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Tristram of Lyonesse - VIII - The Last Pilgrimage

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Enough of ease, O Love, enough of light,

Enough of rest before the shadow of night.

Strong Love, whom death finds feebler; kingly Love,

Whom time discrowns in season, seeing thy dove

Spell-stricken by the serpent; for thy sake

These that saw light see night's dawn only break,

Night's cup filled up with slumber, whence men think

The draught more dread than thine was dire to drink.

O Love, thy day sets darkling: hope and fear

Fall from thee standing stern as death stands here.

For what have these to do with fear or hope

On whom the gates of outer darkness ope,

On whom the door of life's desire is barred?

Past like a cloud, their days in Joyous Gard

Gleam like a cloud the westering sun stains red

Till all the blood of day's blithe heart be bled

And all night's heart requickened; in their eyes

So flame and fade those far memorial skies,

So shines the moorland, so revives the sea,

Whereon they gazing mused of things to be

And wist not more of them than waters know

What wind with next day's change of tide shall blow.

Dark roll the deepening days whose waves divide

Unseasonably, with storm-struck change of tide,

Tristram from Iseult: nor may sorrow say

If better wind shall blow than yesterday

With next day risen or any day to come.

For ere the songs of summer's death fell dumb,

And autumn bade the imperial moorlands change

Their purples, and the bracken's bloom grow strange

As hope's green blossom touched with time's harsh rust,

Was all their joy of life shaken to dust,

And all its fire made ashes: by the strand

Where late they strayed and communed hand from hand

For the last time fell separate, eyes of eyes

Took for the last time leave, and saw the skies

Dark with their deep division. The last time'

The last that ever love's rekindling rhyme

Should keep for them life's days and nights in tune

With refluence of the morning and the moon

Alternative in music, and make one

The secrets of the stardawn and the sun

For these twain souls ere darkness held them fast;

The last before the labour marked for last

And toil of utmost knighthood, till the wage

Of rest might crown his crowning pilgrimage

Whereon forth faring must he take farewell,

With spear for staff and sword for scallop-shell

And scrip wherein close memory hoarded yet

Things holier held than death might well forget;

The last time ere the travel were begun

Whose goal is unbeholden of the sun,

The last wherewith love's eyes might yet be lit,

Came, and they could but dream they knew not it.

For Tristram parting from her wist at heart

How well she wist they might not choose but part,

And he pass forth a pilgrim, when there came

A sound of summons in the high king's name

For succour toward his vassal Triamour,

King in wild Wales, now spoiled of all his power,

As Tristram's father ere his fair son's birth,

By one the strongest of the sons of earth,

Urgan, an iron bulk of giant mould:

And Iseult in Tintagel as of old

Sat crowned with state and sorrow: for her lord

At Arthur's hand required her back restored,

And willingly compelled against her will

She yielded, saying within her own soul still

Some season yet of soft or stormier breath

Should haply give her life again or death:

For now nor quick nor dead nor bright nor dark

Were all her nights and days wherein King Mark

Held haggard watch upon her, and his eyes

Were cloudier than the gradual wintering skies

That closed about the wan wild land and sea.

And bitter toward him waxed her heart: but he

Was rent in twain betwixt harsh love and hate

With pain and passion half compassionate

That yearned and laboured to be quit of shame,

And could not: and his life grew smouldering flame.

And hers a cloud full-charged with storm and shower,

Though touched with trembling gleams of fire's bright flower

That flashed and faded on its fitful verge,

As hope would strive with darkness and emerge

And sink, a swimmer strangled by the swallowing surge.

But Tristram by dense hills and deepening vales

Rode through the wild glad wastes of glorious Wales,

High-hearted with desire of happy fight

And strong in soul with merrier sense of might

Than since the fair first years that hailed him knight:

For all his will was toward the war, so long

Had love repressed and wrought his glory wrong,

So far the triumph and so fair the praise

Seemed now that kindled all his April days.

And here in bright blown autumn, while his life

Was summer's yet for strength toward love or strife,

Blithe waxed his hope toward battle, and high desire

To pluck once more as out of circling fire

Fame, the broad flower whose breath makes death more sweet

Than roses crushed by love's receding feet.

