Cornell University Library 
 PR5115.04A71874 
 
 Lays of France.(Founded on the Lays of M 
 
 3 1924 013 531 466 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013531466 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR— 
 AN EPIC OF WOMEN, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 Second Edition, 1871. 
 
LAYS OF FRANCE. 
 
LAYS OF FRANCE. 
 
 (FOUNDED ON THE LAYS OF MARIE.) 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 ILon&on : 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LAUSTIC J OR THE LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE . . 1 
 
 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS .... 43 
 
 CHAITIVEL ; OR, THE LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE 87 
 
 THE LAY OF ELIDUC .... • J 4S 
 
 THE LAY OF YVENEC .... . 251 
 
LAUSTIC; 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
' This olde gentil Bretons in here daies 
 Of divers aventures maden laies, 
 Rimyden in her firste Breton tonge, 
 Whiche laies with here instrumentes thei songe, 
 Other elles redden hem for her plesance, 
 And one of hem have I in remembrance 
 Which I shall seie with goode wil as I can.' 
 
 Chaucer : Prologe to the Frankeleyne 's Tale. 
 
 ' Une aventure vus dirai 
 Dunt li Bretun firent un Lai ; 
 Laustic ad nun ceo m'est avis, 
 Si l'apelent en lur pais : 
 Ceo est reisun en Franceis, 
 E Nihtegale en dreit Engleis.' 
 
 Marie : Lais. MS. Bibl. Harl. No. 978. 
 
LAUSTIC; 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 Fair ladies, give me leave to sing : 
 God will I may die serving you 
 
 And finding ever some sweet thing 
 To praise your beauty and renew 
 The soft enchantment of your love : 
 
 Now let my singing please your ears, 
 Or gentle pity in you move, 
 
 Bringing your eyes the grace of tears, 
 Yet never grieving you too sore 
 
 With any lay of mine or tale ; 
 Yea so : for I shall say no more 
 
 Singing a fair thing, ere I fail, 
 
 Of lovers and a nightingale. 
 
LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 In Brittany a goodly town 
 Is Bon, and there indeed befell 
 
 What I shall show, and had renown. 
 Two knights who loved each other well 
 Through many a year were come to dwell 
 
 In that fair town at length ; good fame 
 In all France very wide and far 
 They twain had earned for deeds of war ; 
 
 And their whole living had no blame 
 Of any, but before and then 
 Right noble seemed they to all men. 
 
 Now this befell, and was the fate : 
 
 One of those knights wed with his hand 
 A lady, who was fair and great — 
 
 Yea, rather, throughout all that land 
 Fairest and greatest in good sooth : 
 In all the riches of sweet youth 
 
 She was quite perfectly arrayed, 
 With every grace that flowers have 
 
 Of spring, or beauty that a maid 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 May have or that a man may crave 
 To look on for his love. Great pride 
 
 It was to woo and win that dame ; 
 Yea, so to take her for man's bride 
 
 It was a thing for which knights came 
 Full many and from far and wide 
 
 In France ; but soon they all had shame 
 Because of this one of renown 
 Who came and took her for his own. 
 
 How shall I say she was so fair? 
 
 But truly God did her compose 
 
 Of the same colours as the rose, 
 Which of all flowers he does declare 
 The fairest : this way she was fair : 
 
 First pale she was, all delicate — 
 
 Like the first sweetest leaf that shows 
 Frail texture, and lets penetrate 
 
 Through its pure secret, to the flows 
 Of inner feelings intricate 
 
 That change and glow, — so was she, too, 
 Pale and most tender ; you might trace 
 
 The heart and all its yearnings through 
 
LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Her virgin colour : as she grew, 
 The perfect inner soul began 
 
 To rise to many a purple place 
 
 Of blushes on her changing face, . 
 Or on her neck that shamed a swan 
 Or snow for white : at length her skin 
 
 Was all fair fading, all fine hue ; 
 
 And her eyes held the fairest blue 
 That is not in God's heaven above. 
 She was a goodly bride to win ! 
 
 She wedded ere she knew what love 
 Can and doth do ; what right he hath 
 
 To rule in all ; to change and move 
 All things that are ; to make a path 
 
 For all hearts whither they shall go : 
 She wedded ere she well could know. 
 
 And, alas ! for it did befall 
 
 Of sad fate to that gentle dame, 
 
 She could not love with love at all 
 
 The husband to whose hand she* came ; 
 
 But love the rather did intend 
 
LAY OE THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 A thing most crooked ; day by day 
 See knew not of his subde way, 
 
 Thought truth and cared not to defend 
 Her heart with any sort of arm ; 
 So day by day grew up the harm. 
 
 That other knight, her husband's friend 
 Seemed fair unto her eyes ; and fain 
 Her heart grew of his sight, till pain 
 
 And tears it was to miss his smile 
 
 That seemed such healing ; for no fear 
 Bade her withhold when he was near 
 
 Her heart ; but sweetest was the while 
 He, sitting nigh, touched her almost, 
 Or gold edge of his garment crost 
 
 Her own robe ; no doubt did defile 
 
 Her thought, to think that there was sin, 
 Or that in such way could begin 
 
 Love's ill ; but precious seemed the eve, 
 When so they sat, and he was singing 
 
 Some song to bid her bide the night 
 
 In peace ; the music, too, would leave 
 Soft sighing echoes, 'mid the clinging 
 
 Of many a balm of rich delight, 
 
LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Stored in the soul through that fair hour 
 
 — The purples of some closing flower, 
 Thin distant scents of thyme or musk 
 
 Faded or finished far away 
 'Mid the dim blightings of the dusk. 
 
 And so, in many a subtle way, 
 Her heart was wholly leaguered round 
 And poisoned with a sweet love-wound ; 
 
 And so she learned love day by day. 
 Alas for her again ! She loved 
 
 Deep in her heart, before she knew 
 
 Aught of the ill that love should do 
 To her own heart and him she loved. 
 
 But in good time this thought did grieve 
 
 — All for the ancient love that had 
 Those knights — in secret communing 
 
 Her lover : yea, it made him mad 
 To think that he should e'en deceive 
 That friend of his in such a thing. 
 
 So for his honour he was moved 
 To have good care ; and, sorely rueing, 
 
 With many a penance he reproved 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 His heart, and sought some straight ■undoing 
 
 Of all this toil love's craft had made ; 
 Who held both of them in his hand ; 
 
 Whose fingers were like fetters laid 
 About their hearts. And to withstand 
 Truly in this design, he plann'd 
 
 That he would seek no more her face 
 To see, nor covet to draw near 
 
 For sake of her. in any place : 
 And this he vowed, with many a tear, 
 To do in all faith for a year. 
 
 Fair ladies, think not any shame ; 
 
 For love ye know hath longing feet, 
 Yea, it hath ever been the fame — 
 
 To walk in strange paths of deceit ; 
 I pray you, therefore, think no shame ; 
 For surely it must be the same 
 
 As long as love : so be content ; 
 And I shall set me to repeat 
 
 The whole thing for your ravishment, 
 And truly, for the tale is sweet. 
 
LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 The houses were together quite ; 
 
 The roofs and all the window places 
 Drew nigh with yearning to unite ; 
 
 They were quite like two lovers' faces, 
 Leaving just space enough for sighs 
 
 And fair love looks and soft replies ; 
 You could just see the blue above, 
 
 You were just far enough for breath 
 
 Indeed, or near enough for love ; 
 
 There lay a little turf beneath 
 Where a few sickly flowers grew, 
 
 Chilled by the shadows of the eaves, 
 Warmed by the light that trembled through ; 
 
 A rose all white and with no leaves, 
 
 Slender and like a maid that grieves, 
 And other flowers one or two. 
 
 But round about and from the sides, 
 At every moment you could hear 
 
 A pleasant noise of wind that glides 
 Among thick boughs ; for very near 
 
 There was a garden, and a wood 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 Full of sweet-scented trees that stood 
 
 Shivering for pleasure in the sun, 
 Whose shadows rustled on the wall ; 
 
 There through the day, one after one 
 The sweet birds sang till even-fall ; 
 
 And then they ceased, and the night long, 
 Sang that one sweetest of them all — 
 
 The nightingale, O many a song, 
 Or all one song that could not pall 
 
 Of love luxurious and long. 
 
 And heavy hazel boughs shut in 
 
 The souls and scents of all the flowers, 
 The noon, the flight and the fair hours ; 
 
 And kept the place all dim within, 
 
 A pleasant place for love's sweet sin. 
 The noon fell almost to twilight 
 
 Under the heavy hazel boughs ; 
 
 And the great shadow of each house 
 Growing made dark the other quite ; 
 
 There the dim time was very sweet ; 
 And hours between the noon and night 
 
 Were slow to pass, with lagging feet 
 
LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 And wings full-loaded j tarried late, 
 
 Till long fair fingers from the deep 
 Dark wood came forth to separate 
 
 Leaves, lights from shades and love from sleep, 
 And the moon, like a dreamed-of face 
 
 Seen gradually in the dark, 
 Grew up and filled the silent place 
 
 Between those houses wan and stark. 
 
 After a year that she was wed 
 
 And had well striven with this love, 
 Thought shame of it. well purposed 
 
 To slay it, yet, for all she strove, 
 Loved with a love she could not quell ; 
 After a year, that lady fell 
 
 Quite weak in heart because of it ; 
 She was like one on whom some spell 
 
 111 and mysterious hath lit 
 To work great harm ; she could not tell 
 
 Her beads at night the holy way 
 Her wont, nor any more compel 
 
 Her pining feeble heart to pray ; 
 
 But silently she used the day, 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 13 
 
 Mourning within, and weeping kept 
 The night, and scarcely now she slept. 
 
 One night in the full summer's tide, 
 — Throughout the house no sort of stir, 
 
 — For sleep lay heavily on all 
 Though love most heavily on her, 
 
 She left her lord's bed ; from his side 
 
 Rose softly, with no thought to fall 
 Indeed to any sin ; but all 
 
 To quench and quell the heat she had, 
 
 The heat within that made her mad. 
 
 She threw the casement open quite, 
 
 And let the summer air come in : 
 Have you not stood, the summer night 
 At windows ; felt with soft delight 
 
 The air come from the balmy land 
 Play in your bosom with no sin, 
 
 Play in your bosom like a hand ? 
 She stood and felt it on her brow, 
 
 Like a kiss straying here and there, 
 
 Like light lips playing in the hair ; 
 
14 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 She felt it on her neck, and now 
 
 Creeping through every loosened fold 
 Of the night garment, more and* more 
 
 To slake her body with some cold 
 Sweet touch of dews it thirsted for. 
 The night so softly treated her, 
 
 And, fair and fond, the moon so sought 
 To lure with smiling ; every stir, 
 
 Or breath, or sound, or silence, taught 
 So pure a peace, they cheated her 
 
 Almost of bitterness and thought ; 
 They strove to heal the heaviness 
 And that most secret sore distress 
 
 Of her long ailment for love's sake ; 
 
 And all the night-sounds could not make 
 Her fear for all the loneliness ; 
 Nay, for hard by her in the glade 
 
 Of hazels was the nightingale ; 
 
 And his known singing did not fail, 
 Like a fount babbling in the shade, 
 
 Or music of familiar tale. 
 All the sweet day things were in sight; 
 
 And, with the wandering of her gaze, 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 15 
 
 She sought them now in the changed light, 
 Knew them in each inconstant phase, 
 Found them in each familiar place ; 
 
 She counted all the flowers plain 
 
 Under the house; — she could see quite 
 
 The frail rose-petals with the stain 
 
 Of their scarce love-tint in each vein, 
 Tender and shrinking, almost white : 
 
 There had she looked on them for hours ; 
 It was like dreaming the most sweet ; 
 
 A flower she was among those flowers, 
 
 And soft light touchings of the air 
 For lips of love seemed with full greet 
 
 Kissing around her, faint and fair, 
 
 Over her bosom and her hair. 
 
 But it befell that she was stirred 
 
 Out of the stillness of her dreaming ; 
 A sudden shadow crost the streaming 
 
 Moonlight : some faint sound was heard ; 
 Sure one with step or touch did scare 
 The deep night musings. She aware, 
 
 With sweet forebodings that went through 
 
1 6 LAUST1C; OR, THE 
 
 Her secret soul, scarce her eyes moved 
 For dread, until she saw and knew 
 
 The face of him who was so loved. 
 He was before her in full light ; 
 
 And the great steady moonbeams made 
 The narrow window-ledges bright 
 
 About him ; but a thickened shade 
 Hid all the chamber ; he was leant 
 
 Such way against the inner wall 
 
 Deep in the dark, that scarce at all 
 She saw the uncertain lineament 
 
 Of a dim drapery that let fall 
 About him many a changeful fold ; 
 Maybe sometime his heart was told 
 
 That she had felt his look on her; 
 
 He was as one that could not stir ; 
 Their eyes met : then they seemed to touch 
 
 At length with eyes and lips and face ; 
 For soul yearned forth to soul with such 
 
 A might of 3'earning, all the space 
 Seemed to yield fast between them, yea 
 
 Grew rather to a perfect way. 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 17 
 
 O 'twas a feast in every feeling 
 
 So long a-hungered ; sudden balm, 
 All a long fever slowly healing 
 
 And reaching quickly with its calm 
 Each inmost lurking place of pain, 
 That knew those lovers, seeing plain 
 
 Each other after so long loss ; 
 Eye sated eye, face answered face ; 
 And so their looks did interlace 
 
 They made a shining path across 
 The moonlight in that silent place : 
 For heaped-up floods of long desire 
 
 Were loosened, and there was no power 
 
 In all that tender midnight hour 
 To hold or stand against them, — nay, 
 But rather all things did conspire, 
 
 Moonlight and nightingale and flower, 
 In a sweet aid to help that they 
 Should yet meet love, cheating the day 
 
 And all their niggard fate's hard stress. 
 So the night found for them a breast 
 
 Of dreams and dews, and safe indeed 
 
 Under her hair's dark shining tress, 
 
 c 
 
1 8 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Full of sweet quietness and rest, 
 
 Where they might have their love and lead 
 Its luscious hour without molest. 
 
 They both were pale, and bore long trace 
 
 Of sorrow ; each one read with fears, 
 Looking upon the other's face, 
 Great written histories of weeping, 
 
 Great woven tapestries of tears ; 
 
 Saw the dim stains love cannot hide 
 Under each wan white eyelid keeping 
 
 Piteous record ; found out beside 
 Full many a passage of plain teen, 
 
 And in a writing true and wet 
 
 Of what heart's pain and feeling's fret 
 Through the long desolateness had been ; 
 For, lo ! on either face was cast 
 
 Some shade' of the long bitter past. 
 
 They lingered, learning all these tender 
 Secrets, and loved them as they learned ; 
 
 So each to each, with sweet surrender • 
 Of such sad lore as was hard earned 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 19 
 
 Through so much labour of long grieving, 
 Yielded at length past all deceiving 
 
 The soul's bare surface ; quite revealed 
 Its inward secret of remorse 
 And yearning, that had grown but worse 
 
 Lying all fearfully concealed. 
 But soon their weak hearts did revive 
 With fertile bliss ; and love did thrive 
 
 A pure and spiritual flower 
 Fit to inhabit the soft soils 
 
 And regions in that holy hour 
 Of midnight, fain indeed to live 
 
 For subtle and mysterious joys ; 
 A tender flower, whose sense recoils 
 
 From coarser climes of the day's noise, 
 And sights and shreds of sunlight. Then, 
 
 Their souls made compact to renew, 
 Apart and secret from all men, 
 
 Love-interchangings long and true ; 
 And love's own mystery was done, 
 That silent hour, a way that none 
 
 But the nightingale and the moonlight knew. 
 
LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Love lasted through the summer time ; 
 
 And had a language all its own, 
 Of separate sighs and wordless rhyme, 
 
 Of communing looks and kisses thrown ; 
 And had no need for lustier clime 
 
 Than the unearthly midnight ; grown 
 Estranged at length from all the things 
 
 Whose life sleep steals, but nigh of kin ' 
 To the dim unviewed hoverings 
 
 Of sweet things shadowy and thin 
 That traverse moonlight with pale wings 
 
 Of amber, when on blinded eyes 
 
 Of men some heavy dream-death lies. 
 — For, soon as, with all stealthy creep 
 
 Of rays, the moon came forth again 
 To touch each hostile sight with sleep 
 
 In aid of lovers, not in vain 
 Released, they two did haste to reap 
 
 The great fresh harvest of each heart, 
 Grown up through lonely hours unculled : 
 
 Their lives indeed day tore apart 
 
 And left a-dying ; but each night 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 21 
 
 Came just in saving time, annulled 
 
 The hard day's spell and bade re-plight 
 
 Love's broken bonds with new delight. 
 No moment longer could they sit 
 
 With day-long agonies that strove 
 To bring on night desiring it, 
 Ere from those window-places, lit 
 
 With smiling of the moon, they wove 
 Some mesh of intermingling looks 
 That felt and fastened to each place 
 
 Of beauty, crept to and took hold 
 In all the shadowy nestling nooks 
 Dimmest where love could ever trace 
 
 Love ; and in measure manifold 
 They soon paid back all stolen peace ; 
 
 And with new presence soon consoled 
 All pining ; till the whole disease 
 
 Of sorrow, in each sundered breast 
 Begotten, was divinely cured 
 
 With rapture of most new and blest 
 Communion. Such sweet time, assured 
 
 Of all love's joy, they could consume 
 Serenely in a long-drawn leisure, 
 
LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Fulfilled with many a tranquil bliss, 
 
 Born as mere transitory bloom 
 Upon a branch, for the mere pleasure 
 
 Of fragrance ; many a tiny way, 
 Almost as pleasant as a kiss, 
 
 They found for making a sweet play 
 Of love ; they had continual treasure 
 
 Heaped in their hearts ; things fair to say 
 With looks or tokens ; to relate 
 
 All quaint sad reveries of the thought 
 In loneliness, and through what state 
 The time had brought them ; what new task 
 
 Or pastime loneliness had taught 
 Their fretting fingers ; so to ask 
 And so to render little treats 
 
 Of trusting. Often they had wrought, 
 Seeking such precious toil as cheats 
 Love-languishment, some fair device 
 
 In work of tapestry most fine ; 
 Or on a scroll dainty and nice 
 Set forth most delicate conceits, 
 
 Written in many a pleasant line 
 Of sweet love-poesy : and ways 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 23 
 
 Full easy found they to exchange 
 
 Their gifts and messages athwart 
 The white path of the thin moon-rays, — 
 
 For love did strengthen every art, 
 And, with his charm, subtle and strange, 
 Prospered them, as he doth always, — 
 
 Yea, so they learned a pleasant skill 
 To east those things each unto each, 
 
 And could e'en send them at their will : 
 And truly they failed not' to reach 
 Fair interchange with wafted sign 
 
 Of kissing, or prolonged embrace 
 Of looks ; such way they could combine 
 That many a moment they half felt 
 
 Touchings sweet ; as of face on face, 
 When lips drain lips and eyelids melt 
 
 And meeting tears make soft the place. 
 
 And, more and more, this thing became 
 
 To them a custom, the most sweet 
 In all the heart ; and so the dame 
 Beloved it, she forgot to chide 
 
 Her heart for all this fond deceit ; 
 
24 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Yea, she forgot or cast aside 
 
 Such thought and that it was half sin. 
 
 No man can otherwise abide 
 
 In life but love must enter in : 
 This thing — do what she would — God knew 
 
 She could not help with all her care, 
 Nor change ; for love will have his due ; — 
 
 And before God she was most fair, 
 And wise and good in all her way : 
 
 Himself shall pardon and forbear 
 In all things, as His mercy may. 
 
 So when the night was, and her lord 
 
 Lay in the bed beside her sleeping, 
 She made no stir nor uttered word, 
 But, while the nightingale was heard, 
 
 And all the tender spells were keeping 
 Silence and safety, rose and went 
 
 To greet that lover ; and so stayed, 
 Nor thought that many an hour was spent, 
 
 Ere she returned once more and laid 
 Her down beside her lord, with fear 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 25 
 
 He might have sought her and been wrath 
 Not finding her ; yet, all so dear 
 
 And needful are the needs love hath, 
 That many a time she rose again 
 
 And left him ; who, when he perceived 
 She was so oft away, was fain 
 
 To chide her somewhat ; but believed 
 Her true, and that she had at most 
 Some fantasy of wayward mood, 
 
 To see, maybe, the trees dark-leaved 
 By the pale moonlight shadows crost, 
 Or sickness of some hidden brood 
 
 Of nameless longings unallayed, 
 Wherein he nothing might avail, 
 
 But whereunto some soothing made 
 The still night and the nightingale. 
 
 She was so fair indeed and good, 
 
 And to his word in all so meek, 
 In heart he could not, by the Rood, 
 
 Find chiding for her harsh to speak ; 
 But he did pray her, for the fear 
 
 He had she might attain to ill 
 
26 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Through some chance spell of all the- drear 
 Strange magic of the night, to still 
 Her sad unrest and wanton will ; 
 
 Yea, that she should not, for that bird, 
 Forsake her lord so and her sleep ; 
 
 Whereto she promised with fair word ; 
 And yet from love she could not keep. 
 
