But how to take last leave of all I loved? Traitors-and strike him dead, and meet

O golden hair, with which I used to play
Not knowing! O imperial-moulded form,
And beauty such as never woman wore,

myself

Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.

Until it came a kingdom's curse with And thou remaining here wilt learn the

Let no man dream but that I love thee still. Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,

found

thought,

And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, The casement: 'peradventure,' so she
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and
thou

'If I might see his face, and not be seen.' And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!

Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, And near him the sad nuns with each a

I charge thee, my last hope. Now must And while he spake to these his helm was

Thro' the thick night I hear the trumpet To which for crest the golden dragon

blow:

hosts

clung

They summon me their King to lead mine Of Britain; so she did not see the face, Which then was as an angel's, but she saw, Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,

Far down to that great battle in the west,
Where I must strike against the man they

call

The Dragon of the great Pendragonship My sister's son-no kin of mine, who Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.

Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him
gray

And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.

Except he mock'd me when he spake of
hope;

His hope he call'd it; but he never mocks,
For mockery is the fume of little hearts.
And blessed be the King, who hath for-
given

Then she stretch'd out her arm and My wickedness to him, and left me hope
That in mine own heart I can live down

cried aloud

'Oh Arthur!' there her voice brake

suddenly,

sin

And be his mate hereafter in the heavens Then-as a stream that spouting from a Before high God. Ah great and gentle

cliff

Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale

Went on in passionate utterance:

'Gone-my lord! Gone thro' my sin to slay and to be slain ! And he forgave me, and I could not speak.

lord,

Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint Among his warring senses, to thy knights

To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took

Full easily all impressions from below, Would not look up, or half-despised the height

Farewell? I should have answer'd his To which I would not or I could not

His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord I thought I could not breathe in that fine

the King,

air

My own true lord! how dare I call him That pure severity of perfect light

mine?

The shadow of another cleaves to me,

I wanted warmth and colour which I

found

And makes me one pollution: he, the In Lancelot-now I see thee what thou

The months will add themselves and make Myself must tell him in that purer life,

the years,

The years will roll into the centuries,

And mine will ever be a name of scorn.

I must not dwell on that defeat of fame.

But now it were too daring. Ah my

God,

What might I not have made of thy fair world,

Let the world be; that is but of the world Had I but loved thy highest creature

What else? what hope? I think there was

a hope,

here?

It was my duty to have loved the highest :

It surely was my profit had I known:
It would have been my pleasure had I

seen.

We needs must love the highest when we see it,

Not Lancelot, nor another.'

Here her hand Grasp'd, made her vail her eyes: she look'd and saw

Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts;

Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys,

But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites;
Pray and be pray'd for; lie before your
shrines;

Do each low office of your holy house;
Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole
To poor sick people, richer in His eyes

The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said Who ransom'd us, and haler too than I ;

Was chosen Abbess, there, an Abbess, lived
For three brief years, and there, an
Abbess, past

So let me, if you do not shudder at me,
Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you;
Wear black and white, and be a nun like To where beyond these voices there is
you,

peace.

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.

THAT story which the bold Sir Bedivere, | With whom he dwelt, new faces, other First made and latest left of all the

knights,

Told, when the man was no more than a

voice

minds.

For on their march to westward,
Bedivere,

In the white winter of his age, to Who slowly paced among the slumbering

Heard in his tent the moanings of the Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee.

For I, being simple, thought to work His Thine, Gawain, was the voice-are these

And have but stricken with the sword in Thine ? or doth all that haunts the waste

And all whereon I lean'd in wife and Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?'

But in their stead thy name and glory cling
To all high places like a golden cloud

Then, ere that last weird battle in the For ever: but as yet thou shalt not pass.

Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain | And care not thou for dreams from him, blown

Along a wandering wind, and past his ear I hear the steps of Modred in the west, Went shrilling, Hollow, hollow all And with him many of thy people, and knights

Hail, King! to-morrow thou shalt pass Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown

Than heathen, spitting at their vows and And there, that day when the great light thee. of heaven

Right well in heart they know thee for Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year,

the King.

Arise, go forth and conquer as of old.'

On the waste sand by the waste sea they

closed.

Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the

west.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 'Far other is this battle in the west Whereto we move, than when we strove A deathwhite mist slept over sand and

sea :

in youth, And brake the petty kings, and fought Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew

with Rome,

Or thrust the heathen from the Roman Down with his blood, till all his heart was wall, cold

And shook him thro' the north. Ill doom With formless fear; and ev'n on Arthur

is mine

To war against my people and my knights. The king who fights his people fights himself.

And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke

That strikes them dead is as my death to

me.

Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way
Thro' his blind haze, which ever since I

saw

One lying in the dust at Almesbury,
Hath folded in the passes of the world.'

fell

Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought.

For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,

And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew ;

And

some had visions out of golden
youth,

And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, many a base,
And chance and craft and strength in
single fights,

Then rose the King and moved his host And ever and anon with host to host

by night,

And ever push'd Sir Modred, league by
league,

Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse-
A land of old upheaven from the abyss
By fire, to sink into the abyss again;
Where fragments of forgotten peoples
dwelt,

And the long mountains ended in a coast
Of ever-shifting sand, and far away
The phantom circle of a moaning sea.
There the pursuer could pursue no more,
And he that fled no further fly the King;

Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,

Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash

Of battleaxes on shatter'd helms, and
shrieks

After the Christ, of those who falling down
Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the

mist;

And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,

Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,