But all the lovely land wherein he went

The blast of ruin and ravenous war had rent;

And black with fire the fields where homesteads were,

And foul with festering dead the high soft air,

And loud with wail of women many a stream

Whose own live song was like love's deepening dream,

Spake all against the spoiler: wherefore still

Wrath waxed with pity, quickening all his will,

In Tristram's heart for every league he rode

Through the aching land so broad a curse bestrode

With so supreme a shadow: till one dawn

Above the green bloom of a gleaming lawn,

High on the strait steep windy bridge that spanned

A glen's deep mouth, he saw that shadow stand

Visible, sword on thigh and mace in hand

Vast as the mid bulk of a roof-tree's beam.

So, sheer above the wild wolf-haunted stream,

Dire as the face disfeatured of a dream,

Rose Urgan: and his eyes were night and flame;

But like the fiery dawn were his that came

Against him, lit with more sublime desire

Than lifts toward heaven the leaping heart of fire:

And strong in vantage of his perilous place

The huge high presence, red as earth's first race,

Reared like a reed the might up of his mace,

And smote: but lightly Tristram swerved, and drove

Right in on him, whose void stroke only clove

Air, and fell wide, thundering athwart: and he

Sent forth a stormier cry than wind or sea

When midnight takes the tempest for her lord;

And all the glen's throat seemed as hell's that roared;

But high like heaven's light over hell shone Tristram's sword,

Falling, and bright as storm shows God's bare brand

Flashed as it shore sheer off the huge right hand

Whose strength was as the shadow of death on all that land.

And like the trunk of some grim tree sawn through

Reeled Urgan, as his left hand grasped and drew

A steel by sorcerers tempered: and anew

Raged the red wind of fluctuant fight, till all

The cliffs were thrilled as by the clangorous call

Of storm's blown trumpets from the core of night,

Charging: and even as with the storm-wind's might

On Tristram's helm that sword crashed: and the knight

Fell, and his arms clashed, and a wide cry brake

From those far off that heard it, for his sake

Soul-stricken: and that bulk of monstrous birth

Sent forth again a cry more dire for mirth:

But ere the sunbright arms were soiled of earth

They flashed again, re-risen: and swift and loud

Rang the strokes out as from a circling cloud,

So dense the dust wrought over them its drifted shroud.

Strong strokes, within the mist their battle made,

Each hailed on other through the shifting shade

That clung about them hurtling as the swift fight swayed:

And each between the jointed corslet saw

Break forth his foe's bright blood at each grim flaw

Steel made in hammered iron: till again

The fiend put forth his might more strong for pain

And cleft the great knight's glittering shield in twain,

Laughing for very wrath and thirst to kill,

A beast's broad laugh of blind and wolfish will,

And smote again ere Tristram's lips drew breath

Panting, and swept as by the sense of death,

That surely should have touched and sealed them fast

Save that the sheer stroke shrilled aside, and passed

Frustrate: but answering Tristram smote anew,

And thrust the brute breast as with lightning through

Clean with one cleaving stroke of perfect might:

And violently the vast bulk leapt upright,

And plunged over the bridge, and fell: and all

The cliffs reverberate from his monstrous fall

Rang: and the land by Tristram's grace was free.

So with high laud and honour thence went he,

And southward set his sail again, and passed

The lone land's ending, first beheld and last

Of eyes that look on England from the sea:

And his heart mourned within him, knowing how she

Whose heart with his was fatefully made fast

Sat now fast bound, as though some charm were cast

About her, such a brief space eastward thence,

And yet might soul not break the bonds of sense

And bring her to him in very life and breath

More than had this been even the sea of death

That washed between them, and its wide sweet light

The dim strait's darkness of the narrowing night

That shuts about men dying whose souls put forth

To pierce its passage through: but south and north

Alike for him were other than they were:

For all the northward coast shone smooth and fair,

And off its iron cliffs the keen-edged air

Blew summer, kindling from her mute bright mouth;

But winter breathed out of the murmuring south,

Where, pale with wrathful watch on passing ships,

The lone wife lay in wait with wan dumb lips.

Yet, sailing where the shoreward ripple curled

Of the most wild sweet waves in all the world,

His soul took comfort even for joy to see

The strong deep joy of living sun and sea,

The large deep love of living sea and land,

As past the lonely lion-guarded strand

Where the huge warder lifts his couchant sides,

Asleep, above the sleepless lapse of tides,

The light sail swept, and past the unsounded caves

Unsearchable, wherein the pulse of waves

Throbs through perpetual darkness to and fro,

And the blind night swims heavily below

While heavily the strong noon broods above,

Even to the very bay whence very Love,

Strong daughter of the giant gods who wrought

Sun, earth, and sea out of their procreant thought,

Most meetly might have risen, and most divine

Beheld and heard things round her sound and shine

From floors of foam and gold to walls of serpentine.