 But, on one day, he came, withal, 
 
 And did bespeak her otherwise — 
 Reproaching, and with wrath in all 
 
 He said, — that he indeed was wise 
 Of her whole doing and deceit, 
 
 And of that love she had so sought . 
 To cover with all seeming meet ; 
 
 And for this wrong of will and thought 
 She did his life, he bade her take 
 
 Fair shame ; because himself was -true 
 In all his way with her, nor brake 
 
 His faith at all. — This he would do, 
 He said, because of his love's sake, — 
 He would still bear with her, and hide 
 
 Her fault from men — yea, still renew 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 27 
 
 Some trust in her ; no more to chide 
 
 Or tell her of that thing again ; 
 If she would truly do her part 
 
 For right, and spare not toil or pain 
 In striving till she freed her heart 
 
 From all this grievous bond and stain. 
 
 O when his voice that way she heard, 
 Alas, she could do nought but weep ; 
 
 For very shame of her deceit 
 She fell down in a sorrow deep ; 
 Amid her tears she spake no word 
 
 And looked no look that could but meet 
 With him her husband ; yet she quite 
 
 Desired to touch him and entreat 
 The most of pardon that he might 
 
 For the great wrong of will and thought 
 
 She e'en had done his life ; yea, now 
 She purposed with herself to smite 
 
 And slay this evil love had brought 
 
 Into her heart ; and, with a vow 
 To Mary without sin, she said 
 
 She would make true her living now, 
 
28 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 And of her love make recompense 
 To him her husband ; so she prayed, 
 Through her whole grief and penitence, 
 God might forgive her that offence. 
 
 But lo, as the man went away, 
 He took into his heart that day 
 
 To do a hard thing ; for he hailed 
 His servants all, yea, the whole band 
 Who served with willing heart and hand, 
 
 And briefly spake to them, nor failed 
 To tell them all there was a cause 
 
 Of sore displeasure and unrest 
 
 To her, whom each with service best 
 
 Of love and honour, holding dear 
 Did serve ; wherefore, should each man pause 
 
 In his own labour and forbear 
 
 From doing other far or near, 
 Until he might bring death to pass 
 On such as wrought this ill. Alas, 
 
 For then he said the nightingale, 
 
 He was the doer of the thing ; 
 For that no fowl at all he was, 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 29 
 
 But a magician who, for bale 
 
 And mischief on them all to bring, 
 
 Out of his witcheries did sing 
 So sweetly faining all the nights 
 That he could lure with his delights 
 
 Their mistress from her lord and sleep ; 
 
 Yea, for the singing he did keep 
 All night was truly not of bird, 
 
 For sweetness new and magical 
 Such as no man had ever heard, 
 
 But an enchantment was it all. 
 
 And so, he said, was come to ail 
 
 The gentle lady whom all loved, 
 Yea, she was grown quite wan and pale ; 
 All men had seen it as he told, 
 
 How she became as one sore moved 
 
 With witcheries ; disease she had, 
 A kind that no man could unfold 
 
 With any leechcraft ; fallen and sad 
 She was of face and faint of eye ; 
 
 Her head like any rose's head 
 When it is even come to die ; 
 
30 LAUSTIC; OH, THE 
 
 Her hand too, like a dwindled leaf 
 In autumn time, quite thin and wan ; 
 You might see all the tender thread 
 Of the veins through, it was so thin ; — 
 And this came all of some mischief 
 And not her fault ; for sure no man 
 Stood there to give her word of sin. 
 
 He said too, he was full of fear 
 
 And very heavy sorrowing, 
 To think some ill fate might be near 
 
 Unto them all ; but most to bring 
 
 Great woe upon his house and shame, 
 Or losing of his wife so dear. 
 
 But having heard, all in God's name 
 They joined them to him with a will ; 
 
 And did devote themselves to do 
 
 The thing he said ; yea, in God's name, 
 That no man should take rest until 
 
 So fared he, that he brought or slew 
 Some certain way that bird of ill 
 
 And all his magic overthrew. 
 Then took they many a kind of arm 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 31 
 
 That might such quest of theirs assure ; 
 
 Nor spared they any sort of lure 
 Man makes, that he may take or harm 
 
 In any way of sport the free 
 
 Wild birds that are in field or tree : 
 And, lest some chance should be to save, 
 
 By all his swiftness or his craft, 
 
 That bird from death through snare or shaft 
 Winged of skill from bow, — they gave 
 A care made perfect through long toil 
 
 To make a lime most deadly sure, 
 Yea, so that never bird could foil 
 
 The death of it ; for without cure 
 The touch and poison of it were, 
 
 And the clinging of it most sore : 
 And, truly, this was such a snare 
 
 As fowler never had before. 
 
 And he who moved them to this thing, 
 He led them ; and, when all was made, 
 
 He tarried not their steps to bring 
 Into the garden and the glade 
 
 Where that sweet bird was wont to sing : 
 
32 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 There soon, with voices harsh and rude, 
 They startled all the tender shade, 
 And broods of mysteries that lay 
 
 Of long time in that solitude, 
 Woven among the leaves alway : 
 For there he brought them "on that day, 
 
 In a great troop and multitude, 
 The nightingale to take or slay. 
 
 In truth they had small care or grace ; 
 They trode down all the tender flowers, 
 
 Of whose short sweetness was that place 
 Made fit to serve the short sweet hours 
 That pass and come no more in life ; 
 
 They wrought a ruin in short space ; 
 And hasted in unseemly strife 
 
 With the fair boughs and branches all, 
 And cast their leaves down on the ground, 
 And wounded them with many a wound, 
 
 And many fair trees they made fall. 
 
 But very soon it did not fail, 
 
 Before they had done half their care, 
 And purpose, that they had in snare 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 33 
 
 That craftless bird the nightingale ; 
 Who was so free from stain of sin 
 That way they thought that he was in, 
 
 He fell to them quite unaware 
 It was his death they sought to win. 
 They took and brought him in their hands, 
 
 The life yet in him, to their lord ; 
 
 Who, when he had him, with fair word 
 Praised their good care of his commands ; 
 Then each man went forth to his lands. 
 
 But straight into the house came he, 
 
 That good knight, when the men were gone ; 
 
 Yea, he was even in a haste, 
 And sought his wife where she might be ; 
 
 For yet the thought of the wrong done 
 
 To him in time so little past 
 
 Lay surely bitter at his heart ; 
 So, when he found her there alone, 
 
 He spake her thus and without art : 
 See, wife, he said, here is that bird 
 
 — For well I trow that this is he — 
 Who strangely and so long hath stirred 
 
34 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Thy rest in nights past ; yea, full sore, 
 With all his song and witchery, 
 Hath troubled all thy sleep and me ; 
 
 But now I think he shall no more, 
 
 Nor may a song of his be heard, 
 For I have taken him in snare ; 
 From him and evil everywhere 
 
 May we have peace for evermore. 
 
 So with that word, yea, as he spake, 
 He took him in his hands, and hard 
 
 He wrung him, so the neck he brake 
 
 And took the life away with ease ; 
 And cast him to her afterward ; 
 
 She could no way to save him make, 
 The bird fell dead upon her knees. 
 
 She was in middle of her grief; 
 Striving to take her leave of love, 
 And weeping all the while she strove ; 
 
 But this new woe stole like a thief 
 Her heart, and the sad power to move 
 
 Her tears : first took she scarce belief 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 That it was truly and indeed 
 The singing nightingale she had : 
 
 Yea, no time had she seen him lead 
 
 Life in the body of a bird ; 
 And for his song, holy and sad 
 
 And never with another heard, 
 Angel of God him might she call 
 Or something not to die at all. 
 
 She took him ; in her hand she took 
 
 His body ; and the life was scant 
 Within it, and his blown plumes shook 
 All in a palsy wofully ; 
 
 In his breath too there was no pant, 
 And.no stir at his heart nor look 
 Of-pleasant living in his eye ; 
 
 Surely his soul had broken plight 
 With sweet frail life and left to die 
 
 That relic. To such wretched sight 
 Her tears came quickly, and the thought 
 It almost was her love, so brought 
 
 Before her slain and faded quite 
 To wanness and sad autumn hue, 
 
36 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 The death colour of leaves : she knew 
 Thereby, that, in her life, no more 
 
 Should be that summer colour of love 
 To purple it ; and all the sore 
 Of thought within her filled with pain, 
 
 And grew such burden that she strove 
 If, with lips seeking, she might gain 
 
 — Yea, even out of that bird's bill, 
 A part of death. But, in the end, 
 
 She was turned to another will ; 
 
 She thought it would be sweet to send 
 Unto her lover such last sign 
 
 Of sorrow, and that they must kill 
 
 Both of their hearts and unto deaths . 
 Indeed quite equal them resign ; 
 For that the harder part and fate 
 
 Of life prest with prevailing breaths 
 
 Bitter upon them, governed, gained, 
 And laid such snare for all that late 
 Their fairest, most indulged, their near 
 
 Real seeming dream, that now remained 
 For this no longer any state 
 Or place at all, — but love was clear 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 37 
 
 A thing unrealmed, a prey attained 
 By the hard fastening hounds of grief : 
 
 So she would send that bird — their dear 
 Familiar — as a sign of brief 
 
 Sad parting and of death all shared. 
 
 And now to do this she prepared, 
 And made soon, fair with many a lace, 
 
 A little wallet tapestried 
 
 AVithin of stuffs the richest dyed ; 
 Full daintily she did enchase 
 
 The outer part ; and worked it all 
 
 With broideries symbolical ; 
 And, in the midst, she wrought a place 
 
 For that slain bird ; the body there 
 Lay fitly covered up and prest 
 Upon warm purples ; in a nest 
 
 It seemed, wings folded smooth and fair, 
 And the head sleeping on the breast. 
 A grievous gift was this indeed 
 For love to give. — But, with all speed, 
 
 She did fulfil the thing and dare 
 
 Its piteousness : it was conveyed 
 
38 LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 That trackless way which love had freed 
 Across the unconfessing air. 
 
 Then she said sorrow was all made, 
 To fill her life's long after-year 
 With the full burden she might bear 
 
 Of loneliness and of regret, 
 
 And sharp thoughts with an inward fret 
 Gnawing some remnant of a Past, 
 
 Which should not give them ease while yet 
 At heart the very life might last. 
 She thought how wave of water feeds 
 
 Upon some oasis of earth, 
 
 Where hath been greenness and the birth 
 Of flowers ; — how it takes the reeds 
 One after one, and with its lips 
 
 Sucks in the lilies, makes sweet prey 
 Of all at leisure, and in sips 
 
 Dissolves the whole of it away : 
 She deemed that it should be like this 
 
 With those thoughts ever in her heart, 
 Feeding upon each separate bliss 
 
 That once grew in the fragrant part 
 
LA Y OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 39 
 
 Of life called love : she would find store 
 Of faded relic and perfume, 
 To the most waste and meanest bloom 
 
 That love's great time for her once bore ; 
 
 And sure the heart should be no more 
 Ere such as this might all consume. 
 
 She thought, too, how that flower the Rose, 
 
 — After that it hath filled all June 
 Full of its beauty, as man knows, — 
 How it doth e'en begin to lose 
 
 Softly its colour ; and then soon 
 To let the leaves and petals fall, 
 But with such falling gradual 
 
 As you may count them one by one, 
 Yea, till it droppeth of them all : 
 And with her heart so it should be, 
 
 Yea, with that flower of her heart ; — 
 Full long should be the atrophy 
 
 And falling of it part from part ; 
 And, for it was in the true core 
 And richest soil of memory, 
 
 Beauty of it should not depart, 
 
4o LAUSTIC; OR, THE 
 
 Nor fragrance of it be quite o'er, 
 Till death's own snow for evermore 
 Were fairly laid on all the heart. 
 
 Ah, when the knight, her lover, found 
 And knew that last of gifts from her ; 
 
 Such time now as he slow unwound 
 
 The broidered bindings one by one, 
 His heart within made many a stir 
 
 Trembling, many a time it swooned 
 
 With half foreboding what was done 
 To their hearts equal : soon he read, 
 And could not fail to understand 
 
 The tender silken hieroglyph ; 
 
 And knew it written with her hand, 
 That both had better have been dead 
 
 Than to have loved so ; and that life 
 Had used up sweet and had instead 
 
 No balm but death. — O then he sought 
 
 Indeed for death, that balm, — quite caught 
 And conquered of a great mad sorrow 
 
 That would no healing, while he thought 
 And knew that there should be no morrow 
 
LAY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 41 
 
 For him to look once on her face, 
 Or worship her in any place ; 
 
 That rather, with his heart's great sore 
 Of love, he should go far and near 
 
 About the world for evermore, 
 And get no joy from year to year ! 
 
 Ladies, when he had thought and wept 
 And gazed on that gift many a day, 
 
 For it he found a casket bright 
 Of finest gold ; therein he kept 
 That treasure, and with him alway : 
 
 And then he went with many a knight 
 To save the tomb where Jesu slept : 
 In Palestine, so is the Lay, 
 
 He fell and died in holy fight. 
 
THE 
 
 LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
O Love, where is the bed we made 
 
 In scented wood-ways for sweet sin ? 
 The sun was with us and the shade ; 
 The warm blue covered us in : 
 
 All men their curse on us had laid — 
 Finding had slain us both therein ; 
 But, summer with us, not afraid 
 Were we to love and sin. 
 
 O Love, the crushed place is quite fair ; 
 
 Leaves have sprung back and flowers grown there ; 
 
 The blithe trees no long record bore ; 
 
 The flown bird knoweth no more; 
 
 The hard one never found our lair ; — 
 We are not slain, love, — we are fair, 
 
 And love, ay, as we loved before : 
 
 —Let us go back once more ! 
 
THE 
 
 LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Lady, is there indeed no place 
 
 Beyond the world for thee and me ? 
 Where we may love a little space, 
 
 And joy as any flower or tree 
 That loves the sun ; and half forget 
 
 That life our enemy hath been, 
 And fate a bloodhound keenly set 
 
 To hunt us on through waste and green 
 And night and day and year and year, 
 Lest we should hallow and make dear 
 
 One spot of bitter earth with bliss ? 
 Is there indeed, beyond the day, 
 
 Beyond the eve, beyond the sun, 
 
 No dreamed-of place where we shall kiss, 
 
46 THE LA Y OF THE TWO LO VERS. 
 
 Ay, kiss and put all fear away, 
 
 Death tarrying till our kiss is done ? 
 
 Since I have loved thee, I have known 
 
 Their hard irrevocable doom — 
 Ah, love,- — mine henceforth and thine own- 
 
 Whose lives are re-born in the womb 
 Of love : it seems all common food 
 
 That erst might feed them shall no more 
 Bring to them any taste or good ; 
 
 Eut they shall go in hunger sore, 
 Seeking some manna that scarce falls 
 
 On earth ; and, surely, their lives long, 
 Full of sad secrets the world calls 
 
 By names of shame, shall seem a wrong 
 To them and to the world. For, sure, 
 
 Both I and thee, whom this fair bower 
 And frail night spells somewhile secure, 
 
 Whom a thin heaven of scent and flower 
 Doth feebly part from outer deaths 
 
 Awaiting sore and manifold 
 With stings of hate and long fierce breaths 
 
 Of cursing, — small share do we hold 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 47 
 
 Of any meanest privilege 
 
 To have and use our common lives 
 
 With joy : but, rather, this love drives 
 Our doomed days cowering to some edge 
 
 Of loveless strong humanity ; 
 
 And we are kin with some who lie 
 Slain shamefully on bitter grounds 
 
 Where grew their furtive flower of sweet ; 
 And some who, foiling the strong hounds 
 
 Of tracking hate, have fled for meet 
 Safe cover where the trees held shade, 
 
 Or grass and thornbush knew the feet 
 Of many a hunted thing afraid 
 
 Of the sun's smile ; who, through great plight 
 With death and very choice to die, 
 Have rapturously cared to buy 
 
 One little year, one day, one night 
 Of their lives' confiscated own, 
 
 Wherein to taste indeed of love 
 The great forbidden good unknown, — 
 
 Yea, these may call us nought above 
 Brother or sister ; and take hands 
 
 Of us and lead us, as they shall, 
 
48 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Joined ever to their fameless bands 
 
 Who, of all ages and all lands, 
 Do bear one sad memorial 
 That here love hath no heaven at all. 
 
 My love, I have a lay well fit 
 
 For me to sing and thee to hear ; 
 For they of whom I find it writ 
 
 Did long time, amid hope and fear, 
 Love secretly ; having of fate 
 The seeming fair things and good state 
 
 Dull men are mocked with ; but no place 
 Or liberty, by day or night, 
 
 To look upon that other face 
 Life had for them shedding strange light 
 
 Upon their inward thoughts. In fair 
 Green midst of mountain-lands they dwelt, 
 
 In Val de Pistre ; for 'twas there 
 A certain king had sometime built 
 
 His castle. She, of whom I sing, 
 Was e'en the princess and his child, 
 
 Whom he would marry, coveting 
 To strengthen by harsh means or mild 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 49 
 
 His hated sway, to some hard lord 
 Of neighbouring hosts. But love had wrought 
 So fair a miracle and taught 
 
 Such strength to her, that no sharp sword 
 Might have compelled her to this thing. 
 And now a year was he besought 
 
 Of many, who, with pitying, 
 Beheld her beauty and the death 
 
 Love surely did intend to bring 
 Upon her, yea to the last breath, 
 
 That he would even let her wed 
 
 The fair youth, whose, alive or dead, 
 She could not fail to be. Alas, 
 
 He grew the harder, and took rage 
 Against them : so it came to pass 
 
 Their two lives, full of sad presage, 
 And faint with thoughts despairing fret, 
 
 Were leaguered round about with fear ; — 
 Yea, fear was as a demon set 
 
 About their steps both far and near 
 In every moment, in the dark 
 
 And in the day : the future year, 
 
 That once had glimmered from afar 
 
 e . 
 
So THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 With many a beacon-ray and spark, 
 
 Like distant heavens of some star, 
 Was changed and faded now — yea, changed, 
 
 As though with long dim ambushed gleams 
 Of deaths in shadowy phalanx ranged 
 
 Against their coming days : their dreams 
 Were very heavy with the clank 
 
 And echo the chained days still made 
 Around them ; and oft-times they shrank 
 
 From sleep, as though hard hands were laid 
 Upon the wide unguarded heart 
 To read each open thrill and start. 
 
 They had been happy, yea, in truth 
 A few sweet hours of precious youth, 
 
 Ere the world found them. Once and more, 
 The rich effusion of some kiss 
 
 Had warmed shy scents the roses bore, 
 Making the full heart of some noon 
 Their own most strangely, in a bliss 
 
 No summer knew or felt before 
 They loved ; and, once and more, the swoon 
 
 Of eve had lengthened out some joy 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 51 
 
 Of theirs, delaying the hard chill 
 
 And dim affright that would destroy 
 Too shortly such a day, until 
 
 The blithe eternal nightingale 
 
 Had seen and known, and did not fail 
 To sing that, though hard fate should kill 
 
 The twain that midnight, they had taste 
 Of sweet, for one rich day of life. 
 Many a garden place was rife 
 
 With tender record of fond waste 
 Of hours and broken words and sighs, 
 
 In the long innocence when love 
 Kept fearful fetters on their eyes 
 
 And lips and hearts, the more to prove 
 His strong life-filling flower, one day 
 
 A bursting blossom not forborne. 
 But now the fair earth turned away 
 
 Her summer from them : on no morn 
 Did shy beams, stealing from the sun, 
 
 Bring early promise of joy bom 
 To fill them till that day was done 
 
 In some close paradise oft bloom, 
 
 Where love had made them a fair room 
 
52 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 With unbetraying bird and tree 
 
 And sleek scared fawn. — O but to see 
 
 The warm bright chambers under leaf 
 Sun-streaked and gilded morn and noon ; 
 
 The burrow under the arched sheaf 
 Whose crowned heads nodded to some tune 
 
 Of wordless wavy motion, dim 
 And dense with harvest scent that drew 
 
 The brown bee blundering o'er the rim 
 To drone about them the noon through ! 
 O but to see, yea, once again, 
 
 Though but to weep, the bed they left 
 Of prest and tumbled leaves with stain 
 
 Of fair crushed flowers, the day he reft 
 The first long willing bliss from her, 
 And she felt safe to touch and stir 
 
 The strange and gracious hair he had 
 That once so lured her, as a thing 
 Whereon love's blessing seemed to cling ! — 
 
 Ah, she had said, it would be sad 
 For her, then in the world, when time 
 
 Were come that she could no more touch 
 His warm drooped head, nor draw the rhyme 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 53 
 
 Of soft words from his lips once more, 
 Watching and loving overmuch 
 Each passionate corner of his mouth : 
 
 And now 'twas almost come, that sore 
 Too bitter time of her heart's drouth. 
 
 Their place was no more in the bloom ; 
 All ruined was it ; and their doom 
 
 Was a thing sung of by the bird 
 That long had caught his rhapsody 
 
 Straight out of their charmed thinking, heard 
 And felt like some strong melody 
 
 The corn or trees made, wordless, wild, 
 Most wonderful : in the grey shade, 
 The searched and trampled solitude 
 
 Still bore the curses that defiled 
 Its echoes ; all the mournful glade 
 Had heard dread shouts and voices rude ; 
 
 Yea, the whole country no more had 
 One shelter of sweet green, one wood, 
 
 One safe path bright for them, not one ; 
 
 But bitter seemed its smile, and sad 
 And like an alien land it grew, 
 
54 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 That put scorn of them in its sun, 
 And death lurked in its shade they knew. 
 
