          40   
   
There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them,      
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel;      
And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing,      
Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal.      
Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation,          45   
But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt:      
There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow,      
Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out.      
   
And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals      
There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well;          50   
And over beauty’s aftermath of hazardous ambitions      
There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.      
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,      
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:      
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow,          55   
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.      
   
Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,      
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;      
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,      
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.          60   
There were many by the presence of the many disaffected,      
Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore:      
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow,      
And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.      
   
So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others,          65   
And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn;      
And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer      
May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.      
For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,      
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed:          70   
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,      
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.