For splendid as the limbs of that supreme

Incarnate beauty through men's visions gleam,

Whereof all fairest things are even but shadow or dream,

And lovely like as Love's own heavenliest face,

Gleams there and glows the presence and the grace

Even of the mother of all, in perfect pride of place.

For otherwhere beneath our world-wide sky

There may not be beheld of men that die

Aught else like this that dies not, nor may stress

Of ages that bow down men's works make less

The exultant awe that clothes with power its loveliness.

For who sets eye thereon soever knows

How since these rocks and waves first rolled and rose

The marvel of their many-coloured might

Hath borne this record sensible to sight,

The witness and the symbol of their own delight,

The gospel graven of life's most heavenly law,

Joy, brooding on its own still soul with awe,

A sense of godlike rest in godlike strife,

The sovereign conscience of the spirit of life.

Nor otherwhere on strand or mountain tower

Hath such fair beauty shining forth in flower

Put on the imperial robe of such imperious power.

For all the radiant rocks from depth to height

Burn with vast bloom of glories blossom-bright

As though the sun's own hand had thrilled them through with light

And stained them through with splendour: yet from thence

Such awe strikes rapture through the spirit of sense

From all the inaccessible sea-wall's girth,

That exultation, bright at heart as mirth,

Bows deeper down before the beauty of earth

Than fear may bow down ever: nor shall one

Who meets at Alpine dawn the mounting sun

On heights too high for many a wing to climb

Be touched with sense of aught seen more sublime

Than here smiles high and sweet in face of heaven and time.

For here the flower of fire, the soft hoar bloom

Of springtide olive-woods, the warm green gloom

Of clouded seas that swell and sound with dawn of doom,

The keen thwart lightning and the wan grey light

Of stormy sunrise crossed and vexed with night,

Flash, loom, and laugh with divers hues in one

From all the curved cliff's face, till day be done,

Against the sea's face and the gazing sun.

And whensoever a strong wave, high in hope,

Sweeps up some smooth slant breadth of stone aslope,

That glowed with duskier fire of hues less bright,

Swift as it sweeps back springs to sudden sight

The splendour of the moist rock's fervent light,

Fresh as from dew of birth when time was born

Out of the world-conceiving womb of morn.

All its quenched flames and darkling hues divine

Leap into lustrous life and laugh and shine

And darken into swift and dim decline

For one brief breath's space till the next wave run

Right up, and ripple down again, undone,

And leave it to be kissed and kindled of the sun.

And all these things, bright as they shone before

Man first set foot on earth or sail from shore,

Rose not less radiant than the sun sees now

When the autumn sea was cloven of Tristram's prow,

And strong in sorrow and hope and woful will

That hope might move not nor might sorrow kill

He held his way back toward the wild sad shore

Whence he should come to look on these no more,

Nor ever, save with sunless eyes shut fast,

Sail home to sleep in home-born earth at last.

And all these things fled fleet as light or breath

Past, and his heart waxed cold and dull as death,

Or swelled but as the tides of sorrow swell,

To sink with sullen sense of slow farewell.

So surely seemed the silence even to sigh

Assurance of inveterate prophecy,

'Thou shalt not come again home hither ere thou die.'

And the wind mourned and triumphed, and the sea

Wailed and took heart and trembled; nor might he

Hear more of comfort in their speech, or see

More certitude in all the waste world's range

Than the only certitude of death and change.

And as the sense and semblance fluctuated

Of all things heard and seen alive or dead

That smote far off upon his ears or eyes

Or memory mixed with forecasts fain to rise

And fancies faint as ghostliest prophecies,

So seemed his own soul, changefully forlorn,

To shrink and triumph and mount up and mourn;

Yet all its fitful waters, clothed with night,

Lost heart not wholly, lacked not wholly light,

Seeing over life and death one star in sight

Where evening's gates as fair as morning's ope,

Whose name was memory, but whose flame was hope.

For all the tides of thought that rose and sank

Felt its fair strength wherefrom strong sorrow shrank

A mightier trust than time could change or cloy,

More strong than sorrow, more secure than joy.

So came he, nor content nor all unblest,

Back to the grey old land of Merlin's rest.