 And now Death only let them draw 
 Each unto each, when most they drew 
 
 Nigh to himself : he only saw 
 Dread lonesome places where they came 
 
 In the dark, beautiful and white 
 Beyond their wont ; oft-times blue flame 
 
 Quite clothed the marsh plants, and the night 
 Down there felt horror, seeing that one 
 
 So clasped and revelled on the slight 
 
 Soft splendours of a woman — death 
 Hard over him as a prey won — 
 Death stretching to him with armed hands 
 
 Nigh clutching at the throat where breath 
 Quivered so rapturously. 
 
 Ah, love, 
 There was no path to other lands, 
 
 Save only by the mountain steep 
 And desolate, that stood above 
 
 A mighty way and seemed to sleep 
 On through the year in storm or rain. 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 55 
 
 And yet, thou must be sure, so vain 
 
 The fair world seemed, they oft would pray 
 Their tenderest fate might show them plain, 
 
 Through some safe chasm, the merest way 
 To any desert of the earth, 
 Far from that country of their birth 
 
 Where they were aliens. Many a hope 
 Had fallen from them. 
 
 Fearful seemed 
 
 That mountain in the distance ; slope 
 
 On slope of green they counted high 
 Upon its side — down which there streamed 
 
 Whole rivers fallen from the sky : 
 But, sometimes, they had even dreamed 
 
 There was a way to heaven, past 
 The topmost crag and precipice ; 
 
 Often a golden cloud was cast 
 Across it bright, and like a piece 
 
 Of purest heaven it floated there 
 
 And faded not : but in the fan- 
 Angelic moonlight quite a strange 
 
 Most holy smile seemed resting wide 
 Upon its height, working some change 
 
56 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Of snowy mystery : one noontide 
 
 They saw high up there, nigh the sun, 
 
 Fair arched paths, gleaming every one 
 
 As though the winged angels trod 
 
 Them oft-time going up to God. 
 
 Then, for no better thing they yearned, — 
 
 Seeing the whole green world below, 
 
 Yea, and as far as they might go 
 Fleeing for ever, was all turned 
 
 Against their love, — than to be there, 
 Quite saved above the ken and reach 
 Of any man, where each to each 
 
 Might yield some latest hour more fair 
 Than all life past, and truly will 
 The utter breath to love, until 
 
 Some charmed sleep, wonderful and soft, 
 With deep strange soothings and long dreams 
 Of wings and golden miles of light, 
 
 Should take them ; wherefrom, perhaps, oft 
 Awaking before death, warm gleams 
 Of the same sun would show them, bright, 
 
 The unchanged earth beneath them yet, 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 57 
 
 Their two selves, and the broad waste green, 
 Full of light singing wind and hum 
 
 Ineffable, where to forget 
 All but one love they twain were come. 
 
 And now that love of theirs, I ween, 
 
 Had even brought them, through fond sin, 
 Past many a death that land decreed ; 
 
 And the king strove a while between 
 A voice at heart that entered in 
 Like a returning bird indeed 
 
 By disused unfamiliar ways, * 
 
 With pleading overmuch of days 
 
 When she, now scorned and half condemned, 
 Seemed yet his child fair and unshamed, 
 
 A perfect promiser of joys ; — 
 And the loud whisper of the land 
 
 And the unanswered urging voice 
 Of many a counseller who planned 
 
 This way and that to save the law : 
 
 But day by day could only draw 
 
 One thing the nearer to them — death. 
 
58 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Yea, as I singing of this lay, 
 
 — Knowing myself e'en such as they 
 
 Of whom I sing, one changed and filled 
 And lifted by a great pure love, 
 
 That is much stronger than aught willed 
 By me, and seemeth much above 
 
 This world, — as I do feel my heart 
 Rise many a time and glow and yearn 
 
 Like a thing doomed and set apart 
 
 For perfect sacrifice, — I say , 
 As one who learneth and shall learn, 
 Those lovers and their love so fair 
 
 Had condemnation from the day 
 The bitter world began ; both there, 
 
 And in all lands beneath the sun, 
 And here as there, and now as then, 
 
 Other than this had not been done 
 
 By the world unto them : for lo, 
 They be few women and few men, 
 
 — Of thousands here that come and go, 
 By life-long ways named virtue, shame 
 Sin, innocence, mightiness or fame, 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Whither I know not, — few they be 
 
 That reach or touch, conceive or see, 
 Through all mock strivings, kisses, prayers 
 Cold passions, measured lusts of theirs, 
 
 This one love — led to every way; 
 
 Which whoso winneth, from that day 
 Hath heavens within him all unfurled 
 
 And clear sights of the other side 
 Of death. But half loves in the world, 
 
 And lusts, the dead roots that divide 
 From the spurned cast off flower, are great, 
 
 And many as mankind, crouch down 
 Timid and loathsome, without fate 
 
 Or hope or pang or passionate crown, 
 Dying among the deaths and days. 
 
 And these ignobly safe, being shorn 
 Of all the measureless curse or praise 
 
 Of love's unmeasured futures — bom 
 Inevitably to the whole 
 True daring venture of the soul 
 
 Eternal through its chosen hell 
 Or, chosen heaven, — these do possess 
 
 59 
 
60 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 The altered earth, first peopled well 
 By love's first self; now to oppress 
 
 His straggling offspring, like some rare 
 
 And winged alien, having share 
 Of unknown being with the blue 
 
 And supernatural places fair. 
 
 — O Lady mine is this not true ? 
 
 Were it not better I and you 
 
 Had found some straight way long ago 
 Up to the place we seem to know 
 
 With all our mingled being, hard by 
 
 In new parts of our destiny, 
 Or even dwelt in, as doth seem, 
 In parts so far they form a dream 
 
 Within and round us ?■ — Mistress mine, 
 
 Since here the charmed space of a vine, 
 A few leaves shade, is all love's bower, 
 And all the time one reckless hour 
 
 Of treacherous night, wherein a cry 
 
 Too sharp amid our ecstasy 
 
 Must surely doom us ; and since now, 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 61 
 
 Ay, more and more, we do avow 
 No wild wide earth were wide enough, 
 But the immenseness of our love 
 
 Must have its ending in some star, — 
 
 Were it not even better far 
 We had found freedom the first days, 
 
 And earned with our first kiss's breath 
 
 Some easy momentary death ? 
 
 O to wake strangely in fair ways 
 Past every bar of death and birth, 
 
 Launched high above all law and hate 
 
 Or memory of the finished fate 
 Of sloughed pasts in a cast off earth, — 
 
 And bare and shameless through the whole 
 
 Eternal unreproved soul, 
 To lead on, formed into its form 
 
 And fated with its fate, this strong 
 
 Compelling passion, great and long, 
 And one in me and thee ! — The storm 
 
 Of all the blind divine first things, 
 
 Whose vast eternal wills and wings 
 Bear them fulfilling, age on age, 
 
62 THE LA Y OF THE TWO LO VERS. 
 
 The nameless elemental rage 
 
 Of the same lusts, loves, hungers, thirsts, 
 
 That God who gave can ne'er assuage — 
 
 The storm of the great universe, 
 With all its tidal throes and bursts 
 Of passionate being and excess, 
 
 Should set us free of fate and curse 
 And shame and tyranny and stress 
 Of day and night — me to possess 
 Thy soul and body for no less 
 
 Than thine and mine eternity, 
 
 And thee to give thyself to me 
 
 Through all thou art or hast to be. 
 
 I wonder, Love, in what sad way 
 Of sudden bitter pang or shame, 
 The world, that calleth by a name 
 Of sin this love of ours, shall slay, 
 Thinking to end us? — On that day, 
 
 Shall we have dreamed of death at all ? — 
 Shall we be sundered for the space 
 Of some blind fearful moment, face 
 Unsoothed by face, so that we fall 
 
THE LA Y OF THE TWO LOVERS. 63 
 
 Alone through the first dreary waste, 
 Amazed with sickening doubt of death 
 And love and fate? — Or shall the breath 
 
 Of our two beings, in their blithe haste 
 
 Escaping, meet, ere yet the taste 
 Of holy agony hath ceased ? 
 
 Ah, well could I desire that they — 
 The twain whose one love was released 
 
 In Val de Pistre, years gone by, 
 
 Of whom I sing now — lest we try 
 
 This perilled hour with too much bliss — 
 Were e'en ourselves. Lady, one kiss, — 
 
 And I will finish now my lay. 
 
 Though men and women in their land 
 Did wear the lure of softened looks, 
 
 And spake love-speeches, and laid hand 
 In wedded hand, and read in books 
 
 Much gracious and real lore of love ; — 
 Yea, though they were right fair withal, 
 
 And bore rich outward shows enough 
 
 To cheat love's self with welcoming, — 
 
64 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Yet dwelt they, men and women all, 
 In hells of their own fashioning, 
 Where golden good of life was turned 
 
 To each foul contrary, and love 
 The true god, some rare day returned 
 In stainless perfect semblance bright, 
 Looked shamed and hideous in the light 
 
 Of long age-honoured lies, above 
 One hearf s weak will to change or break. 
 Long years ago some fatal snake 
 
 Had crept among their hearts, and shed 
 
 The venom of false shames and dread 
 Between them all ; and now the heart 
 
 Lied back unto the heart that lied ; 
 
 And life lived false with life and died 
 
 Faining a faithless sanctity : 
 Yea, so that now, for each man's part 
 In life and good, God's changeless sun, 
 
 The green gay earth, the blithe blue sky 
 
 That spake unchanged of love did lie. 
 
 And, therefore, very few or none 
 Of.all those men and women, framed, 
 
THE LA Y OF THE TWO LOVERS. 65 
 
 As even they two and as we, 
 To know love and be known unshamed 
 
 Of love, had eyes at all to see 
 Or hearts to feel or voice to cry 
 
 That these were very far from sin 
 And had done nought that they should die 
 Like caitiffs : rather all could say 
 
 Some slight thing treasured up within, 
 Condemning them from some past day 
 
 When they but used the sun and bloom 
 And rapture of their frank fair world, 
 
 And knew not that its least perfume 
 
 And lightest joy were long become 
 Things chained and confiscate. Back-hurled 
 Upon their hearts in cruel hard 
 
 Accusing, knew they now e'en some 
 
 Of their own sweet words, whispered low 
 Where they were fit, for skies fair starred 
 
 And guileless birds and leaves to know 
 And take for music, not for ears 
 Of those who turn sweet words to spears 
 
 Against the heart from whence they flow. 
 
66 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 And, truly, since the king had set 
 His utter curse upon the twain, 
 
 And would not have the law be let 
 From punishing, they had been slain 
 
 With common sinners the first day — 
 
 None finding in his heart a way 
 To save them, — only for this thing, 
 That she was daughter of the king 
 
 And might not fall beneath the hand 
 
 Of any subject in the land. 
 
 So, many a hopeless day, meantime, 
 
 Was added to their numbered days. 
 
 At last spake some one that their crime 
 Should be for God to take the right 
 
 To punish or forgive, in ways 
 Of some ordeal in the sight 
 Of all. And being nigh the year's 
 
 Great day of meeting and of sports, 
 
 When trials many and of sorts 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 67 
 
 Most various did engage all fears 
 
 And hopes, — the king made this decree ; 
 
 That, whosoe'er the man might be 
 That claimed the princess for his love, 
 H« should that day be man enough 
 
 To bear her strongly in his arms 
 Quite up the mountain, and again 
 
 To bring her back, — as through all harms 
 And o'er steep mountains of the pain 
 
 Of life a man must truly bear 
 
 The woman whom he hath : — for clear 
 It seemed, the toil, so far, alas, 
 All simple strength of man did pass, 
 
 None other could have heart to try 
 
 But he whose love to live or die 
 With her was equal. 
 
 On the night 
 
 Before that day, the common voice 
 
 Of folk who scarcely had a choice, 
 So they beheld the morrow's sight, 
 
 Between the ending well or ill 
 Of these, did on all sides declare 
 
 That, unless God should take the will 
 
68 THE LA Y OF THE TWO LO VERS. 
 
 To save those lovers, and prepare 
 Some wondrous miracle to show 
 
 His mercy on them, by their sure 
 Disaster, quickly all must know 
 
 Their way was neither good nor pure. 
 
 But, on that night, without a fear, 
 As though sure happiness were near, 
 
 The two who loved vowed each to each 
 The extreme day left or the year 
 
 Of life to come ; and death could teach 
 No unknown grief to them it seemed ; 
 But rather many sweet things dreamed 
 
 Should be accomplished to them then : 
 And, on the other hand, there gleamed, 
 
 As though from no short lives that men 
 Had power to trample out and end, 
 
 The clear untroubled heaven within 
 Each soul, that love had made descend — 
 An inextinguishable part 
 
 Of some eternity, akin 
 
 To nothing that took change and death 
 Of earth : more wonderful at heart 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 69 
 
 The great resplendent secrets grew, 
 
 *That could not find a word or breath 
 To bear their telling, while they two 
 
 Sat fated in the darkening world 
 That one night before fate : and, free, * 
 The thoughts for which strange lives shall be 
 
 Hereafter, entered and unfurled 
 Their depths and passed between them free. 
 And through an unrecorded hour, 
 
 Wherein the multitudes of men, 
 With the amassed tyrannic power 
 
 Of all their laws, became again 
 As in the ancientness, when earth 
 Held not one place of death or birth, — • 
 
 It came to pass indeed that they, 
 
 With nought belonging to the day 
 Of common life upon them, whole 
 In the eternity that soul 
 
 Did give to soul, sat quite alone, 
 
 As a man doth the hour unknown 
 Before his death, in the great bare 
 
 Unalterable midst of hell 
 And heaven. 
 
7 o THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 And then were they aware 
 Of being severed from all kin, 
 
 And alien from the ill or well, 
 And the law making good or sin 
 
 To any creature : only they, 
 — Henceforth together — should begin 
 One new almighty spirit, free 
 
 With its own good and evil way 
 And power to end itself or be 
 For ever. 
 
 Such a distant sight 
 
 They had, beyond the daily haze 
 Of bounded vision, at the height 
 And depth of endless destiny 
 
 That love's inevitable ways 
 
 Had wrought for them, — they little knew, 
 
 That eve, how tenderly the blue, 
 Richer with many a memory 
 Out of their open hearts, gave birth 
 
 To every rapturous burning star ; 
 Nor with what perfumed hands the earth 
 
 Made miracles of sweetness far 
 Into the yielding night : and, ere 
 
THE LA Y OF THE TWO LOVERS. 71 
 
 The yet unbroken chains of their 
 
 Short sundered being drew back each soul 
 To fill and feel the rest of fate 
 
 This side of death, alas, this whole 
 Accursed world, where lusts and hate 
 Have tracked and slaughtered love, lay drear 
 
 In dews of chill tears hardening sore 
 
 To add to cruel days one more 
 And not yet be consumed ; while, near, 
 
 Their own yet unattainable, 
 
 Gleamed only fair the heaven where dwell 
 Love's saved ones deathless, night and day 
 
 Itself transfigured with the spell 
 That took their first life's tears away. 
 
 Ah, and the rest is strange enough 
 To common earth-folk, whose cold faith 
 
 Is coined out of some bitter lie 
 Of their polluted lives ; whose wraith 
 
 Goes downward to the dung and dust 
 They worshipped in the stead of love : 
 
 But — Love of mine — if thou or I 
 
 Should doubt love's miracle, whose trust 
 
72 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Is in his heaven for which we die 
 Dishonoured in our lives, — then, mad 
 
 And hopeless were our hearts, and we 
 In all thrice wretched, and this sad 
 
 World-exile thrice a hell ! 
 
 — Now She 
 Who came unto them on the morn 
 
 ' That brought their fate, and, in the ear 
 Of multitudes whose ready scom 
 
 Turned to amaze, said she was near 
 
 Among a kin that held them dear, 
 From time ere unseen hands had torn 
 
 Their ways asunder, — to the dull 
 And jeering folk she seemed a crazed 
 
 Long widowed woman used to cull 
 Strange herbs at night time : but there blazed 
 
 At once, unshrouded, on the twain 
 The beauty in her and the might 
 Of a love-angel long in light ; 
 
 And gathered on no pallid plain 
 By moonlit magic were the charms 
 She gave them : for straight into arms 
 
 Of tripled strength the lover took 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 73 
 
 His love — to win her so or look 
 His last upon the world that day. 
 
 O sweet and swift was the first way : 
 
 — Bearing her from the one dark place 
 
 In all God's universe where still 
 She was not his : winning her more 
 
 At every step ; mere earthly space 
 
 And ruggedness between the chill 
 
 Man's hand that severed and the thrill 
 Of God's that should unite ! 
 
 Grass bore 
 The blithe steps gratefully ; and wings 
 
 Of hurrying wind, outstripping, fanned 
 
 And fretted many a mile of green 
 That waved with gracious murmurings 
 
 To the brink of the seeing ; keen 
 
 Delicious scent was in the land ; 
 And every little joy that sings 
 
 Close to its parent clod, unseen 
 In minute mystery, rang out 
 
 That morn its perfect rapturous chime : 
 And, far behind, the human shout 
 
74 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Fell faint and fainter every time, 
 Baffled and wavering about 
 The mazes of the upward way. 
 
 And then they entered on the fair 
 
 And fearful solitudes that day 
 And night made in the mountain, — air 
 Immeasurable, and light and space, 
 
 And burning breadth of heaven, and steep 
 Interminable slopes that face 
 The blue and lead up to the blue. 
 
 It was the very dream that sleep 
 Had oft beguiled them with, made true 
 
 And mightier far ; the green sheer side 
 Of earth rose boundless, unbeheld 
 Of any living thing beside 
 
 Themselves : the equal infinite 
 Of heaven uncomprehended held 
 
 The other dazzling half of light, 
 Endless and fathomless ; and both 
 
 Seemed worlds to them where they might choose 
 
 To wander out their lives and lose 
 Rich unrecorded days, in troth 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 75 
 
 With some indulgent death that left 
 The lips beloved with the lips 
 
 That loved, and, ending them, scarce reft 
 
 More from them than, with honied theft, 
 Some love-sleep steals of bliss, that nips 
 
 An agonizing joy in twain. 
 And here they knew that they were fain 
 
 To cast away all hope and fear ; 
 
 And pass unnamed from men, and near 
 To none affranchisement more blest 
 Than that first licence the mere breast 
 
 Of an untrodden earth and drear 
 Desired solitude did hold 
 
 To lure them to ignoble rest. 
 
 Calm was the never ending wave 
 
 Of wild mysterious wind, that rolled 
 
 Through changeless ages there, — that brought 
 Nor good nor evil thing and wrought 
 
 No change : and peaceful, as a grave 
 
 Without the memory of a man 
 Or knowledge of a god, the dim 
 
 Grey grass immeasurable ran, 
 
76 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Receding ever, to some rim 
 Where shone, all brandished in the blue, 
 
 Its coarsely golden heads ; and here 
 It seemed indeed that God scarce knew 
 
 The hoary age of Time or where 
 Was ending or beginning. 
 
 And it was wonderful, yea, past 
 The loveliest bewildering 
 
 Of dreams, all suddenly, at last, 
 
 In such an endless fearless place— 
 Where was no least remembering 
 Of sweet or bitter — for the first 
 
 Illimitable moment's space, 
 
 To feel the loneliness of face 
 
 With yearning face, and love with love, 
 And passionate soul with soul that durst 
 
 All depth and height of passion. 
 
 Above 
 
 Their infinite will that moment reigned • 
 No law, but such as the wild wills 
 And endless energies of storms 
 
 And seas, and all things unrestrained 
 
THE LA Y OF THE TWO LO VERS. 77 
 
 Rule themselves with for aye ; and vast, 
 
 As the most fatal force that thrills 
 
 Through endless chaos and reforms 
 The earth and heavens, was all desire 
 
 Of their two spirits — now, at last, 
 
 In irrepressible ways to blend, 
 Fulfilling heaven or adding fire 
 
 To hell — one spirit to the end. 
 Wherefore, indeed, face tempted face 
 
 With a long fatal look, that wore 
 The haggard irresistible grace 
 
 Of utmost yearning ; and no more 
 
 The eager passionate heart forbore 
 The heart's temptation, for the sake 
 Of any false faith in the earth 
 
 Left bitterly ; but sweetest lures 
 That, perishably perfect, take 
 Imperishable loves of birth 
 
 That robs or peoples heaven, did tempt 
 
 And take their souls. 
 
 Lust, that endures 
 While only the alluring hair 
 
 Hath the world's sun in it, exempt 
 
78 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 From aught of the world's change; while, fair 
 In the world's fickle thought, the snare 
 
 Of lips and limbs and eyes doth hold 
 
 The glitter of its fading gold, — 
 Knoweth not wherefore they forsook 
 
 The safe returning paths that day,. 
 
 And such remaining fate as lay 
 Among mankind, and, with a look 
 
 Mirroring the immensity 
 Of blue above them, mutely took 
 
 Unknown irrevocable doom 
 Among all endless creatures, high 
 
 As stars or lowly as the bloom 
 Upon the humble earth : but love 
 That gave an earth knew well what love 
 Gave heaven ; and either lover's soul 
 
 Knew to God's judgment day, the whole 
 
 Loved story of the other's soul. 
 