But ere six paces forth on shore he trod

Before him stood a knight with feet unshod,

And kneeling called upon him, as on God

Might sick men call for pity, praying aloud

With hands held up and head made bare and bowed;

'Tristram, for God's love and thine own dear fame,

I Tristram that am one with thee in name

And one in heart with all that praise thee'I,

Most woful man of all that may not die

For heartbreak and the heavier scourge of shame,

By all thy glory done our woful name

Beseech thee, called of all men gentlest knight,

Be now not slow to do my sorrows right.

I charge thee for thy fame's sake through this land,

I pray thee by thine own wife's fair white hand,

Have pity of me whose love is borne away

By one that makes of poor men's lives his prey,

A felon masked with knighthood: at his side

Seven brethren hath he night or day to ride

With seven knights more that wait on all his will:

And here at hand, ere yet one day fulfil

Its flight through light and darkness, shall they fare

Forth, and my bride among them, whom they bear

Through these wild lands his prisoner; and if now

I lose her, and my prayer be vain, and thou

Less fain to serve love's servants than of yore,

Then surely shall I see her face no more.

But if thou wilt, for love's sake of the bride

Who lay most loved of women at thy side,

Strike with me, straight then hence behoves us ride

And rest between the moorside and the sea

Where we may smite them passing: but for me,

Poor stranger, me not worthy scarce to touch

Thy kind strong hand, how shouldst thou do so much?

For now lone left this long time waits thy wife

And lacks her lord and light of wedded life

Whilst thou far off art famous: yet thy fame,

If thou take pity on me that bear thy name

Unworthily, but by that name implore

Thy grace, how shall not even thy fame grow more?

But be thy will as God's among us done,

Who art far in fame above us as the sun:

Yet only of him have all men help and grace.'

And all the lordly light of Tristram's face

Was softened as the sun's in kindly spring.

'Nay, then may God send me as evil a thing

When I give ear not to such prayers,' he said,

'And make my place among the nameless dead

When I put back one hour the time to smite

And do the unrighteous griefs of good men right.

Behold, I will not enter in nor rest

Here in mine own halls till this piteous quest

Find end ere noon to-morrow: but do thou,

Whose sister's face I may not look on now,

Go, Ganhardine, with tiding of the vow

That bids me turn aside for one day's strife

Or live dishonoured all my days of life,

And greet for me in brother's wise my wife,

And crave her pardon that for knighthood's sake

And womanhood's, whose bands may no man break

And keep the bands of bounden honour fast,

I seek not her till two nights yet be past

And this my quest accomplished, so God please

By me to give this young man's anguish ease

And on his wrongdoer's head his wrong requite.'

And Tristram with that woful thankful knight

Rode by the seaside moorland wastes away

Between the quickening night and darkening day

Ere half the gathering stars had heart to shine.

And lightly toward his sister Ganhardine

Sped, where she sat and gazed alone afar

Above the grey sea for the sunset star,

And lightly kissed her hand and lightly spake

His tiding of that quest for knighthood's sake.

And the white-handed Iseult, bowing her head,

Gleamed on him with a glance athwart, and said,

'As God's on earth and far above the sun,

So toward his handmaid be my lord's will done.'

And doubts too dim to question or divine

Touched as with shade the spirit of Ganhardine,

Hearing; and scarce for half a doubtful breath

His bright light heart held half a thought of death

And knew not whence this darkling thought might be,

But surely not his sister's work: for she

Was ever sweet and good as summer air,

And soft as dew when all the night is fair,

And gracious as the golden maiden moon

When darkness craves her blessing: so full soon

His mind was light again as leaping waves,

Nor dreamed that hers was like a field of graves

Where no man's foot dares swerve to left or right,

Nor ear dares hearken, nor dares eye take sight

Of aught that moves and murmurs there at night.

But by the sea-banks where at morn their foes

Might find them, lay those knightly name-fellows,

One sick with grief of heart and sleepless, one

With heart of hope triumphant as the sun

Dreaming asleep of love and fame and fight:

But sleep at last wrapped warm the wan young knight;

And Tristram with the first pale windy light

Woke ere the sun spake summons, and his ear

Caught the sea's call that fired his heart to hear,

A noise of waking waters: for till dawn

The sea was silent as a mountain lawn

When the wind speaks not, and the pines are dumb,

And summer takes her fill ere autumn come

Of life more soft than slumber: but ere day

Rose, and the first beam smote the bounding bay,

Up sprang the strength of the dark East, and took

With its wide wings the waters as they shook,

And hurled them huddling on aheap, and cast

The full sea shoreward with a great glad blast,

Blown from the heart of morning: and with joy

Full-souled and perfect passion, as a boy

That leaps up light to wrestle with the sea

For pure heart's gladness and large ecstasy,

Up sprang the might of Tristram; and his soul

Yearned for delight within him, and waxed whole

As a young child's with rapture of the hour

That brought his spirit and all the world to flower,

And all the bright blood in his veins beat time

To the wind's clarion and the water's chime

That called him and he followed it and stood

On the sand's verge before the grey great flood

Where the white hurtling heads of waves that met

Rose unsaluted of the sunrise yet.