 So they went upward, still, to leam 
 The mystery of the mountain. Day 
 On day, they ever found some way 
 
 Higher and stranger, past return, 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 79 
 
 Leading up through the solitude 
 
 They sought. And, one by one, earth's rude 
 Horrific semblances, that hold 
 
 Mere changeless secrets of a love 
 
 The world has grown unworthy of, 
 Half fearless for the holy gold 
 
 Within them,. laid by many a veil, — 
 
 Seeing, that, more and more, the might 
 Of love eternal did enfold 
 
 And change and beautify with light 
 Those wanderers. 
 
 And one day they knew 
 There was another wanderer too 
 
 In that fair mountain ; for the pale 
 World-angel Death did haunt it through ; 
 
 Many times, midmost of some waste 
 
 Quite pathless ; or on narrowest place 
 Precipitous, had they even met 
 
 With wondrous and mysterious trace 
 
 Of him, that stayed the very haste 
 
 Of their freed feet, and turned the thought 
 Within them to a dream as yet 
 
 Beyond their bearing : and they caught, 
 
80 THE LA Y OF THE TWO LO VERS. 
 
 Oft-times, some little sound of his, 
 
 Coming unearthly as a sharp 
 And rending cry up the abyss, 
 Or taken for the sudden hiss 
 
 Of a snake near them. 
 
 But at night 
 They heard him, when that mountain, wild 
 
 With hollow ways, became a harp 
 
 Whereon he poured the fearful might 
 Of an immense strange music, full 
 Of storms and thunders, sometimes mild 
 And bringing the delicious lull 
 
 Of an unearthly dream, but great, 
 And hundred voiced and all his own 
 For ever. Then they saw that lone 
 
 And mighty one — that savage mate 
 Of solitude; yea, once, afar, 
 
 And turned from them, and making way 
 
 Tremendous on the height where lay 
 The snowy shroud of moon and star ; 
 Then once again ; then many a time 
 
 Descried they him, scarce nigh, in pose 
 
 Of thinking thoughts that no man knows ; 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. Si 
 
 Or fearful in his haste to climb 
 
 Some distant craggy way of peak 
 
 And precipice, hung between hell 
 And heaven. At length, spite of the sun, 
 
 Nigh every day they saw him well, 
 
 Crouched sullen, or in hideous freak 
 Out on the sunny ledges sheer 
 And glittering. Scarce he seemed to shun 
 
 The sight of them ; though dark and lost 
 
 And heedless seemed he if he crost 
 Their path; but, now and then, would peer 
 
 Intently at them from behind 
 
 Some rugged hiding, with no mind 
 To bring to pass on them his change 
 
 In any bitter sort. 
 
 And so, 
 They were a distance great and strange 
 Above the world : they knew no more 
 
 The shadowy place of it, below 
 
 The silver of the closing clouds 
 That spread beneath them like a floor ; 
 
 Slowly too, had they felt that shrouds 
 Of fearless sweet forgetfulness, 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Gathering all within, did hide 
 
 And shut off from them, and make less 
 And less the knowledge of their tried 
 
 Hard being in the past. Their love 
 
 Was growing with them as the light 
 Made in the sun's clear central mine, 
 That long hath burnt a way through shred 
 
 Of vapoury veil ; so they did move 
 
 And live in it, and, in the bright 
 Transfigurement thereof, did shine 
 Wondrously each on each, and wed 
 
 Their perfect emanating bliss 
 
 In ways of an eternal kiss. 
 
 I cannot find a subtle sound 
 
 Of words, in which it can be said, 
 How the great tides of glory roll, 
 
 Over some unperceived last bound, 
 Inward upon the open soul 
 
 For ever. Softly, while each way 
 And want and manner of the earth 
 
 — Disused, relinquished, — fell away 
 
 And ceased from them, did they change, 
 
THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 83 
 
 Scarcely with dying or with birth— 
 Into the endless element 
 Begun within, the day there went 
 The first love-lightning, swift and strange, 
 Between them, in that lower land 
 Where love's elect are a small band. 
 
 Yea, even as now their feet had made 
 
 Ever an upward way that led 
 From the dull earth, from the cold shade, 
 Ever toward some higher height, 
 
 Where yet their spirits should be fed 
 Upon unearthlier air and light, 
 And yet more perfectiy fulfil 
 
 The high and deep law of their love, — 
 Yea, even as now they went and still 
 
 Found there was love and light above; 
 And shining changes yet to teach 
 Their souls, and loftier joys to reach — 
 
 So, when at length, upon the last 
 Chill summit of the earth they stood, 
 
 And all the earthliness had passed 
 Fairly away from them, a good 
 
84 THE LAY OF THE TWO LOVERS. 
 
 And never-ending sight they had 
 Of heaven and higher heaven ; and, free, 
 
 With winged feet that were bright and glad 
 To walk upon the silver sea 
 
 Of airy cloud and air, no stay 
 
 They made, but upward a great way 
 
 Went ever, loving ever, yea, 
 And drawing nigh to Love. 
 
 And now, 
 Alas, that neither I nor thou 
 
 Can know the full and perfect fate 
 They have ; nor where at length they are ; 
 
 Nor for what fairer thing they wait, 
 If yet they have not come to be 
 
 All things divinely. — But yon star, 
 
 .That doth not seem indeed so far, 
 Hath all this lore ; yea, and each free 
 
 Undefiled flower in the grass 
 
 Knows and sees plainly in the glass 
 Of heaven : and we know not, alas ! 
 
 Yet shall their fate, whate'er it be, 
 Come very soon on me and thee ! 
 
Would I might go far over sea, 
 My Love, or high above the air, 
 
 And come to land or heaven with thee, 
 
 Where no law is and none shall be 
 Against beholding the" most rare 
 
 Strange beauty that thou hast for me. 
 
 Alas, for, in this bitter land, 
 
 Full many a written curse doth stand 
 
 Against the kiss thy lips should bear ; 
 Against the sweet gift of thy hand ; 
 Against the knowing that thou art fair, 
 And too fond loving of thy hair ! 
 
CHAITIVEL; 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 
 
Fair yellow murderess, whose gilded head 
 
 Gleaming with deaths ; whose deadly body white, 
 Writ o'er with secretr records of the dead ; 
 
 Whose tranquil eyes, that hide the dead from sight 
 Down in their tenderest depth and bluest bloom ; 
 
 Whose strange unnatural grace ; whose prolonged youth- 
 Are for my death now and the shameful doom 
 
 Of all the man I might have been in truth 
 
 Your fell smile, sweetened still, lest I might shun 
 
 Its lingering murder, with a kiss for lure, 
 Is like the fascinating steel that one 
 
 Most vengeful in his last revenge and sure 
 The victim lies beneath him, passes slow, 
 
 Again and oft again before his eyes 
 And over all his frame, that he may know 
 
 And suffer the whole death before he dies. 
 
 Will you not slay me ? Stab me ; yea, somehow 
 
 Deep in the heart : say some foul word to last 
 And let me hate you as I love you now : 
 
 Oh, would I might but see you turn and cast 
 That false fair beauty that you e'en shall lose, 
 
 And fall down there and writhe about my feet, 
 The crooked loathly viper I shall bruise 
 
 ^Through all eternity! — 
 
 . Nay ; kiss me, Sweet ! 
 
CHAITIVEL; 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 
 
 Ladies and lovers, may ye dwell 
 In joy ; yea, now and after me ; 
 And, for all I shall sing or tell, 
 Hold me but one who loveth well, 
 And singeth of mere joy to see 
 His lady's golden loveliness, — 
 Yea, joyeth, and may scarce repress 
 The song he hath for every tress 
 
 Her hand hath braided or set free— 
 The rush of rapturous words that break 
 Frail wings against his lips and take 
 A songless death, for mere delight 
 In that fresh miracle of white 
 And perfect red and perfect gold 
 
go CHAI1IVEL; OR, 7HE 
 
 Each new day brings him to behold 
 Renewed and yet unchanged in her. 
 Whence are the rosy seas that stir 
 
 With richly glowing wave of thin 
 
 Ethereal fire, alway within, 
 Alway about her heart — all day 
 
 Flooding the extreme flower of lip 
 
 And finger-tip and bosom-tip, — 
 As summer, flooding in such way 
 Earth, air and heaven, will seem to stay 
 
 Gathered up richly in the last 
 
 And least of the last rose ? — O whence 
 
 Is all her wonder, never past. 
 
 Nor ever dwelt with and possest 
 Quite through, bewildering the sense 
 With loving, looking and suspense 
 
 Of loving ; — shapeless shades and swift 
 
 Transfigurement of heavens that drift 
 Ever with glory giving place 
 To glory on her form and face ? — 
 
 Yea, infinite of change and light 
 
 And wide uncomprehended sight 
 Seems every way his lady's grace, — 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 91 
 
 As seemeth to the day and night 
 
 Some infinite world of flowers, transformed 
 By unseen wands of wind. And he, 
 Beholding, loves ; but may not see 
 Or know whence aught of her may be : 
 
 Only, beholding, he hath formed, 
 Ah, many a song for very love 
 Of her and wonder. But, above, 
 
 — Yea, quite beyond the rapturous days 
 He leads with her, he thinketh well 
 
 Some heaven with fair untrodden ways 
 Shall ever be for him to dwell 
 
 Rejoicing in her, learning praise 
 More passionate of her, winning whole 
 Immortal knowledge of her soul. 
 
 Ladies and lovers, will ye see 
 How gold hair hath its perjury ? 
 
 And how the lip may twice or thrice 
 Undo the soul ; and how the heart 
 
 May quite annul the heart's own price 
 Given for many a goodly part 
 
 Of heaven ? How one love shall be fair, 
 
92 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 And whole and perfect in the rare 
 Great likeness of an angel, — yea, 
 
 And how another, golden-miened, 
 With lovely seeming and sweet way, 
 
 Shall come and be but as a fiend 
 To tempt and drag the soul away — 
 
 And all for ever? Listen well : 
 
 This is a lay of heaven and hell : 
 Listen, and think how it shall be 
 With you in love's eternity. 
 
 Some age ago, Love's splendid lures 
 Through the enchanted world made fan- 
 Each woman's soft enamouring snare ; 
 
 And the contagion that endures 
 
 Among men's hearts spread everywhere 
 
 Love's ailing that love only cures ; 
 
 And, far as the unblemished fire 
 Flooded down joyous from the sun 
 
 Caused rapturous living and desire 
 Unearthly in the earth, not one 
 Of fair mankind was free to shun 
 
 The sudden endless fate of flame 
 
LAY OF LOVE 'S UNFORTUNA IE. 93 
 
 Caught in the hazard of a look 
 Crossing a kindled look. The same 
 
 Frail human life it was that shook 
 With the immortal burning soul 
 
 Of love traversing it, consumed 
 With bearing inwardly the whole 
 Of some celestial joy, or sole 
 
 — In fair midst of the world that bloomed 
 Or withered — through the long sharp throe 
 Of some inexplicable woe 
 
 Reaching out to a shoreless sea 
 Of sadness after death. The earth 
 
 Was beautiful with flower and tree, 
 And full of the delicious mirth 
 
 And low soft endless jubilee 
 
 Of bird and nameless creature free 
 To feel the sun ; and, where the grave 
 
 Saddened and broke the last year's green, 
 There most was this year's summer brave 
 
 With glorious flower and fresh with keen 
 New scent. And men and women, thrilled 
 
 With their own passionate thoughts unseen, 
 Went fair about the fair world, filled 
 
94 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 With wondrous joy or misery- 
 Killing them at the heart ; beheld 
 
 The sun, and looked upon the sky, 
 
 And saw the flowers, and felt go by 
 The summer ; and were not changed, but held 
 
 Their secret of eternity 
 Within them. And the earth was glad, 
 Whether the heart was blithe or sad. 
 
 But Sarrazine, of whom I sing, 
 
 Had shut her soul up from each thing 
 That once with all her soul she knew 
 Sweet in the earth, bright in the blue ; 
 
 And, joyless, in the midst between 
 
 Fair blue of heaven and green earth's green, 
 
 Lived now this lovely Sarrazine 
 
 With passionate thinking and unknown 
 Most secret flowering of her lone 
 
 And infinite, beauty. All amazed 
 
 She was, and fearfully she gazed 
 Into each dismal future year, 
 The while it ceased not that a tear, 
 
 Born of her thought right wearily, 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 95 
 
 Found its way backward to the drear 
 
 Dead ashes of some memory 
 In a sweet fatal reckless past 
 Love had made recklessly and cast 
 
 Against her soul. 
 
 She did not die, 
 
 But dreamed and lived, and bade the gray 
 
 Of grieving, more and more each day, 
 
 Gather around and steal away 
 
 Her hidden fairness, that was bloom 
 More white and wondrous in that tomb 
 
 Where the sun touched it not, and sight 
 
 Should never worship, and delight 
 
 Flower not of it day or night. 
 
 The slow cloud found it sweet to rest 
 
 Over each shadow-haunted tower 
 Of her lone castle, and to remain 
 Low brooding over that domain 
 Of deep autumnal wood and plain 
 And mirroring lake that she possest ;' 
 
 The sun and summer owned no flower 
 Down in the deep and wayward ways 
 
96 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Ruined and lost about her bower, 
 Whose desolation was the nest 
 Of a strange plaintive bird with crest 
 Of tarnished fiery feathers. Haze 
 
 Of changeless morn and noon was blue 
 
 Above the still blue of the lake, 
 Where, year by year, some long dream grew 
 More and more wonderful, and threw 
 
 A stranger spell over wild brake 
 And dripping mile of sallow sedge — 
 
 Where the dark bittern and the crake 
 
 Answered with lone unearthly cry, 
 Or spectral, on the oozy edge, 
 
 Some tall grey egret with wide eye 
 Stood slumbering. Not a troubled thought 
 
 Of toiling in the world, or deeds 
 Of living men, was ever brought 
 To break such magic as dreams wrought 
 
 In that dim region ; but the reeds, 
 And redolent snakelike flowers, and weeds 
 Trailed in the wave, and songless bird, 
 
 With many a shadow thinly seen 
 And many a strange unseen thing heard 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 97 
 
 To wander up and down between 
 The desolate sedges with drear sound — 
 All were become unearthly, bound 
 
 In the enchanting solitude 
 
 Of some vast supernatural mood 
 Of sadness. All had learned the heart 
 
 Of Sarrazine ; and every sore 
 Bewailing thought of hers was part 
 Of burdens that the silent things 
 
 Of wave and fen and feather bore, 
 On languid leaves and drooping wings, 
 
 In the blue stillness more and more 
 The haunt of cloud and dream. 
 
 And for his sake — who quite possest, 
 
 In short blind life upon the earth, 
 The whole irrevocable gift 
 
 Of her sweet body's passionate worth — 
 AVhose soul was ever strong and swift 
 To seek her shaken soul and wrest 
 
 Some irremediable word 
 Out of its troubled speech to drift 
 
 Onward eternal and be heard 
 
 H 
 
CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Among the destinies, — for him, 
 She now had given up to grief, 
 
 To let grief ruin it and dim 
 
 And waste it as worms do a leaf, 
 The rich continual flowering 
 
 Of each white unregarded limb, 
 Yea, and the whole of that rich thing, 
 
 Her woman's loveliness, that love 
 Would perfect secretly and bring 
 
 To many a marble grace above 
 
 His wont. O how grief slew each day 
 With deadliest remembering 
 Of some first day the cruel past 
 
 Held golden with joy torn away 
 For ever ! Snake-like, how he cast 
 His sickly and bewildering coil 
 
 About her life, holding his prey, 
 
 Her heart, with fierce fang of regret, 
 And making poisoned thought to spoil 
 
 Her desolate fairness with lone fret ! 
 
 Now she would weary out the days, 
 Joylessly looking on the white 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNA TE. 99 
 
 Slim wonder that she was, whose praise 
 
 Henceforth must be omitted quite 
 Out of men's praising mouths ; whose sight 
 Should ne'er strike sudden with amaze 
 
 One other heart fain to have crost 
 That solitude, where she must be 
 
 Evermore as a flower lost 
 Or nameless unto men. To see 
 
 The wild white lilies, passionless 
 And lonely, wasted in the rank 
 Green shadowy shallows of the bank, 
 
 Was to see many a loveliness — 
 No more rejected and left out, 
 
 As a thing none cared to possess 
 Of love and time — than, past all doubt, 
 
 Her joyless form and face were now 
 Till death. Was the world whole without 
 
 One need of her, one thought of how 
 Love prospered making her — one look 
 
 At the short perfect miracle 
 His passionate hands wrought when they took 
 The rare sweet elements, the fine 
 
 And delicate fires, and wove the spell 
 
CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Of her rich being ? Did days yet shine, 
 And men love boundlessly and well 
 In the fair world, beyond that cell 
 
 Of grey thoughts shutting out the sun 
 
 Her life seemed brought to ? yea, since none 
 Set living heart upon her more, 
 And all she was and all she bore, 
 
 Of rare and wonderful lay known 
 
 To the worms only left alone 
 With faded secrets in the core 
 
 Of dead men's hearts ? 
 
 Time was so bare, 
 — Her heart at solitary feast 
 Of sorrow sitting unreleast 
 
 For ever, wasting slow the hair 
 
 Of gold, the plenteous form of white 
 Unconquerable flower, through night 
 
 And day, that emptied year and year 
 
 Of sullied summers, drawing near 
 
 To death scarce more a winter ; — yea, 
 And one last chosen tomb seemed, day 
 
 And night, so little comforted 
 
LAY OF LOVE 'S UNF0R7 UNA TE. i o i 
 
 With summer given or true tear shed — 
 There might have been — her heart now said 
 
 Sometimes all softly — even for him, 
 That earlier lover, lightly slain 
 
 Without the touch of her for dim 
 Delicious dreaming after vain, 
 
 Void life, the guiltless recompense 
 Of more love than he sought to save 
 
 His soul ; yea, though he had gone hence, 
 Telling the worms they should but have 
 
 Hair's gold that once had been his bed, 
 
 And dust that love for once had wed 
 To his glad dust, when death made her 
 Some next year's spoil ! O who would stir 
 
 In sleep down there, and think he missed 
 
 Aught of the faultless mouth that kissed 
 His life all through ? For, verily, 
 
 — He who had all — was not his day, 
 E'en to death softened endlessly 
 With love, filled to the full and more 
 
 With sweet of hers ? And, where he lay, 
 Was not the grave o'erbrimmed with store 
 Of perfect memories and rich ore 
 
CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Of a life rich in love ? And, now, 
 It seemed all bitter to avow 
 
 That one most gracious should have gone 
 
 Uncheered to death, who had lived on 
 Right rapturously, if once his brow 
 
 Had felt her lips ; if once his hand 
 Had revelled on her, and his heart 
 Filled itself with one lovely part 
 
 Of loveliness, the rotting sand 
 
 Of time alone should use with kiss 
 Joyless for ever. Would not this — 
 
 To weigh the lost wealth of her hair 
 Once in his hand, as one might poise 
 
 Some weight of gold — have seemed right fan- 
 To him, amid the few sad joys 
 
 He thought it well to die for ? Yea, 
 
 And now the whole sweet, that he lay 
 Evermore thirsting for, was there 
 At waste for ever, out of care 
 
 Of any ; and no man came back 
 To call it his. 
 
 And, since to her 
 
 No man returned ; since no more lack 
 
LAY OF LOVE 'S UNFOR TUNA TE. 103 
 
 Of her gave any strength to stir 
 The very grave-stone and come back ; 
 And he whose soul's least word of love 
 Seemed a love-fetter strong enough 
 
 To bind eternity to whole 
 
 Eternity, — since now his soul 
 Having content of her, or quite 
 
 Forgetting, left her, as a thing 
 
 Not owned, and never jealous sting, 
 Caused him to care now, day or night, 
 What chance might happen to the white 
 
 Unblemished beauty or the heart 
 
 His empire :■ — ah, as houseless wraiths 
 And unhoused creeping beasts would glide 
 Back to a house the day he died 
 
 Who cast them forth, — so, from each part 
 
 Of her annulled past, full of faiths 
 Abjured and fruitless loves and loss, 
 
 There came back to her heart the host 
 
 Of memories comfortless ; the ghost 
 Of every lover now might cross 
 
 Its threshold when he would, to scare 
 
 And grieve her with his tears, or bare 
 
io 4 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 The great wound in his heart, or make 
 
 Long threat of unknown things for sake 
 
 Of some forgotten heedless word. 
 
 It seemed now as a sad thing heard 
 
 But yesterday, how, bearing still 
 
 Fair vow of hers, wherefrom the will 
 Of other love had wrenched her, yea, 
 
 Relying ever on each fair 
 
 Uncancelled word, and, night and day, 
 
 Bound, with her gift of golden hair, 
 To hold hers only heart and hand, 
 For ever, — one in Paynim land 
 
 Died loving her. The intense flower 
 Of waving strange-leaved trees that sang 
 His dirge with voices wild and soft, 
 
 Wafted her perfume that had power 
 
 To shake her heart ; warm air, that rang 
 With ends of unknown singing, oft 
 
 Broke in upon her, as though space 
 Of cold climes and cold seas between 
 Were dwindling, and she should have seen 
 
 That fair unconsecrated place, 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 105 
 
 Golden in sunlight, green in shade 
 
 Of many a palm and mighty blade 
 Of monstrous herb. 
 