And from his heart's root outward shot the sweet

Strong joy that thrilled him to the hands and feet,

Filling his limbs with pleasure and glad might,

And his soul drank the immeasurable delight

That earth drinks in with morning, and the free

Limitless love that lifts the stirring sea

When on her bare bright bosom as a bride

She takes the young sun, perfect in his pride,

Home to his place with passion: and the heart

Trembled for joy within the man whose part

Was here not least in living; and his mind

Was rapt abroad beyond man's meaner kind

And pierced with love of all things and with mirth

Moved to make one with heaven and heavenlike earth

And with the light live water. So awhile

He watched the dim sea with a deepening smile,

And felt the sound and savour and swift flight

Of waves that fled beneath the fading night

And died before the darkness, like a song

With harps between and trumpets blown along

Through the loud air of some triumphant day,

Sink through his spirit and purge all sense away

Save of the glorious gladness of his hour

And all the world about to break in flower

Before the sovereign laughter of the sun;

And he, ere night's wide work lay all undone,

As earth from her bright body casts off night,

Cast off his raiment for a rapturous fight

And stood between the sea's edge and the sea

Naked, and godlike of his mould as he

Whose swift foot's sound shook all the towers of Troy;

So clothed with might, so girt upon with joy

As, ere the knife had shorn to feed the fire

His glorious hair before the unkindled pyre

Whereon the half of his great heart was laid,

Stood, in the light of his live limbs arrayed,

Child of heroic earth and heavenly sea,

The flower of all men: scarce less bright than he,

If any of all men latter-born might stand,

Stood Tristram, silent, on the glimmering strand.

Not long: but with a cry of love that rang

As from a trumpet golden-mouthed, he sprang,

As toward a mother's where his head might rest

Her child rejoicing, toward the strong sea's breast

That none may gird nor measure: and his heart

Sent forth a shout that bade his lips not part,

But triumphed in him silent: no man's voice,

No song, no sound of clarions that rejoice,

Can set that glory forth which fills with fire

The body and soul that have their whole desire

Silent, and freer than birds or dreams are free

Take all their will of all the encountering sea.

And toward the foam he bent and forward smote,

Laughing, and launched his body like a boat

Full to the sea-breach, and against the tide

Struck strongly forth with amorous arms made wide

To take the bright breast of the wave to his

And on his lips the sharp sweet minute's kiss

Given of the wave's lip for a breath's space curled

And pure as at the daydawn of the world.

And round him all the bright rough shuddering sea

Kindled, as though the world were even as he,

Heart-stung with exultation of desire:

And all the life that moved him seemed to aspire,

As all the sea's life toward the sun: and still

Delight within him waxed with quickening will

More smooth and strong and perfect as a flame

That springs and spreads, till each glad limb became

A note of rapture in the tune of life,

Live music mild and keen as sleep and strife:

Till the sweet change that bids the sense grow sure

Of deeper depth and purity more pure

Wrapped him and lapped him round with clearer cold,

And all the rippling green grew royal gold

Between him and the far sun's rising rim.

And like the sun his heart rejoiced in him,

And brightened with a broadening flame of mirth:

And hardly seemed its life a part of earth,

But the life kindled of a fiery birth

And passion of a new-begotten son

Between the live sea and the living sun.

And mightier grew the joy to meet full-faced

Each wave, and mount with upward plunge, and taste

The rapture of its rolling strength, and cross

Its flickering crown of snows that flash and toss

Like plumes in battle's blithest charge, and thence

To match the next with yet more strenuous sense;

Till on his eyes the light beat hard and bade

His face turn west and shoreward through the glad

Swift revel of the waters golden-clad,

And back with light reluctant heart he bore

Across the broad-backed rollers in to shore;

Strong-spirited for the chance and cheer of fight,

And donned his arms again, and felt the might

In all his limbs rejoice for strength, and praised

God for such life as that whereon he gazed,

And wist not surely its joy was even as fleet

As that which laughed and lapsed against his feet,

The bright thin grey foam-blossom, glad and hoar,

That flings its flower along the flowerless shore

On sand or shingle, and still with sweet strange snows,

As where one great white storm-dishevelled rose

May rain her wild leaves on a windy land,

Strews for long leagues the sounding slope of strand,

And flower on flower falls flashing, and anew

A fresh light leaps up whence the last flash flew,

And casts its brief glad gleam of life away

To fade not flowerwise but as drops the day

Storm-smitten, when at once the dark devours

Heaven and the sea and earth with all their flowers;

No star in heaven, on earth no rose to see,

But the white blown brief blossoms of the sea,

That make her green gloom starrier than the sky,

Dance yet before the tempest's tune, and die.

And all these things he glanced upon, and knew

How fair they shone, from earth's least flake of dew

To stretch of seas and imminence of skies,

Unwittingly, with unpresageful eyes,

For the last time. The world's half heavenly face,

The music of the silence of the place,

The confluence and the refluence of the sea,

The wind's note ringing over wold and lea,

Smote once more through him keen as fire that smote,

Rang once more through him one reverberate note,

That faded as he turned again and went,

Fulfilled by strenuous joy with strong content,

To take his last delight of labour done

That yet should be beholden of the sun

Or ever give man comfort of his hand.

Beside a wood's edge in the broken land

An hour at wait the twain together stood,

Till swift between the moorside and the wood

Flashed the spears forward of the coming train;

And seeing beside the strong chief spoiler's rein

His wan love riding prisoner in the crew,

Forth with a cry the young man leapt, and flew

Right on that felon sudden as a flame;

And hard at hand the mightier Tristram came,

Bright as the sun and terrible as fire:

And there had sword and spear their soul's desire,

And blood that quenched the spear's thirst as it poured

Slaked royally the hunger of the sword,

Till the fierce heart of steel could scarce fulfil

Its greed and ravin of insatiate will.

For three the fiery spear of Tristram drove

Down ere a point of theirs his harness clove

Or its own sheer mid shaft splintered in twain;

And his heart bounded in him, and was fain

As fire or wind that takes its fill by night

Of tempest and of triumph: so the knight

Rejoiced and ranged among them, great of hand,

Till seven lay slain upon the heathery sand

Or in the dense breadth of the woodside fern.

Nor did his heart not mightier in him burn

Seeing at his hand that young knight fallen, and high

The red sword reared again that bade him die.

But on the slayer exulting like the flame

Whose foot foreshines the thunder Tristram came

Raging, for piteous wrath had made him fire;

And as a lion's look his face was dire

That flashed against his foeman ere the sword

Lightened, and wrought the heart's will of its lord,

And clove through casque and crown the wrongdoer's head.

And right and left about their dark chief dead

Hurtled and hurled those felons to and fro,

Till as a storm-wind scatters leaves and snow

His right hand ravening scattered them; but one

That fled with sidelong glance athwart the sun

Shot, and the shaft flew sure, and smote aright,

Full in the wound's print of his great first fight

When at his young strength's peril he made free

Cornwall, and slew beside its bordering sea

The fair land's foe, who yielding up his breath

Yet left him wounded nigh to dark slow death.

And hardly with long toil thence he won home

Between the grey moor and the glimmering foam,

And halting fared through his own gate, and fell,

Thirsting: for as the sleepless fire of hell

The fire within him of his wound again

Burned, and his face was dark as death for pain,

And blind the blithe light of his eyes: but they

Within that watched and wist not of the fray

Came forth and cried aloud on him for woe.

And scarce aloud his thanks fell faint and slow

As men reared up the strong man fallen and bore

Down the deep hall that looked along the shore,

And laid him soft abed, and sought in vain

If herb or hand of leech might heal his pain.

And the white-handed Iseult hearkening heard

All, and drew nigh, and spake no wifely word,

But gazed upon him doubtfully, with eyes

Clouded; and he in kindly knightly wise

Spake with scant breath, and smiling: 'Surely this

Is penance for discourteous lips to kiss

And feel the brand burn through them, here to lie

And lack the strength here to do more than sigh

And hope not hence for pardon.' Then she bowed

Her head, still silent as a stooping cloud,

And laid her lips against his face; and he

Felt sink a shadow across him as the sea

Might feel a cloud stoop toward it: and his heart

Darkened as one that wastes by sorcerous art

And knows not whence it withers: and he turned

Back from her emerald eyes his own, and yearned

All night for eyes all golden: and the dark

Hung sleepless round him till the loud first lark

Rang record forth once more of darkness done,

And all things born took comfort from the sun.