 Yea, these were three 
 Whose lives and deaths were hers ; and she 
 
 Had only given good to one ; 
 And all were with her now, to share 
 And haunt her thoughts quite to the bare 
 
 Lone end of living. There was none 
 Among sweet women whose ripe heart, 
 Full of the perfect precious part 
 
 Of many a love, was a deep tomb 
 
 Where fair dead lay in goodly gloom 
 More royally than these, whose fate 
 
 Was filled and ended in her, lay 
 In her proud heart, disconsolate 
 
 And lonely, turning from the day 
 
 Into its own rich grieving gray. 
 
 But in the separate place that death 
 Had found for him, to rest from life, 
 To dream upon it, or to wait, 
 
 Each of her lovers held the breath 
 
io6 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Of his strong dauntless spirit rife 
 With memories ; or content with late 
 
 Fair kisses on his mouth ; or sure 
 
 Of heaven because of some sweet lure 
 Of looks or pledge or perfect vow 
 
 She made him, — doubting her not his 
 
 For ever in fair destinies. 
 
 He who ne'er felt upon his brow 
 The perfect blessing of her kiss, 
 
 Stayed his long thirst with thinking how 
 Some early and far-reaching smile, 
 That looked on many a distant mile 
 
 Of golden promise, seemed to bind 
 
 His love to follow her and find 
 Dim outskirts of her life to cling 
 
 With solace in ; and, where the chill 
 And changeless dark spread covering 
 
 His patient soul, he thought it still 
 
 Her shadow on him ; and a thrill 
 That was not joyless turned the sting 
 Of death. 
 
 And he who, in the fair 
 
LAY OF LOVE \S UNFORTUNA TE. 107 
 
 Rich Paynim place, with the ripe glare 
 
 Of foreign summers gilding palm 
 
 And poisonous fruit about him, calm 
 And mighty, rusted in red steel — 
 Not merely barren did he feel 
 
 Death's prison and the silent gloom 
 
 Around him ; but, within, the tomb 
 Was opulent with glimmering gold ; 
 
 For the slim tress that once was hid 
 Upon his heart, was grown to fold 
 On fold that many times had rolled 
 
 About him ; and he lay amid 
 The splendours of it, and thought well 
 That he should have her soul for hell 
 
 Or heaven. 
 
 But he who had all sweet 
 Latest and longest of her, — day 
 And night and many a year he lay, 
 
 Enthralled, past knowing cold or heat 
 
 Or hearing thunder or the feet 
 Of armies, in a long deep dream 
 
 Of her sweet body, full of joy 
 And magical amaze and gleam 
 
CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Of endless excellence : there nought 
 Might reach his spirit or destroy 
 
 Its passionate raptures of long thought, 
 
 — Save only if, beneath God's sky, 
 One other creature should draw nigh 
 
 To touching her whom his soul bought. 
 
 Tranquil, and holding it enow 
 
 Each of them had his hope or bliss 
 Or memory of her ; and with this 
 He lay alone there, — as I trow, 
 Thinking that she was only his. 
 
 — O men and women, Love is king 
 Upon the earth ; summer and spring 
 
 Will serve him in the year to come 
 With all new rapture, when the blast 
 Of many a long-drawn autumn day, 
 
 Made golden with fair thought and dumb 
 Remembering of the perfect past, 
 Shall have swept utterly away 
 
 The dry dead leaves of summer and spring 
 
LA Y OF LO VE 'S UNFORTUNA TE. 109 
 
 That spent themselves with worshipping 
 His latest godhead perfectly : 
 His realms are all the lands that lie 
 Beneath yon distant unknown sky — 
 
 Where only freed souls go unseen 
 
 To different dooms : his are the green 
 Of grass, the blue of seas, the red 
 
 Of passionate roses, — each frail life 
 
 Of rose and bird and slight thing rife 
 With sunlight is but sweetly led 
 
 By him to its sweet life and death. 
 
 But, more than all, while ye have breath 
 And rosy relic of the rose 
 
 Born with you — men and women, lo, 
 
 Your rich eternal hearts that grow 
 Like widening flowers that cannot close 
 
 Their leaves — are Love's, to turn and use, 
 
 And work upon as he may choose. 
 
 Do ye not feel how love pursues 
 
 Your full hearts ever with his new 
 Inconstant summer — to convert 
 
 And steal them from the thing they knew 
 
CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Their own, — to cause them to desert 
 Their piteous memories and the few 
 
 Fond faiths of perfect years ? Alas, 
 
 He careth not how he may hurt 
 
 The dead, or trouble them that wait 
 
 In heaven, so he may bring to pass 
 Ever some new thing passionate 
 
 Arid sweet upon the earth : his sun 
 Hath need of you ; and, if he takes 
 Last year's spoiled roses and remakes 
 
 Red summer with them, shall he shun 
 
 To steal your soft hearts every one, 
 O men and women, to enrich 
 
 His fair new transitory reign ? 
 
 Are ye mere flowers to love again 
 
 With each fresh summer, knowing not which 
 Hath had the ripest of your bloom ? — 
 Nay, but, for you, there is a doom 
 
 For ever making in the fair 
 Unalterable world above 
 The blue, unknown to your new love, 
 Irrevocable in your own 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFOR TUNA TE. in 
 
 Sweet word : — O women, have a carq 
 
 What if two come to claim your hair 
 Of God ? — what if two shall have thrown 
 
 Their strong arms round your body, quite 
 
 Belonging with an equal right 
 To each for ever ? 
 
 Would the place, 
 That bore so long the lovely grace 
 
 And wayward grief of Sarrazine, 
 Had never lost the tender spell 
 Of the half death that seemed to dwell 
 
 Out of time there on what was green 
 Of leaf and what was grey, on bird 
 And sleepless wraith ; — -would none had stirr'd 
 
 The gloomy magic making there 
 
 Some lone eternity to scare 
 Untoward striving fates and save 
 Her soul and body in one grave 
 
 Of safe sleep unresponsive. 
 
 Yea, 
 For, at the last, I cannot say 
 
CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 What thing fell on her, when my lay 
 Hath told you of this Chaitivel, 
 Whom his fate made to love her well 
 
 And seek her. knowing nought of those 
 That held her on the other side 
 Of death. May this man's woe abide 
 
 With God for ever, among woes 
 
 Some heaven of his — some mystic kiss 
 Of Mary sweet shall turn to bliss ! 
 
 It may be, still, for many a year 
 
 Sarrazine counted tear on tear 
 To soften death unto the dead ; 
 
 And many a thing, that they might hear 
 Sometimes all faintly in the bed 
 Of earth and leaves about them, said 
 
 — To touch them, if she might, and set 
 
 Some late desire of her at fret 
 
 Within them ; — and, if, day or night, 
 The grave had let them, fair and white, 
 
 And far more wondrous as she was 
 
 Than in their memory, she would quite 
 Have hailed that one who should have earned 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 113 
 
 To come to her in any pause 
 
 Of death, with words that long had burned 
 
 Her breast, and love that had long turned 
 To fair earth near their hearts. But now, 
 The graves grew winterly, and how 
 
 It fared with them in that long sleep 
 She knew not : and they lay and dreamed, 
 
 Each one his dream, that he should keep 
 And hold her his for evermore. 
 
 Then Love, who rules the bright world, deemed 
 
 That, all too well indeed, she bore 
 Such sorrow for the dead who seemed 
 
 No longer worth one's caring for ; 
 And, so, I ween, he sent one day 
 
 This Chaitivel — who was a man 
 Most goodly, full of all the gay 
 
 And thrilling summer-time that ran 
 Once more with rapture through the earth. 
 
 Alas, for her who gave him birth, 
 And put indeed, upon his face 
 And form, somewhat of her own grace 
 
 1 
 
it4 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 To make men love him, and her smile 
 Like magic in his mouth ! No guile 
 
 Was in her ; and she saw him fair 
 And stayed with him, maybe a while, 
 
 For the mere joy to see his hair 
 Grown lovely with youth's golden crown, 
 
 And to behold his perfect bloom, 
 As of a flower that she had sown : 
 And, having loved indeed and known 
 
 His heart, she left him to the doom 
 Another woman's love should make : — 
 
 Alas, for her down in the tomb ! 
 
 Was there no little deadly snake 
 Curled on the threshold, for her sake, 
 
 To save him with its fiery fang ? 
 Nay, but he entered ; and this sad 
 Too lovely Sarrazine, all clad 
 
 In clinging robes, with voice that sang 
 The piteous music of lone thought 
 
 Most luringly, is unto him, 
 
 As 'twere some fatal serpent, slim 
 And gracious that hath softly caught 
 
LAY OF LO VE'S UXFORTUNA TE. 1 1 5 
 
 His soul twining about it close, 
 
 Sinking it into -ways of woes 
 Past saving. 
 
 But his coming brought 
 The new strange miracle of love 
 
 Upon her; and her heart, estranged 
 From all that once had seemed enough, 
 Sprang sudden at him as a bird 
 
 Breaking a snare, or as a free 
 Blithe butterfly some second birth 
 
 Lifts in the air, no more to be 
 The joyless worm it was on earth. 
 
 And, lo — once, when the night was sore, 
 And the world, for a faint space, bore 
 
 The bitter nearness of its dead 
 Unwontedly, and every pore 
 
 Of the chill graves seemed free to shed 
 
 The white and ghasdy dews long bred 
 In lone laborious agonies 
 Of those on whom the death-sleep lies 
 
 Uneasily, — she said or sang, 
 
 Mourning one last while, words that rar.g 
 
n6 CHAI7IVEL; OR, THE 
 
 With their full farewell in the ear 
 Of those her listening lovers, — clear 
 With poignant doom of anguish, straight 
 Awakening them to fight with fate 
 
 For ever. 
 
 Wheresoe'er ye be, 
 Forgetting or remembering me, 
 She sang, — I bid you now farewell : 
 Surely, I think, you shall not tell 
 Hard things of me in heaven or hell : 
 I pray God, that the grave be sweet 
 About you, — yea, and, if ye keep 
 Some sort of love of me through sleep, — 
 May the worms cease not to repeat 
 My sweet words lest ye wake and weep : 
 Only, if before God we meet, 
 I pray you, lovers, that no more 
 Ye tell me of the things I swore ; 
 I loved you : may all death be sweet, 
 And peace be with you evermore. 
 
 O lover, who had all delight 
 
LA Y OF LO VE'S UNFORTUNATE, i j 7 
 
 In winning me, — 'tis many a night, 
 Since, through the sweet hours lovingly, 
 I lay by you and you by me ; 
 And now, perchance, if you should see 
 My flowerless beauty, loved by you, 
 Wasted to white and kissed all through 
 With sorrow, — scarcely might I seem 
 Your love of lost days or your dream 
 Down there in charmed sleep ; and, to-day, 
 Why need I take your dream away ? 
 — Sleep on ; and think of me, I say, 
 Whatever sweet thing lets you lie 
 Content with death ; I have made rich 
 Your grave indeed with tear and sigh ; 
 And, many a night hath been, through which 
 I prayed to God that I might die 
 And go down softly to you. Dear, 
 I do believe you would not hear ; 
 You would not know or feel me near ; 
 And, though I kissed you, till you saw 
 My wan face, I should never draw 
 One warm kiss from your lips, or thaw 
 
n8 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 The hard ice at your heart ! What song 
 Of mine hath ever reached you ? Long 
 Mad nights I lay awake, and wrought 
 My sorrowing heart to such a plaint 
 Of lone imploring words, I thought 
 Some of them surely must have brought 
 Your soul quite to me, roused with faint 
 Most piteous murmurings that made way 
 Through earth and leaves to where you lay. 
 And, if indeed death had not set 
 Some cold and very mighty spell 
 Upon you, making you forget 
 My face, yea, and your love, to dwell 
 With some unearthly dream, or rest 
 Dreamless and joyless in his breast 
 For ever, — O you had not failed 
 To steal up somehow, wearying night, 
 Death, dreams, and mystic ways of sight 
 And sound, till one fair path availed 
 To make you known to me. And now, 
 It seems we both who made the vow 
 Of love have fallen on either side 
 
LAY OF LOVE 'S UNFORTUNA TE. 1 19 
 
 Somewhat away ; and I, who chide 
 Thee never for it, hold, maybe, 
 At length the greater memory. 
 
 'Tis as though both of us had died 
 
 I think ; and that lone grave of thine 
 
 Is scarce a harder place to pine 
 
 And gnaw the inmost heart and shed 
 
 Unsolaced tears in, than this bed, 
 
 Lonely and waste and white, where grief 
 
 Hath held me buried, years wrought sore 
 
 With sorrowing. No fair hope made brief 
 
 The agony it was, no more 
 
 To see one loved face bring relief 
 
 Of love : the hollow darkness bore 
 
 No dream to comfort ; and the sight 
 
 Of the yet fair unruined white 
 
 Of my forlorn lost beauty pained 
 
 My spirit, showing me but chained 
 
 To so much more of death. Farewell: 
 
 Memory or sleep shall hold their spell 
 
 Unchanged upon you, till the name 
 
 Or thought of Sarrazine shall dwell 
 
120 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 No more with you ; and though, at last, 
 She winneth any sweet the past 
 Knew nothing of, she will not cast 
 The tenderness of many a day 
 Quickly and utterly away : 
 And, though quite other she became, 
 Surely the grave will feel the same. 
 
 But he who, living, had possest 
 Her peerless body — who, till then, 
 Rapt in sweet thought, had never known 
 
 How death grew chill and cold earth prest 
 And walled him in, nor felt the stone 
 Lie heavy between him and men, 
 
 But he who, giving his soul's best 
 Of heaven and God's eternal good, 
 
 Had won that woman to be his 
 And change not : in mere solitude 
 
 Of death he woke, without a kiss, 
 
 And knew that fate was false ; — the hiss 
 Of a fell serpent seemed to bring 
 
 The words that woke him to his ear, 
 
LAY OF LOVE 'S UNFORTUNA TE. 121 
 
 Bitter with endless echoing, 
 
 And one long agony stretched clear 
 
 Out to his soul's eternity. 
 
 Then, in the hollow of the tomb, 
 Where his speech thundered into doom, 
 
 He answered her : 
 
 Woman, said he, 
 Why have you been so false with me ? 
 
 Was it the waste thought of a day 
 I gave to you ? — was it to win 
 
 A wanton hour, I cast away 
 
 My untried heavens and slew straightway 
 My greater unknown self within ? 
 Was it to shrivel, with the sin 
 
 Of mere rich revelling to dull 
 
 My fallen soul once beautiful 
 Because of love, sharing the hell 
 Of harlots, that I chose to sell 
 
 Usurious fate so much of vast, 
 Yea boundless, that lay known between 
 
 Me and God only ? So, at last, 
 
 Not half way into doom, I find 
 
CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 This fails me, — this that should have been 
 
 All heaven, this love that was to blind 
 So richly, I should ne'er have seen 
 The depth I dwelt in nor the height 
 
 I forfeited ; now, all behind, 
 
 At once I see as many kings 
 As golden seeming days, with light 
 And lustre fading on them ; bright 
 
 Imperial crowns and goodly things 
 Fall from them hastily ; they sit 
 
 Dishonoured spectres of me, bare 
 In the bare past, abhorring it. 
 
 If I could go back and repair 
 
 One hour, one moment, to make fair 
 Eternity, — O I should seem 
 Not quite denuded of some dream 
 
 To keep my soul unshamed before 
 The fiends and angels : but, indeed, 
 
 I am too distant from that shore 
 Of life already ; and no seed 
 
 Is left for sowing any more. 
 Henceforth, a weed among much weed 
 Of foundered love and life, my soul 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFOR TUNA TE. 123 
 
 Shall drift upon dark waves and waste 
 Upon the ceaseless seas that roll 
 
 Through the lone Infinite. 
 
 Ah, haste 
 To live thy false life through, that I 
 May have that wrecked thing I did buy 
 
 — A body for a soul ! — for mine 
 I think you shall be, since I hold 
 A vow for every hair of gold, 
 
 And destinies and all divine 
 Unalterable things of old 
 Witnessed your pale frail body bound 
 
 To me immutably. — Ah, white 
 
 And worthless blossom, for delight 
 Of the lips only : Ah, the round 
 
 Quite faultless fashioning of slim 
 
 And sinuous side and shapely limb : 
 Ah, the delirious abyss 
 Of the mouth fainting in a kiss : — 
 Ah, all this, yea, though merely this, — 
 
 Can make a goodly hell for him 
 Who loses heaven. And I grow sick 
 
 Of waiting since I am no more 
 
i2 4 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Than one to kiss your bosom sore 
 For ever. Wherefore now the thick 
 
 Polluted darkness ? Wherefore gloom 
 
 And lonely wakings in the tomb ? 
 Sin all, and, as you are, come quick 
 
 And share my sin down here. How long 
 
 Have I endured to dream among 
 The worms in faithful wretchedness — 
 
 Sure you would come and lie along 
 Beside me and be sweet no less 
 Than I believed you ? You would bless 
 
 Some fond way for it all, and set 
 
 Your mouth upon my mouth and let 
 The dreamed-of heaven begin : and, quite 
 
 So noble was I with my faith, — 
 But for these sad words, I felt bite 
 The ground through to me — O I might 
 
 Have ceased not trusting the sweet wraith 
 Of word and kiss and memory, 
 Of what I left you, endlessly ! 
 
 Here, in my place among the things 
 That change not, 1 myself, in all, 
 A changeless spirit past recall, 
 
LAY OF LOVE 'S XJNFORTUNA TE. 125 
 
 With life's supreme rememberings 
 Unshaken in me, — here I feel 
 
 And shudder at your shameful word. 
 
 O woman, think you no fates heard, 
 When, passionately, beyond repeal, 
 You bade them know you mine and seal 
 
 Your life and death so ? See the blue — 
 
 The sight you have up there with you 
 Most near to heaven, — and, if you can, 
 
 Believe there is a God to let 
 
 You change the word you would forget, 
 And quite revoke the doom a man 
 
 Hath lived and died in ! Change ; and yet 
 You cannot change, but earth and sky 
 And death will keep you mine : and I — 
 Do not I live for ever ? 
 
 And it befell, another day, 
 
 When earth, well ravished of the gay 
 Turbulent summer, fell to swoon 
 Under the perfume of the noon, — 
 
 That Sarrazine, now rich at heart 
 
126 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 With love's fond thinking, felt a part 
 
 Of tender pity that must go 
 And find the grave out there beyond 
 
 So many a sea, where, lone and low, 
 Beneath the palms, that Pharamond 
 
 Lay buried, with his love of her, 
 
 And bound as though he might not stir, 
 In meshes of soft growing gold. 
 And him, believing death must hold 
 
 So rigorously his heart and hands 
 
 That no fair singing in those lands 
 Had ever soothed him, — now she named ; 
 And, murmuring softly of him, framed 
 
 Her last thought of him in a song ; 
 Singing it idly to the birds, 
 
 And finding as she went along 
 
 Mere wanton music in the words : 
 
 # 
 * * 
 
 * * * 
 
 Hath any loved you well, down there, 
 
 Summer or winter through ? 
 
 Down there, have you found any fair 
 
LAY OF LOVE 'S UNFORTUNA TE. 127 
 
 Laid in the grave with you ? 
 Is death's long kiss a richer kiss 
 . Than mine was wont to be — ■ 
 Or have you gone to some far bliss 
 
 And quite forgotten me ? 
 
 What soft enamouring of sleep 
 
 Hath you in some soft way ? 
 What charmed death holdeth you with deep 
 
 Strange lure by night and day ? 
 — A little space below the grass, 
 
 Out of the sun and shade ; 
 But worlds away from me, alas, 
 
 Down there where you are laid ? 
 
 My bright hair's waved and wasted gold, 
 
 What is it now to thee — 
 Whether the rose-red life I hold 
 
 Or white death holdeth me ? 
 Down there you love the grave's own green, 
 
 And evermore you rave 
 Of some sweet seraph you have seen 
 
 Or dreamt of in the grave. 
 
128 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 There you shall lie as you have lain, 
 
 Though in the world above, 
 Another live your life again, 
 
 Loving again your love : 
 Is it not sweet beneath the palm ? 
 
 Is not the warm day rife 
 With some long mystic golden calm 
 
 Better than love and life ? 
 
 The broad quaint odorous leaves like hands 
 
 Weaving the fair day through, 
 Weave sleep no burnished bird withstands, 
 
 While death weaves sleep for you ; 
 And many a strange rich breathing sound 
 
 Ravishes morn and noon : 
 And in that place you must have found 
 
 Death a delicious swoon. 
 
 Hold me no longer for a word 
 
 I used to say or sing : 
 Ah, long ago you must have heard 
 
 So many a sweeter thing : 
 
LA Y OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 129 
 
 For rich earth must have reached your heart 
 
 And turned the faith to flowers ; 
 And warm wind stolen, part by part, 
 
 Your soul through faithless hours. 
 
 And many a soft seed must have won 
 
 Soil of some yielding thought, 
 To bring a bloom up to the sun 
 
 That else had ne'er been brought ; 
 And, doubtless, many a passionate hue 
 
 Hath made that place more fair, 
 Making some passionate part of you 
 
 Faithless to me down there. 
 
 But Pharamond heard that sweet sound, 
 As the one strange thing waited for 
 Through death ; and, waking at the sore 
 Inconstant words, his hands unwound 
 The shining chain and tress that bound 
 His limbs ; and, in the glorious gloom 
 Of that unconsecrated tomb, 
 
 K 
 
130 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 He rose up, dumb and mighty, — pale 
 And terrible in blood-stained mail, 
 And the gold on him as a belt, — 
 He rose up, — a great soul that felt 
 Death ended ere a word from God : 
 And, going forth, he once more trod 
 The waste ways of the human earth ; 
 And, terrible, and giving birth 
 To wide dismay, he crossed all lands, 
 Mountains and forests, and the sands 
 Of deserts, and the pathless seas, 
 And where suns burnt or snows did freeze 
 The summer, — going back to take 
 Her soul for vows she could not break. 
 
 And yet again, the last rich eve 
 — Ere, for this Chaitivel, whom woe 
 
 Lay waiting for, she thought to leave 
 The past for ever, yea, and go 
 Through earths and heavens that ne'er should 
 know 
 
 Other than her new love of her,— 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFOR TUNA TE. 131 
 
 Fearing not that the dead should stir 
 
 Nor fate remember, — as they stayed, 
 Having used up their words and sighed 
 
 To soften hours that yet delayed 
 Their souls from mingling to divide 
 
 No more for ever, — Sarrazine, 
 Making her voice sad as might be 
 Some bird's last singing in the tree 
 
 It nested in, said : 
 
 As I lean 
 This way upon your bosom, love, 
 Dreaming how it shall be above, 
 
 — Yea, when we go from star to star, 
 Finding innumerable ways 
 
 To heaven, — a little thought flies far 
 Behind me, to the piteous days 
 Of one whom no soft memory stays, 
 
 Maybe, from cursing me down there 
 
 To death — who might have made life fair 
 
 And death less bitter, with one care, 
 One fond angelic word : O you, 
 
 Whose love quite governs me and finds 
 
 No will in me but your will binds 
 
132 CHAIT1VEL; OR, THE 
 
 And turns it all to serving you — 
 You might have hated, if you knew 
 
 How I was sterner than the death 
 
 That gave him ease of the last breath, 
 Watching him hollow out his grave 
 
 In his deep boyish love of me ! 
 I had a thousand- ways to save 
 
 And strengthen him and make him flee ; 
 
 Nay, but I rather chose to see 
 His passionate face from day to day 
 
 Consuming near me, knowing well 
 The different thoughts that made their prey 
 His heart, having a word to say 
 
 — A word unsaid yet ! — ah, what spell 
 Of peace should I delight to weave 
 
 Over his grave there ! I would take 
 The very waste the autumns leave 
 
 Upon it, thinking, for his sake 
 Who lies there, no one stays to grieve, 
 
 And I would change it into flowers 
 Forced up and fostered in my heart, 
 So I might soften the least part 
 
 Of death, and make him quite forgive 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 133 
 
 And never hate me for the hours 
 
 That made death sweeter than to live. 
 
 Ah, love, but, now, I feel, as though 
 
 I may forget all this, and say 
 
 It was another woman, yea, 
 And not this Sarrazine ; for, so 
 Your love hath changed me, I may throw 
 
 The past into a grave, and shrink 
 
 From ever looking o'er the brink 
 To see the dead in it and see 
 A mouldering form of one like me. 
 
 And he who never had a joy 
 
 In life because of her, — he heard 
 Quite plainly ; and she did destroy 
 
 His slender hope with .every word. 
 And, in the silence, his soul prayed 
 
 That she might never take away 
 
 The little joy it was to stay 
 Not far off in the place she made 
 Her heaven, to steal there unbetrayed, 
 And only see her from some shade. 
 
i 3 4 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 But that night, ere they bade farewell, 
 A fear of unknown sadness fell 
 
 Between them ; and her lover went 
 To wait for joy, with such a heart 
 
 As if an omen had been sent 
 Sorrow would come to take joy's part. 
 
 And when he sought her the next mom, 
 Lo, there was one who sat forlorn 
 
 In the room with her, — a mute, pale, 
 Uncertain semblance of a man 
 Dreary and wasted past the span 
 
 Of mortal sorrow ; with a frail 
 Still passionate look he haunted her, 
 As though his pain changed with each stir 
 
 Her hand or body made; — and, lo, 
 When, fearful, with a voice that burned 
 
 His heart, he asked concerning him, 
 And why he came to her, — she turned 
 
 And trembled, looking to and fro, 
 
 And said, indeed, it was not so ; 
 
LA Y OF LO VE 'S UNFORTUNA TE. 135 
 
 Only a chill mist seemed to dim 
 Her sight ; but surely none was there 
 
 Beside himself and her. Then, straight 
 That other answered him from where 
 
 He stood : a voice lent by mere fate 
 It seemed to be, and, thin as air, 
 
 The void form seemed to vacillate, 
 As though sound shook it through and through : 
 
 — O lover, loved of her whom I 
 Must love unloved for ever, — you 
 Have nought to hate me for ; e'en death 
 
 Found little he might purify, 
 
 When he divided the last sigh 
 I gave her with an earthly breath ; 
 
 And now I have long learnt to take 
 
 Content in ways that could not break 
 Your peace or hers : none hindereth 
 
 My soul from loving of her still : 
 
 I pray God keep her from the chill 
 Of seeing me ; and only this — 
 Which he hath granted for my bliss 
 
 Shall all suffice me — to traverse 
 
 Quite after her his universe 
 
136 CHAITIVEL, OR, THE 
 
 And dwell in the enchanted place 
 Her shadow filleth with her grace : 
 
 Do thou not grudge me this I pray ; 
 
 And this she cannot take away. 
 
 The phantom flickered as a flame 
 
 Blown blue and rent about by wind ; 
 It seemed thaj every word became 
 A second agony like death 
 
 Racking a soul caught and confined 
 In the strained film of some last breath ; 
 But, when the utterance ceased, the same — 
 
 A cheerless wraith of form and face 
 
 Shrinking into the room's far place 
 Of shade — that semblance did abide 
 
 Before the living man who held 
 That living woman for his bride : 
 And still when, stricken with amaze, 
 He said : that other hath his gaze 
 
 Upon thee and but now he held 
 The speech thou must have heard, she grew 
 As one whom many deaths pursue, 
 
 Pale and affrighted, but averred 
 
LA Y OF LO VE 'S UNFORTUNATE. 137 
 
 She nothing saw neither had heard 
 At all one speaking, 
 
 And, behold, 
 As they sat speechless through the day 
 The spirit of the boy did stay 
 
 Saddening them both and making cold 
 Their hearts ; he stirred not from the gloom 
 Of the far corner of the room, 
 Crouched like a phantom in a tomb. 
 
 But a more fearful thing befell 
 
 Ere night ; and they have done full well 
 
 To call this man the Chaitivel — 
 
 The wretched one. 
 
 For when, at eve, 
 
 He went to her, and did believe 
 God and her love for evermore 
 Had power to make her his, — before 
 
 He could have taken her or laid 
 A trembling hand on her, — there past 
 One between her and him. A blast 
 
 Brought him in fearfully and made 
 
138 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Unearthly winter chill the place ; 
 A torn grave garment seemed the last 
 Earth-relic on him ; form and face 
 Were mysteries where no man could trace 
 A part of former man, — within, 
 Without, he was become what sin 
 His soul invented ; for, intense, 
 He bore the hell of it. And this 
 Was he who thought to buy the bliss 
 Of holding one frail woman his 
 For ever, yea, at the expense 
 And loss of half his soul. Mere flame 
 His thought seemed as he stood between, 
 Finding a voice that might have been 
 A man's : and then, in God's great name, 
 He said : — Touch not her body, thou ! 
 Mine only hath it been ; and now 
 I come and hold her for her vow 
 Mine only ! 
 
 Then he took her, fair 
 And deathly, fainting in the clutch 
 Of his grim darkness, with her hair 
 Sweeping the ground, and all her bare 
 
LAY OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNATE. 139 
 
 Delicious beauty free from touch 
 Borne desolately. Her lover there 
 Could find no way to strive at all 
 
 With that appalling shape of dim 
 
 Illimitable darkness : — him 
 No sword reached ; but the blow did fall 
 
 On Sarrazine : then, with a yell 
 
 Unearthly, which no tongue could tell 
 The horror of, that spectre fled 
 Bearing the body of her dead, 
 
 Dragging it inward to his hell 
 For ever. 
 
 But her soul did stay : 
 Amazed with knowledge, and aghast 
 
 To see, that moment and too late, 
 The real eternities and vast 
 
 Terrific truths of love and fate. 
 
 The Wretched one sank down, and lay 
 Knowing and suffering no more, 
 As though he struck some dark closed door 
 
 At the blank end of being and ceased 
 
140 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Against the darkness. — Who can say 
 If one may die so, rent away 
 From life and after-life, and eased 
 
 At once from destiny? How long 
 He felt not : but he felt again 
 The irremediable pain 
 
 Recall him ; and he woke among 
 Dread repetitions of the plain 
 And reeking horror : then his sight 
 Met all things uttering the vast 
 Relentless record : then, at last, 
 Beheld her soul remaining white 
 And whole and beautiful, no blight 
 Or ruin cleaving on it. Free 
 Of the torn frame now would she be, 
 And all acquitted ! And the drear 
 And clanging night subsided near 
 And far ; and holy stillness grew. 
 
 There, after all, remained they two 
 Together : death's mere subtle change 
 Dividing. And a new voice — strange, 
 
 Ineffable in the night, — it seemed 
 One in a distant star were heard 
 
LA Y OF LOVE'S UNFORTUNA TE. 141 
 
 Singing celestially, — brought word 
 
 Revealing more than he had dreamed 
 Of love about him : for the speech 
 
 Of her rapt spirit gazing straight 
 
 Into the veilless face of fate 
 Was heard there ; seeming to beseech 
 Unyielding destinies and strive 
 
 With angels. Only, visible there, 
 In the clear wonder death did give 
 The face of her unfading soul, 
 
 She seemed an angel, thrice more fair 
 Than she had seemed a woman. 
 
 Yea; 
 But now, for many a league away, 
 Where he was wandering by day 
 
 And night, through many a land beyond 
 
 The seas and deserts, — Pharamond 
 Beheld her in that hour : and, whole 
 Immeasurable miles between, 
 Across the dark, her soul had seen 
 
 And trembled at him. Strong and loud 
 And dreadful were his feet that trod 
 
 Thundering on mountain or on cloud — 
 
142 CHAITIVEL; OR, THE 
 
 Traversing earth and sea and air — 
 With vehement will defying God 
 To take her ; for the golden hair 
 
 Gleamed like a flaunted robe of flame 
 
 Through earth and hell and heaven. He came 
 With no help of the wind or storm, 
 
 Or miracle by sea or land, 
 Or deathly terror : in the form 
 
 Of one most mighty, with the brand 
 Of blood upon stained steel he bore 
 
 Till doom, and blood upon his hand, 
 And burning badge of one who swore 
 To bear his love for evermore, 
 
 He came on through the night. And hate 
 
 A long way off did emanate 
 And fly before him, making felt 
 
 The coming of a fiend. And, lo, 
 Vengeful, a great way off, he dealt 
 
 Defiance with his voice. 
 
 I know 
 This only : that, as one might go 
 
LAY OF LO YE 'S UNFOR TUNA TE. 143 
 
 Against one's death, the Chaitivel 
 
 Went against Pharamond that night 
 
 And met him ; and the two did fight 
 Out on the moor. 
 
 And some can tell 
 How, while they fought and neither fell, 
 
 The fiend did mock the man and said : 
 How long wilt thou contend widi me, 
 A day, a year, a century?— 
 
 That thou art come to me arrayed 
 In this frail garb of flesh and blood, 
 
 And with these arms, as man to strive 
 For some dull perishable good 
 
 With man ; or, thinkest thou to drive 
 Back to the grave this soul of mine 
 
 That brake the grave asunder ? Yea, 
 Look on my soul and think if thine 
 May fight for an eternal tiling 
 
 With me eternal ? 
 
 And they say 
 
 That, wrestling with the fiend, the man 
 
 Replied : O Pharamond, I can ; 
 
i 4 4 CHAITIVEL. 
 
 And we must go on combating, 
 My soul and thy soul to the end ! 
 
 Then Pharamond's red sword did rend 
 The swart air ; and they saw him smite 
 
 The man ; and, ere the man was dead, 
 Once more a great voice shook the night 
 Saying : Come up and let us fight 
 
 Unto the end, as thou hast said ; 
 And, peradventure, thou or I 
 May vanquish some day in the sky ; 
 
 Or after ages have been spent, 
 
 Fighting through every element ; 
 
 Or in the place where shadows dwell ; 
 In thy far heaven or my far hell ; 
 
 Or never ; till some final gloom 
 
 Shall end all things and God entomb 
 Eternity ! 
 
 And so they two fight on till doom. 
 
THE LAY OF ELIDUC. 
 
I WENT to her who loveth me no more, 
 And prayed her bear with me, if so she might, 
 
 For I had found day after day too sore, 
 And tears that would not cease night after night ; 
 
 And so I prayed her, weeping, that she bore 
 
 To let me be with her a little ; yea, 
 To soothe myself a little with her sight 
 
 Who loved me once, ah many a night and day. 
 
 Then she who loveth me no more, maybe, 
 She pitied somewhat : and I took a chain 
 
 To bind myself to her and her to me ; 
 Yea, so that I might call her mine again : 
 
 Lo, she forbade me not ; but I and she 
 
 Fettered her fair limbs and her neck more fair, 
 Chained the fair wasted white of love's domain 
 
 And put gold fetters on her golden hair. 
 
 O the vain joy it is to see her lie 
 Beside me once again ; beyond release, 
 
 Her hair, her hand, her body, till she die, 
 All mine for me to do with as I please ! 
 
 — For after all I find no chain whereby 
 
 To chain her heart to love me as before, 
 Nor fetter for her lips, to make them cease 
 
 From saying still she loveth me no more. 
 
THE LAY OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Combien que j'aie demoure 
 Hors de ma douce contree 
 Et maint grant travail endure 
 En terre maleuree, 
 Pour ce n'ai-je pas oublie 
 Le dous mal qui si m'agree, 
 Dont ja n'en quier avoir sante 
 S'en France ne m'est trouvee ! 
 
 GUILLAUME DE FERR1ERES. 
 
 Hard is the banishment from thee, 
 Fair France ! And, like a minstrelsy, 
 
 The very naming of thy lands 
 
 Rouseth the heart, and eke the hands 
 Of any son indeed of thine, 
 In any land of the sunshine 
 
 Where his feet tarry or are held ; 
 
 For, but to think of thee, is spelled 
 With all his joy or all his woe, 
 As he shall come again, or no, 
 
1 48 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 To die thy rose gardens among, 
 Thou land of roses and of song ! 
 
 This Lay is of Sir Eliduc 
 And all his warfare, and the luck 
 He had of love ; bitter and sweet : 
 Ladies, it is a thing full meet 
 For minstrelsy ; whereof indeed 
 Fair singers have well taken heed 
 In times before ; but, first of all, 
 In many a stead and castle-hall, « 
 Tax Brittany it was a lay, 
 And such as all could sing or say. 
 
 He was in honour of his king ; 
 
 And rich, and crowned with every thing, 
 That, through the hardest years of war 
 A knight may yearn and battle for, 
 
 To be his guerdon and his pride : 
 
 Yea, for at length, right far and wide, 
 He was the most beloved of knights 
 For valorous deeds, restoring rights 
 
 To all oppressed, both mean and fair ; 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 149 
 
 And him all voices did declare 
 
 The very saviour of his land 
 
 And king from the strong growing hand 
 Of bitter enemies, whose might 
 Had brought to many an evil plight 
 
 The shrinking borders of the realm, 
 
 — Whom Eliduc did overwhelm 
 With such a swift and perfect stroke 
 In all their quarters, that he broke 
 
 Their utter strength, and put in fear 
 
 All other foes that might be near. 
 
 And now, for many a great emprise ; 
 And, because, also, he was wise 
 
 As any elder, and his word 
 
 In every council was most heard, 
 His name was grown the highest name 
 Of theirs who in the king's hall came ; 
 
 And through the whole land he was known 
 
 Next to the king ; and, for his own, 
 He- had a palace like the king's, 
 Royal and served with sumptuous things. 
 
1 50 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Yet, for the envying of some, 
 To see how great he was become 
 In places where they once had part 
 But now scarce stood with any art, 
 — For this sad cause, or else for none, 
 Since man more noble than this one 
 Was ne'er in any place at all — 
 Sir Eliduc came to his fall. 
 Even he saw how, leaguered round 
 With false tongues and the feigning sound 
 Of courtiers, who made constant wile 
 To work him ill with all their smile, 
 The king's face fell indeed from him, 
 And the king's smile at last was dim 
 And his trust fenced round with doubt : 
 Then from the king's house he went out, 
 Saying a proud word to them all, 
 To wit, they should have need, and call 
 Some fair way on him, ere again 
 He should be there in that king's reign. 
 
 But, surely, in the court that day, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 151 
 
 There was full many a one to say 
 
 That this should never have been so — 
 
 To let that goodliest of them go, 
 And with so little thank at last 
 For all his serving in time past ; 
 
 Yea, for he held their hearts long while, 
 
 He had so fair and free a smile ; 
 Half soft, yet sharp and grey like steel 
 His eyes were ; and from head to heel 
 
 Shaped fair he was ; and, or with sword 
 
 Or gentler wielding of fair word, 
 Could win his will in everything 
 Through field' or court, with queen or king ; 
 
 Yet was there no man certainly 
 
 Knew aught of him but loyalty. 
 But swift was he to ride that day 
 Back to his lands and castle grey, 
 
 Vast lands of meadows fair and green, 
 
 Over whose last swell there was seen 
 The blue sea, — castle grey, with moat, 
 And walls that many an axe had smote, 
 
 Upon a hill set, strong and high 
 
 With thronging towers against the sky. 
 
i s 2 THE LA Y OF ELID L/C. 
 
 There came his people all to seek 
 
 His face ; but when they heard him speak 
 
 With changed voice, and beheld his brow 
 
 Where heavy thoughts like clouds were now, 
 — O they were silent ; and, made sad, 
 Spoke not of tithe or harvest glad, 
 
 Nor of their fortunes bad or good ; 
 
 But all with downcast look they stood, 
 Thinking of him their fair good lord, 
 Whose praise in each man's heart was stored. 
 
 Then he more saddened them with speech, 
 
 Yea, deeply in the heart of each ; 
 For now he bade them, till some while, 
 Farewell, and spoke of hard exile ; 
 
 For wrath was in him, and his pride 
 
 Let him not any more abide 
 In any realm of that his king 
 Unthankful ; but he chose to bring 
 
 The glory he was wont to bear 
 
 And service of his sword somewhere 
 To nobler patron over seas, 
 Where valour of a knight could please 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 153 
 
 And any fair thing was to do ; 
 Yea, so he bade them all adieu. 
 
 And on that veiy day, at noon, 
 To his dear wife he came full soon, 
 
 These bitter wrongs of his to tell, 
 
 And this last heavier thing as well. 
 He found her fair indeed that day, 
 Where she was sitting, robed and gay, 
 
 In lonesome coloured chamber high 
 
 Over the blue sea ; there were nigh 
 Her jewelled lute with golden strings, 
 And many fair wrought golden things 
 
 And bright quaint tapestries did lie 
 
 On floor and wall, of various dye, 
 AYrought out in painted histories 
 Of fair women in every guise ; 
 
 And, while she sat in listless mood 
 
 Sweetening that fair solitude, 
 She read an open book of rhyme, 
 Or heeded most the gay noontime 
 
 Out on the sunny coloured bar 
 
 Shedding in showers many a star 
 
1 54 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Or like bright scales of glittering gold 
 Wondrous and lovely to behold. 
 All there was fit to serve her heart 
 With pastime ; while the greater part 
 Her thoughts were tuned in sad accord, 
 Mourning for him their distant lord. 
 And now full red it made her cheek 
 To hold him there and hear him speak, 
 And have so soon of his return 
 All sweet for which her heart could yearn. 
 
 Ah, quick return that brought, alas, 
 A word whose grief was long to pass ! 
 Ah, sweet — the hardest bought of all 
 Her heart's rare sweet ! Soon hearing all 
 The evil tale of change and fate 
 — That now she should indeed but wait, 
 Might be long years, with no fair sight 
 Of him or coming of delight, 
 — Her hope all unassured and long, 
 Uncertain striving mid a throng 
 Of dismal fears and thought of foes 
 Innumerable, and distant woes 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 155 
 
 Already being wrought perhaps, 
 
 — Forefeeling through the doubtful lapse 
 
 The bitterness of many days, — 
 
 She fell a-swooned ; and, in all ways 
 Of sorrow, passed from thought to thought, 
 Despairing of all good ; nor sought 
 
 Too much to turn him from the will 
 
 To do that bitter thing ; for still 
 She knew he loved her, and not vain 
 Could be his deed, while he had pain 
 
 As much as hers at heart for it. 
 
 So all that eve they twain did sit 
 Together, losing not a space ; 
 Each gazing on the other's face, 
 
 To fill each other's heart right well 
 
 With treasure of its love, a spell 
 Against long parting and all crime 
 Of falseness through the bitter time. 
 
 Full many a vow she had of him 
 
 That evening in the twilight dim, 
 That, in what lands or with what men 
 His fate were, all his joy, as then, 
 
156 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Should be in holding her most fair 
 And thought of soon returning there. 
 
 Natheless, upon the morrow morn 
 There was a blowing of the horn 
 
 All round about that castle grey ; 
 
 Not later than the first of day 
 That came up from the hills behind 
 All cheerless ; while the chill new wind 
 
 Fretted between the sea and shore, 
 
 And pale lights changing more and more 
 The dim land and the grey cold sea 
 Gleamed on fair warriors who should be 
 
 Embarked in that day's enterprise ; 
 
 And all men were not slow to rise 
 And get them forth to see the start, 
 Grieving or envying at heart. 
 
 So Eliduc, with warriors ten, 
 His most beloved, well-chosen men 
 And tried, his friends in many a fight, 
 Stood by the ship in the pale light ; 
 And ere the halo from the day 
 
THE LA Y OF EL1D UC. 157 
 
 Was fallen, or the misty spray 
 Gleamed wholly silver in the sun, 
 Their hardy voyage was begun. 
 
 Fair is the south of England's isle : 
 
 There the sun maketh a full smile 
 
 On broad sweet grass of mountain side, 
 Or through great woods where birds abide 
 
 Full cheerily till summer wanes ; 
 
 And, in the quaint long pleasant lanes, 
 
 — Whose hedgerows gleam with bindweed bells 
 
 And fragile particoloured shells — 
 At warm noontide, quite dries the dews 
 From narrow footways lovers use 
 
 A-wandering hand in hand till eve ; 
 
 And there indeed the folk believe 
 In holy Christ and Mary sweet, 
 Yea, and are fairly wont to meet 
 
 In gentle toumay ; not unlearned 
 
 Of chivalry ; but some have earned 
 In all of Christendom good name, 
 
t s 8 7 HE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Whereof indeed the greatest fame 
 Had Arthur and that Launcelot 
 Of whom is song that ceaseth not. 
 But, all before and after these, 
 The folk hath had but little ease 
 From evils dire and manifold ; 
 For in the forests dark and old 
 Was ever many a lurking harm 
 Of foe unseen ; and a strong arm 
 Of weird enchantment too hath been 
 Stretched over that land fair and green. 
 
 Now, longwhile, in a goodly town 
 Reigned hereabout, with all renown, 
 A king both wise and valorous, 
 And happy too in all his house ; 
 For in his time, full many a year, 
 The land had peace from every fear, 
 And was quite easeful now become 
 With heaped-up wealth in every home. 
 Bright was the palace that he built, 
 With carven walls and work of gilt, 
 In every part wrought at command 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 159 
 
 By many a Southern craftsman's hand ; 
 And treasure he had now well stored 
 In many a hidden guarded hoard ; 
 
 Noble he was and served with love 
 
 Of all that folk he reigned above, 
 Honouring all things fair and free 
 And caring well for chivalry. 
 
 Yet after some long while that thus 
 All men were living prosperous 
 
 In happy peace at home, and fain 
 
 To think not else should be again 
 Their lot, yea to forget well-nigh 
 The old hard Past and dream to die 
 
 Even beneath that sunny fate 
 
 Of joy; and so were grown elate 
 With pride indeed of all ; — I say, 
 After somewhile it was this way, 
 
 There happened many a sudden strange 
 
 And fearful omen of sad change 
 And terror coming surely soon. 
 
 But lo, the Princess Guilliadun 
 
1 60 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 — Fair I shall show her as I may, 
 Of whom indeed is all this Lay — 
 Before the eyes of men she stood 
 Filling her year of maidenhood ; 
 
 And now, for all her wealth, and e'en 
 For her fair beauty that was seen, 
 Her hand was sought of many a king, 
 Who came with goodly offering 
 To that rich court her father had, 
 And thought to be made rich and glad 
 With love of her and greater far 
 Than any other, helped in war 
 With mighty aid of him her sire. 
 And with the rest there did aspire 
 A certain king, no way the least ; 
 Who, past the forests, to the east 
 Had realms and cities counted fair ; 
 But rude he was, and took no care 
 Of much that well beseems a knight 
 In bearing him ; nor to the sight 
 
 Seemed other than some rugged lord 
 And leader of outlandish horde. 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 1 6 1 
 
 When he with little grace was heard 
 Among the suitors, nor preferred 
 
 In any way by the king's hand 
 
 Above the lowest who for land 
 Paid tribute, — wroth, he left the court, 
 Leave-taking after no smooth sort, 
 
 But threatening vengeance quick and great ; 
 
 And now he sought his wrath to sate. 
 And it befell that, in no fair 
 And knightly order of warfare, 
 
 But, in his way barbarian, 
 
 — Lurking in wait with many a man 
 And marking well the fitting while 
 When was no dream of foe nor guile, — 
 
 He came upon that town and wrought 
 
 No little panic while men sought, 
 Bewildered in the strange turmoil 
 Their arms ; and, with much precious spoil, 
 
 He 'scaped them, ere their hands were strong 
 
 To do great battle with that throng 
 Of ravagers made greatly bold 
 For sake of many a prize of gold. 
 
1 6 2 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Alas, there was an evil sight 
 At morn in all that city bright, 
 
 And every head with grief was bowed ; 
 
 For many a dwelling-house or proud 
 Fair treasury, or holy place 
 Was now made poor of store and grace ; 
 
 And the great crowd of spoiling feet 
 
 Had trodden through the gardens sweet 
 And made a wreck for all that year ; 
 And little was there held most dear 
 
 Of king or townsmen that was found 
 
 Unruined all the city round. 
 So but beginning was their woe ; 
 For now was strengthened every foe 
 
 At hearing only what was done ; 
 
 And with them fought full many a one 
 Of those contending kings at length, 
 Ending their strife for common strength 
 
 To make their single vengeance sure : 
 
 And long the warfare did endure 
 With various fate on either hand ; 
 But so their foes grew in the land, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELTD UC. 1 63 
 
 Pressing upon them more and more, 
 
 That, in a year, they scarcely bore 
 Against them any equal part ; 
 And were become quite faint of heart, 
 
 Because they saw at length small chance 
 
 Or hope of new deliverance. 
 
 So, while the thing was in such state, 
 — Ordered of God's own will and fate, 
 
 There came to help those failing men 
 
 Sir Eliduc with his knights ten. 
 When he was come into that land, 
 And leamt what king there had command, 
 
 And, verily, what evil plight 
 
 They now were in, he deemed it right 
 To bear him to the palace straight ; 
 And there, before the guarded gate, 
 
 Full hardily to stand and crave 
 
 To enter in with his knights brave. 
 And when the king of his intent 
 Knew perfectly, right glad he sent 
 
 A chamberlain to show them grace 
 
 And bring them all before his face. 
 
1 64 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Then, surely, he beheld how fair 
 
 And goodly knights those strangers were, 
 And most what person of high mien 
 Was Eliduc ; and, having seen, 
 
 He joyed at heart such guests to know 
 
 And prayed them now no further go 
 In quest of knightly toils, but stay 
 And be right welcome many a day, 
 
 And help him if they would at need ; 
 
 Therewith he bade his folk take heed 
 Those strangers should be nobly served 
 According as their rank deserved, 
 
 And in a mansion of the town 
 
 Be straight regaled with all his own. 
 Right royally with wine and meat 
 He made them fare, and all things sweet 
 
 Was fain unto them to have done : 
 
 But Eliduc spake everyone 
 
 His knights, and gave them this command ; 
 That they should take nought of his hand, 
 
 But use their own in every way ; 
 
 And this until the fortieth day. 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 165 
 
 And now, when through the leaguered place 
 The fame of these was spread apace, 
 
 And their fair vows of timely aid, 
 
 A new and warlike heart was made 
 In breast of every warrior there, 
 And strength again to go and dare 
 
 The legion of oppressors rude ; 
 
 And, day by day, more grew the mood, 
 As through the street was fairly seen 
 The comely and undaunted mien 
 
 Of those fair foreign knights, all clad 
 
 In ready arms, yet wholly glad 
 And fain of laugh and merriment, 
 The while an idle time they spent, 
 
 As though there were no foes indeed 
 
 Or war al hand : scarce in more heed 
 Seemed lie — the leader of the band — 
 Who with a free and caieless hand 
 
 Kept feast-time there right bounteously. 
 
 No longer did men think to die, 
 But felt again all goodly pride ; 
 And every day were fain to ride 
 
 Hotly against the lurking place 
 
1 66 THE LA Y OF EL1D UC. 
 
 Of that ignoble banded race 
 Of praiseless fighters with the sling 
 And treacherous shaft, whom none could bring 
 
 To open battle in the field ; 
 
 But now would Eliduc not yield 
 His word for battle or foray, 
 Until, upon a wished-for day, 
 
 Was told him how along the plain 
 
 The foe was seen to rise again, 
 Coming up in a phalanx dim 
 From the low dusky forest rim. 
 
 Then he caused blast of horn and shout 
 
 To clamour all the town about ; 
 And the roused warriors, strong and bright 
 In ready mail, came to his sight 
 
 From every dwelling in the town ; 
 
 With a great clangour they came down, 
 More knights than men knew in that realm 
 To wield bright lance or wear hard helm, 
 
 For so almighty was the sound 
 
 Of those who stood on high and wound 
 The brazen brilliant clarion there, 
 No youth or old man could forbear. 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 167 
 
 But when he turned and led them all 
 
 To battle past the city wall, 
 I ween already far away 
 The foe was struck with their array, 
 
 Where sunshine on the gleaming gold 
 
 And glittering silver fell and rolled 
 In a proud wave that far and near 
 Broke on some plumed head or spear 
 
 Wrought of the hard and threatening steel : 
 
 So eager was each man to deal 
 
 His vengeance on those robber bands, 
 The spoilers of his wealth and lands, 
 
 That all with spur and eager rein 
 
 Set forward to the midmost plain ; 
 
 And there they met them, and soon paired 
 With lance against round shield, and cared 
 
 Not much, in all their perfect mail, 
 
 For stone or javelin or fierce hail 
 Of fluttering arrows ; but right close 
 They smote among them there with blows 
 
 Of mighty battle-axe and sword j 
 
 And, while the war grew up and roared 
 
168 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Around them, each one did rejoice 
 To hear the great undaunted voice 
 
 Of Eliduc, and knew no fear ; 
 
 And not long could the spoilers bear 
 Such rage as theirs ; but, while they fell 
 Slain more than any song can tell, 
 
 With backward steps along the plain 
 
 They strove a safer place to gain 
 Among the trees, where, so pursued, 
 The hoof-delaying underwood 
 
 Might aid and give them yet a hope. 
 
 But still, that some might be to cope 
 Against them in the place they sought 
 And bring them utterly to nought, 
 
 Sir Eliduc gave quick command, 
 
 And straightway chose him out a band 
 Of swordsmen lithe of limb and keen 
 To follow, without horse, between 
 
 The close and thronging trunks a space ; 
 
 Till they should wholly turn their face, 
 And be past hope or power more. 
 O, on that day he smote them sore ; 
 
 And left them dying far away 
 
THE LA Y OF ELTD UC. 1 69 
 
 Out in the forest ! And when gray 
 Of evening fell, he turned him round ; 
 And with much spoil and prisoners bound 
 
 Led back that troop of his elate, 
 
 And came before the city's gate. 
 So with a golden victory 
 He saveji the king and set him free. 
 
 Now is it time. indeed and right 
 
 To tell of Guilliadun the fair. 
 
 Sweet was her head with woven hair, 
 A tender colour to behold 
 Between the beauty of fair gold 
 
 And some soft palour of fair brown ; 
 
 Lovely she was past all renown ; 
 Her face was of no tint one knows, 
 Save only that of the Primrose, 
 
 With all its strange rare seeming too 
 
 That charmeth so in the spring new 
 After long waiting. Now, in truth, 
 All in a tender year of youth, 
 
 She moved in her scarce maidenhood — 
 
1 7 o THE LAY OF ELID UC. 
 
 Like any Lady to be wooed 
 In bower and served of lord or knight : 
 Upon her neck and her arms white 
 Was many an ornament vermeil 
 Or filigree of gold-work frail ; 
 And in rich vestures of a queen 
 All amply broidered she was seen ; 
 Yea, in a robe of silk most fine 
 Inwrought with many a gem to shine 
 On train, or in fair shapely sleeve 
 Of fabrics such as women weave. 
 
 So was she ; and scarce knew her state, 
 And fair things done to her of fate ; 
 The while, about her form and face, 
 Gracious beginnings of all grace 
 Wrought their most subtly fashioned spell ; 
 And within her was seen to dwell 
 
 Some spirit of bright thoughts and new, 
 Swift glancing out of deep eyes blue. 
 Her beauty was as sweet a thing 
 As is the primrose in the spring. 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 171 
 
 She wondered whether she should die 
 And ne'er find out the mystery 
 
 Of Love ; but daily more and more 
 She sought out all his gentle lore ; 
 And, like a maiden pure and bright, 
 She wooed him, many a day and night, 
 With her chaste worship all apart, 
 And many an offering in her heart 
 Of happy blushing thoughts made mute, 
 And with the music of her lute. 
 
 She had a sweet bright-coloured bower 
 Hidden with many a leaf and flower ; 
 Wrought all beneath the gay sunshine 
 With leaf and flower of eglantine, 
 And branches green upon the side. 
 There was her heart set open wide, 
 To heed the marvels of sweet sound 
 Of the trees singing all around, 
 Moving like many a shapen hand 
 Their leaves, —all shining as some band 
 Of goodly armoured men of war 
 
1 7 2 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 What time the sun his light doth pour 
 On their clashed coats of glittering steel ; 
 And she would hear each sound reveal 
 Some omen spoken to her heart, 
 And, in each sight familiar, start 
 At some new sense or strangeness caught 
 Making an answer to her thought. 
 
 And there, between the leaves and leaves, 
 In yellow summer noons and eves, 
 When thousand sorceries of sweet 
 In strange enchantment seemed to meet, 
 She took fair sprays of flowers and wove 
 Her many a destiny of love ; 
 And prayed love would bless this and this, 
 Seeking yet more some further bliss ; 
 Or after all, forgetting these, 
 Would dream of fair loves over seas, 
 Thinking of Tristan and Ysolde 
 And many another story told, 
 And almost hear the rich lute strain 
 From many a royal tented plain 
 Or golden barge on waters blue : 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 173 
 
 So she would tempt indeed and woo 
 Love's self, and much her thought would err 
 Dreaming what he should do with her. 
 
 God, in all things that He hath made, 
 Full many a jewel hath inlaid ; 
 
 For first He hath set all on high 
 
 That fair enamel of the sky, 
 Brilliant of blue and eke of white ; 
 Then He hath shed the pearl of light, 
 
 And made that jewel-work the seas : 
 
 Nor less a gem indeed than these 
 I count His miracle the Rose, 
 To love more precious than all those : 
 
 But now — a fairer jewel yet — 
 
 In every woman He hath set 
 Her heart, some sort of precious stone ; 
 He shall know perfectly alone 
 
 — Who all the stars of heaven can call — 
 
 The worth and number of them all. 
 Most are they given away, or sold 
 For so much love or so much gold, 
 
 Yea, no man knoweth of their cost ; 
 
174 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 But well I ween that some are lost, 
 And some are of small worth I say, 
 And some are broken and cast away. 
 
 It is the fairest thing you can, 
 
 Ladies, to give this to a man 
 — This precious jewel that God gave : 
 One such is all a man may crave. 
 
 Now when the Princess Guilliadun 
 Had heard what things were done ; and soon, 
 How gracious was that foreign knight 
 And wonderful in all men's sight, — 
 She was but fain some way to seek 
 His presence, so to hear him speak, 
 And win some tale from him perchance 
 Of foreign wonder and of France : 
 So with all salutation meet 
 And many a goodly word and sweet, 
 On the first morrow of that day 
 She sent her Chamberlain to pray 
 Sir Eliduc, of courtesy 
 That to her presence he would hie 
 
THE LA V OF ELID UC. 175 
 
 When so he might, and gain her meed 
 Of praise for all his noble deed. 
 
 And, soon as she at length beheld 
 
 That chivalrous man of court and field, 
 Fair, with fair locks unhelmed, and face 
 Changed from all sternness to all grace, 
 
 Yea, found what smiles in him were stored. 
 
 Knowing him such a perfect lord 
 In foreign courts of kings, — alas 
 She thought some dream were come to pass 
 
 Of Love's own sending : with his kiss 
 
 He touched her hand ; nor less than this 
 Fair salutation did he make 
 With many a sweet word for her sake ; 
 
 Then even to her side he came, 
 
 And told her many a thing of fame. 
 Sitting anigh her on a couch. 
 
 But, while he heeded not her touch. 
 Nor what fair hanging of her sleeve 
 Or robe upon his own might cleave — 
 
 O she was feeling in her breast 
 
1 7 6 THE LA Y OF EL1D UC. 
 
 A spell she knew not, breaking rest 
 And thoughts too sweet for shame or fear 
 Making a strange new trouble there, 
 
 Shaking her breath with many a start ; 
 
 And very colours of her heart 
 Did ofttime rise upon her cheek, 
 Until she scarce knew what to speak ; 
 
 And now the more on him she gazed 
 
 The more within that sight she praised, 
 And knew that she could love him quite ; 
 Yea, sooth, if any were her knight, 
 
 Sir Eliduc — it might be he. 
 
 Thereat so weak at heart fell she, 
 Troubled a way she could not hide 
 With him there sitting at her side, 
 It surely had not failed at last 
 But on his breast she there had cast 
 Her head quite weeping. — O, what lack 
 Of wiles to hide the sore heart-rack 
 Beginning all love's secret woe, 
 Yea, of such wiles as women know, 
 — What lack I say was here ! — to sigh 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 177 
 
 And let the thoughts come up so high 
 
 Out of the heart ; yea, as it would, 
 
 To let the heart beat unwithstood 
 And«do its pleasure with the cheek ! 
 Love was so strong and she so weak. 
 
 But not like one unskilled I ween 
 Was Eliduc, when he had seen 
 
 The trouble of her breast and eye, 
 
 And her breath striving with its sigh ; 
 Nay, surely, for he was well taught, 
 Oft having seen how love had wrought 
 
 With many a.queen and lady fair ; 
 
 So of his tokens had good care : 
 That day he left her with a bland 
 And sweet leave-taking of her hand. 
 
 Now all the toil of war was done ; 
 
 And joy it was to everyone 
 
 To rest that morn in garden sweet, 
 Or wander through the idle street ; 
 
 Or, as though foe had never been, 
 
 To seek fair wood and meadow green 
 
 N 
 
1 78 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 And feel the sun's rich hour of glow ; 
 
 That day, as in time long ago, 
 Came round the yellow smile of noon 
 Bringing the easeful shadows soon. 
 
 And now this knight, whom all men blest 
 
 — In fair pavilion full of rest, 
 
 Made sweet with many a perfumed thing — 
 He lay, half glad, half sorrowing. 
 
 Amid the silken curtains there 
 
 Tarried the soft-lipped summer air, 
 
 With many a murmurous tiding brought 
 From woodlands far of sweet things wrought 
 
 Under the cool leaves all that day, 
 
 Or from the blue sea far away. 
 Yea, he was glad indeed awhile, 
 All through the sorrow of exile ; 
 
 For now, no thought of war at hand, 
 
 Full of new pleasure seemed that land ; 
 Like soft enchantments in a dream 
 Under fair floating blue did seem 
 
 The summer colours, where, in woods 
 
 Of quaint-cut golden leaves, sweet broods 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 179 
 
 Of pied birds and the painted jay 
 Flouted with clamours strange and gay ; 
 
 Or where, in wilds of forest grass, 
 
 Through sun and shade was wont to pass 
 The shrinking spirit-slender herd 
 Of roes ; and, far as his sight erred, 
 
 The straitened particoloured mead 
 
 Was like some fair mosaic indeed : 
 
 And there, for many an hour of rest, 
 
 His heart of all things counted best 
 The thought of goodly Guilliadun ; 
 And — through such soft times of the noon 
 
 When most is pleasant need to steep 
 
 The sense in dreamy wines or sleep — 
 Remembered all her beauty fair, 
 And fragrance of her presence, rare 
 
 And haunting as some flower's is ; — 
 
 The blue of pale anemones 
 
 Her eyes were ; and her bosom's white, 
 With every changing hue and sight 
 
 That love or shame could make of it ; 
 
 And with what grace it did befit 
 
180 THE LA Y OF EL1DUC. 
 
 Her hands, — their toying with the lace 
 On her rich vest's embroidered place. 
 
 Then on warm mountain side was seen 
 Full many a broadcast shadow green, 
 And, from the homesteads deep among 
 The thronging trees, some strain was sung 
 Such as the shepherds make at eve ; 
 And soon the unseen hands, that weave 
 The sweet spell of the summer night, 
 Were changing softly each fair sight 
 In all the pleasant world ; and soon 
 The long pale fingers of the moon 
 Touching all weary things with sleep 
 Through flower-land and forest deep. 
 
 How many a magic Love doth quite 
 
 Perform in one short summer night — 
 Wherein is scarcely space for dreams, 
 While, on each side the world, it seems 
 
 The days nigh join with amber hands, 
 
 Over the dimly gleaming lands, 
 
 Where under thin-veiled shifting sky 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 1 8 1 
 
 Gleams many a flower with white eye 
 Unclosed ! — On moonlight paven path 
 How many a meeting place Love hath — 
 
 Where dreams, or yearning thoughts that thrill, 
 
 Parted in vain, may find their will, 
 And come together as they range, 
 And fall into sweet interchange 
 
 Like waves with waves, whereof some sign 
 . Felt at the trembling ripple-line 
 Of either brimming heart doth bring 
 A rich unwonted comforting ! 
 
 Not else I ween, nor without aid 
 Of love's sweet miracle, now strayed 
 
 The restless seeking thoughts that brake 
 
 The breast of Guilliadun, for sake 
 Of things some hand of fate had brought 
 So near, yet thereof left her nought 
 
 But loss and love, and like a sore 
 
 Filling the heart up more and more : 
 And her sighs, full of that fair ill, 
 Set free, drew near, I think, at will 
 
 E'en to the breast of him they sought, 
 
182 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 And there a sweet contagion wrought : 
 Else, in some way no man can tell, 
 Love did renew with greater spell 
 All heart-enthralling memories 
 Of Guilliadun and her fair eyes ; 
 And cherished still the slender strain 
 Of her last words; and wrought again, 
 From all the balmy pores of night, 
 The very perfume and delight 
 It was to be at her fair side ; 
 For over him a charm did glide : 
 And through the fair hours came a dream 
 Of her beside him ; she did seem 
 
 Still hearkening, with her hands at fret, 
 As in the same fair trouble yet ; 
 The while almost upon his own 
 The tremor of her arm seemed known, 
 And in her breath a short half sigh 
 Hung fluttering ; and his heart felt nigh 
 To some rich living flower — stood still 
 For fear of breaking some rich thrill. 
 Then, it seemed, all their words had been 
 Of nothing else than love ; and e'en 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 1 83 
 
 Their trouble, that they could not say 
 How sweet it was, and in what way 
 
 It wrought with each of them at heart; — 
 
 For, now, it seemed, he, for his part, 
 Loved most because of the sweet hue 
 Her eyes held, purer than all blue ; 
 
 And now for ways her neck was curved ; 
 
 Or for some secret sweet reserved 
 In her curled smiles ; but now, in truth, 
 'Twas only for her body's youth, 
 
 And the whole strangeness of the grace 
 
 Belonging to its every place. 
 
 So, a long time, athwart his trance, 
 
 Such thoughts love's power did all enhance. 
 
 Yet afterward came with a tear 
 
 The memory of his own wife dear. 
 And of her love through all time past, 
 And of her words and grief at last : 
 
 Yea, now he thought, and with it wept, 
 
 Of the church where his fathers slept 
 In the midst of the grey sea town, 
 In the land where they had renown, 
 
t 84 THE LA Y OF ELW UC. 
 
 And he was honoured with them all, 
 
 When, under shield armorial, 
 
 He stood, on holy day and seemed 
 Before his folk all things they dreamed 
 
 Noblest and highest to attain. 
 
 Alas, his heart had been nigh fain 
 To fall away from all that state ; 
 And, for some fair uncertain fate 
 In alien land, to bear no more, 
 Laid up in many a precious store, 
 The thoughts of what had quite made fair 
 All fates of many a former year, 
 The long rich pasts of love and fame ; 
 — So at length, till his very name 
 Should weary on the lips of men, 
 And in his home among his kin 
 Should come to be no more a boast, 
 And he to seem as one quite lost 
 
 Or one quite false. Thereof he thought 
 Full bitterly, till he was wrought 
 To utter grief ; and in his breast 
 His erring heart at length confest 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIJD UC. 1 85 
 
 The treason love had there begun ; 
 
 And how it had well nigh undone 
 His constancy ; and did intend 
 Surely no honourable end, 
 
 But to bring on him shameful stain 
 
 In sight of all men who were fain 
 To call him noble, — yea, to cast 
 Him wholly from their praise at last, 
 
 As one scarce true with heart and hand 
 
 To king and love and fatherland. 
 
 But soon, for all such shame, he found 
 That love had made indeed a wound 
 
 Already inmost in his heart ; 
 
 And that it was quite hard to part 
 At once from the so sweetened sting, 
 Whereto the aching thoughts would cling 
 
 Right fondly, spite of all his strength : 
 
 Then thought he with himself at length, 
 That- neither had he needs take heed 
 — Like a mere youth unskilled indeed, 
 
 To fly a straight inglorious flight 
 
 Because of such first simple sight 
 
1 86 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Of love — that snarer of man's heart, 
 Nor yet should he forget with art 
 
 To be full armed, so in the end 
 
 To foil the harm love did intend. 
 For surely, with no spell or snare 
 Should he be taken unaware, 
 
 Who had well known all subtle ways 
 
 Wherein that enemy most lays 
 His ambush, yea, and of long time 
 Seen many an one fall in fair crime 
 
 Of love, trapped most unwittingly ; 
 
 — Himself in Love's court held to be 
 A very courtier above all : 
 — Yea, little need he fear to fall 
 
 Through aught of love's familiar guile ! 
 
 Verily, too, love hath some wile 
 Laid deeply in the sweet sunshine 
 And woven in the tissue fine 
 
 Of the mere light and floating air ; 
 
 And in the purest place his snare 
 Is surely set — in field or home 
 Or wheresoe'er a man may roam 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 187 
 
 About the world, in day or night, 
 
 In moods of sadness or delight, 
 In crowds or solitudes sought out 
 Or dreams; — so must He go quite out 
 
 Of all the pleasant world, and joy 
 
 No more in living, or destroy 
 The very heart, — whoso would flee 
 Where no more taint of love shall be. 
 
 Moreover, in his exile sad, 
 
 I ween, some kind of sweet he had, 
 
 Dwelling in any thought or dream 
 
 Of love ; and so -alone did seem 
 Softened at all his utmost fate 
 In that far foreign land ; for great 
 
 Indeed Love's power is to charm, 
 
 And he can stretch a magic arm 
 Over all sadness to prevail. 
 
 Then, after all, it doth not fail 
 
 — Yea, Ladies, as ye know, I say, — 
 
 But there be many a sweet half way, 
 Wherein is pleasantness enough, 
 
1 88 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 That one may quite come nigh to love; 
 And e'en accomplish some fair part 
 Of longing, and regale the heart 
 Ofttimes with many a tender bliss, 
 Or feast of passionate looks or kiss ; 
 Yea, many a rapturous thing begin 
 Whereto shall cleave no word of sin. 
 
 Now Guilliadun was grown quite weak 
 Against her love ; and ways did seek 
 To break the spells of silence set 
 Hard over all her thoughts ; while yet 
 She sought how, without shame or sin, 
 She might most favourably win 
 To some new solace-giving sight 
 Of fair Sir Eliduc her knight. 
 She took the fairest ring she had, 
 And scarf embroidered from Bagdad, 
 — Of silk it was, rich to behold, 
 Crimson and wrought upon with gold ; 
 These gifts, — that therewith she might send 
 Some message written with her hand 
 To pray him be her knight indeed, 
 
THE LAY OF ELID UC. 1 89 
 
 And come and learn some present need 
 She had of succour : so she fained, 
 And tenderly her will explained 
 
 In words most delicate and meet 
 
 To win all things they did entreat. 
 
 Then one day, — while, each day's long round, 
 
 Full of a fond expectancy, 
 
 Yet heavy at her heart, and nigh 
 Foreboding sore was Guilliadun, — 
 Failing not still to importune 
 
 Each barren hour that brought not peace — 
 
 He came ; and made at once to cease 
 The bitter pulse of fear and doubt 
 That racked her heart ; for there, about 
 
 His waist, was girded that sweet thing 
 
 The scarf her gift, and the fair ring 
 She saw upon his finger set : 
 O, her heart joyed, and did beget 
 
 A pleasant trust in all its fate. 
 
 That day the company was great 
 About the King, in good array ; 
 
1 90 THE LA Y OF ELTD UC. 
 
 For many a noble kind of play 
 
 The guests were met ; but when the name 
 Of Eliduc among them came, 
 
 The King went to him in mid-hall 
 
 And gave him welcome before all. 
 Anon, he took him, with all grace, 
 And brought him straightway to the place 
 
 Where stood the Princess Guilliadun ; 
 
 And bade that soon might be begun 
 Her favour to so great a knight, 
 As she would show forth her delight 
 
 In nobleness and valorous deeds. 
 
 — O, as some music strain that leads 
 The enthralled sense, on willing feet, 
 Through new discoveries of sweet, 
 And leaves it dreaming in some heaven 
 Of half found rapture, — O, as even 
 All simple solace-giving things, 
 Proved now that sweet word of the King's, 
 Heard in the heart of each of these, 
 Wherein it healed one same disease 
 Of restless yearning : and, long pent 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. i 9 1 
 
 In many a secret languishment, 
 
 Some inmost thought of Guilliadun 
 
 — She could not stay it now — too soon 
 It rose up like a flood with rush 
 Out of her heart, and sent its blush 
 
 Of rapture to the fairest place 
 
 Upon her bosom and her face. 
 
 Into a chamber now they came, 
 Apart, where no one was to shame 
 
 The fair fruition that they took 
 
 At once in many a mingling look. 
 Ah, to their hearts that place seemed sweet, 
 A fitting place wherein to meet 
 
 One's love indeed. Rich to the eyes 
 
 It showed, with couch and tapestries 
 Wrought all of precious stuffs and new 
 From conquered East, — rich with a hue 
 
 Of changeful purples ; and therein 
 
 Gleamed many an ornament of thin 
 And precious filigree of gold, 
 And marble things fair to behold 
 
 Through the dim shadows of noontide : 
 
1 92 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 There, too, the casement, open wide 
 To many a pleasant singing breeze 
 And moving shadow of fair trees, 
 Let in the balmy breath all day, 
 From many a lovely garden way.— 
 Ay, fair that chamber was, and sweet 
 For lovers such as they to meet. 
 
 Long time love kept their hearts too faint 
 For words ; and all a sweet restraint 
 
 They suffered, daring scarce to dream 
 
 The joy they had, that still did seem 
 Too fair for trusting : then they broke 
 That precious spell, and words they spoke, - 
 
 Such gentle words as knight or dame 
 
 May ahvay, without sin or shame. 
 And, first, Sir Eliduc would please 
 That lady's fancy, at her ease, 
 
 With all the wonders of the war ; 
 
 And tales of fair deeds done afar 
 In harsh fight with her father's foes, 
 Who so long time oppressed with woes 
 
 And bitter dread that pleasant land ; 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. i y 3 
 
 He told her how the heathen band 
 
 Cried out at sight of the fair line 
 
 Of pointed spears ; and how, in fine, 
 
 They turned and fled, and were most left 
 A-dying on the field bereft 
 
 Of all their arms and spoil, or died 
 
 Fleeing about the forests wide ; 
 
 And how not such a foe, he thought, 
 Should now for many a year be brought 
 
 From any land of theirs again. 
 
 Then too, to tell her he was fain 
 Some foreign history of kings 
 And knights, whereof the minstrel sings 
 
 Already many a fair romance : 
 
 And much he said indeed of France 
 And of its royal court, with fame 
 Of many a noble and bright dame. 
 
 Meanwhile not less seemed very dear 
 To him that time while she was near ; 
 Yea, and amid such fair discourse 
 The depth of many a troublous source 
 Of feeling came well nigh to break 
 
 o 
 
1 94 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Its false restraint, yearning to slake 
 In many a warmer spoken word 
 Its passion ; and each time he heard 
 Her breath in many a liquid sigh, 
 Scarce fain he was to let it die 
 Unculled upon her lips ; nor less 
 Was touched indeed to sweet distress 
 His heart, with heeding many a staid 
 And gentle wooing her eyes made 
 Right piteously amid their fear ; 
 Yea, bitter seemed it to forbear 
 From satisfying the least part 
 Of the great longing of the heart, 
 With any exquisite delight 
 Of touch, wrought on the flower white 
 Of hand or shoulder, where the sin 
 Of sight made well nigh to begin 
 
 Some rosy shame : yea, bitter seemed 
 To let the moments, unredeemed 
 With aught of love's sufficing gain, 
 Fall from the precious present, vain — 
 To pass and dwindle fruitlessly 
 Into a vanishing memory, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC 195 
 
 As of frail dreams, dissolving deep 
 And far away in clouds of sleep. 
 
 But when again some space was wrought 
 Heavy through silence, with the thought 
 
 Of each, that added burdens more 
 
 To every throbbing of the sore 
 And anguished heart, — he did renew 
 Fair chosen speech in praise most due 
 
 For the rich gifts her hand had sent ; 
 
 And, more, for the full favour meant 
 In every gracious word she wrote ; 
 And, thanking her, his heart he smote 
 
 And said that he was ready now 
 
 — Yea said and sealed it with a vow — 
 Both with his hand and all he was 
 To serve her straight in any cause, 
 
 Unto the utmost of all right, 
 
 As he was now indeed her knight. 
 
 O rich the moments were with joy, 
 
 Such as no future could destroy / 
 
 Strange, wrought through many an inward throe 
 
196 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 And miracle of feeling. Lo 
 It was the noon ; and you might hear 
 Now, from the open casement near, 
 
 Faint sounds that came through sun and shade; 
 And the mysterious rapture made 
 Among the leaves and flowers and things 
 Each rapid summer moment brings 
 Richly to life. But, on that day, 
 The garden flowers from far away, — 
 Yea, even from her own bower apart, 
 AVhere so long wearily the heart 
 Of Guilliadun was wont .to dwell,- - 
 They seemed to have a subtler spell 
 Inwoven with their wafted gift 
 Of sweetness ; and she could'not lift 
 Some urging hand, that seemed to press 
 Upon her heart and with sore stress 
 Compel it to some passionate thing 
 Through many a fearful shuddering : 
 And love's great magic seemed to meet 
 With silence of that time, and sweet, 
 And many a long remembered vow 
 That urged its true fulfilment now 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 197 
 
 Out of the lonely maiden past 
 
 Of waiting : yea some league at last 
 
 Was surely made against her there ; 
 
 And hard it was for her to bear. 
 
 — And, that she could no more withstand, 
 Full well her fluttering lily hand 
 
 Betrayed ; and, troubled with its sighs, 
 
 Her breast beneath its broideries ; 
 And even her tender foot was seen 
 To tremble, scarcely hid between 
 
 The silken folds wherein it dwelt. 
 
 In all her soul a fear she felt ; 
 For she thought, on that summer day, 
 Sure Love was either come to slay 
 
 Her heart that moment, or must do 
 
 Some miracle to save her through 
 At once, what way He only can. 
 
 And then, indeed, her lips began 
 All in a passionate way, and spake 
 Quite blindly, as the heart did break 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Straight into many a beautiful word 
 
 Of love ; the which, when she had heard, 
 
 Seemed fearful with some direst sin 
 
 That leaves a rankling stain within 
 And dread for ever. 
 
 Other far, 
 And but the sweetest words that are, 
 
 They seemed to Eliduc I think ; 
 
 And scarcely fain was he to shrink 
 From one of them : but when, aghast, 
 She ceased, — softly he took at last 
 
 Her hand, that, like a bird quite faint 
 
 With fluttering, failed of all restraint, 
 And lay in his, so white and fair 
 That his lips did not long forbear 
 
 From kissing out their love on it : 
 
 Nor after did they quite omit 
 Their pleasant lore of eloquence ; 
 Nor did the heart in any sense 
 
 Fail to suffice their utmost need. 
 
 For, in that place, beset, indeed, 
 With every sweet conspiring spell, 
 His heart withstood no more ; but fell, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 199 
 
 Past saving, into such deep snare 
 
 And passionate sin of love, that bare 
 Of joy seemed any former place 
 Of rapturous vows, and dim the face 
 
 That any earlier lover bore ; 
 
 And with his lips he quite forswore 
 — Yea, now, with praise of that hour's bliss, 
 All former spoken rhapsodies. 
 
 Of ail the things a man may have 
 Before he cometh to the grave — 
 
 Of all the joys that he may win 
 
 Through any toil or any sin, 
 This is the richest : to possess 
 One yearned-for hour in loneliness 
 
 Beside one's love, in some fair clime, 
 
 In some fair purple Autumn time ; 
 For quite shall be forgotten then 
 The pains and labours among men, 
 
 The bitter things of thought and fear ; 
 
 The bitter ends of hope ; and, near, 
 Quite at one's side, yea, on one's heart, 
 Yea, touching, with no more to part 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 The yearning hands or looks that meet, 
 Shall seem the often dreamed-of sweet 
 Much more than all the glowing things 
 To which the fondest memory clings — 
 Much more than any rapturous past 
 Or future in fair heaven at last. 
 And this — the fairest moment, sure, 
 In each man's life — it shall endure 
 
 Some noon ; while creeping twilight dims 
 Slowly some flower's purple rims, 
 Or some green distance suffers change 
 Fading before us : then this strange 
 And precious rapture — it shall pass, 
 And never come again, alas ! 
 Nay, for there shall be bliss and bliss, 
 And love and love, and kiss and kiss, 
 And many a pleasant touch of hands, 
 And place for love in many lands, 
 And communings of heart with heart, 
 Much to be gained much to impart, — 
 All these ; but, surely, never more 
 Doth any time at all restore 
 That faded purple of delight, 
 
THE LA Y OF EL1DUC. 
 
 And the same sweet and the same sight 
 As when one's love in that fair place 
 Blushed with strange crimson, face to face 
 
 With every inward passionate thought 
 
 Into real living blisses wrought, 
 
 And the heart, through some mystery, 
 Seemed filling earths and heavens to be 
 
 — Yea, things and spaces dimly known — 
 
 With endless feelings of its own. 
 
 Hereafter, surely I may say, 
 That, many an hour in night or day, 
 Those lovers knew some precious part 
 Of all the joy that heart with heart 
 Can so beget. Often they came, 
 And found that silken place the same 
 In purple growing glooms at eve ; 
 And sat while pleasure would deceive 
 Their thoughts with many a changing dream 
 Wrought of each momentary gleam 
 Of the unearthly twilight blue, 
 That seemed to make the world anew, 
 Like some enamelled picture fair 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 With jewelled stars and leaves : now there, 
 And now in wanderings amid 
 The pleasant flower-paths, half hid 
 Beneath safe shadows of the trees, 
 They dreamed some dream enough to please 
 All silently; or, one by one, 
 In their own soft and murmurous tone, 
 Spoke all the spells that love hath set 
 In wild sweet words, that ever fret 
 The lips of lovers, till his gold 
 And honied secret be all told. 
 
 So, of his exile, day by day, 
 
 This joy took many an hour away : 
 
 It seemed to Eliduc, perchance, 
 
 Like some fair love in some romance, 
 Passed wholly in strange foreign land 
 And beneath some presiding hand 
 
 Of magic. — At his heart did lie 
 
 The amulets of memory 
 In unsought places falling dim, 
 Till the past was nigh lost to him : 
 
THE LAY OF ELIDUC. 203 
 
 And yet, somewhile, amid this sweet, 
 The voice within him would repeat 
 
 The living vow his heart had made 
 
 To sacred loves, and the words said ; 
 And the face of his own wife dear 
 Some days was with him everywhere 
 
 Between the times of that strange love ; 
 
 As though from far away she strove ; 
 And her face, pleading speechless,' bore 
 Great shadows and forebodings sore ; 
 
 And often, through the silent night, 
 
 She seemed to come with the moonlight ; 
 And, with one known look, holding him 
 In fair arms to her bosom dim 
 
 Through many a tear-stained broidery, 
 
 Mutely some importunity 
 She seemed all earnestly to keep 
 — Yea through the hours of his sad sleep, 
 
 And quite until the strange wide morn 
 
 Was opened yellow and the horn 
 Of foreign huntsmen filled the land. 
 
2 o 4 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Sometimes he could not well withstand 
 The yearning fairly to behold 
 Her face and know what it foretold 
 Of dim calamity ; or still 
 Within him grew some weaker will 
 To visit now and see how fared 
 His lands, and whether any cared 
 For what was his, and if perchance, 
 Saved from the evil governance 
 
 Of plotters vile, the king were turned 
 Again to him so wrongly spurned. 
 
 Meanwhile it had but come to pass, 
 His king, — sore grieved, finding, alas. 
 How, with deep traitorous intent, 
 Those false reviling ones had bent 
 His mind to a wrath all unjust 
 Against one worthiest of all trust ; 
 And further, for that he was pressed 
 Right hotly now in lands possessed 
 Upon a border, by hard foes ; — 
 He sent an embassy of those 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 His noblest, who the most were dear 
 To Eliduc ; and bade them bear 
 
 A royal word of full regret 
 
 Praying him wholly to forget 
 
 His wrong and exile, and to bring 
 His unmatched sword back to his king. 
 
 But lo. no sooner had he heard 
 Than he was glad of every word. 
 
 Yet was he troubled other way ; 
 
 And held his heart still day by day 
 From seeking such a bitter thing 
 A s his free parting from that king 
 
 Who had so soothed his hard exile 
 
 With perfect favour of his smile : 
 But, more than all, for the fair sake 
 Of Guilliadun, and fear to break 
 
 The very life within her heart 
 
 At the first seeking to depart ; 
 For this, full many a bitter thought 
 Most deeply in his bosom wrought, 
 
 Stirring the love within him straight ; 
 
 And all the tenderness that late 
 
2o6 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Had gathered in the inmost core 
 
 Of feeling, now it made right sore 
 
 The very soul of him within. 
 
 — O Ladies, when you will begin 
 AVith love, you know scarce on what dark 
 And eddying stream you do embark 
 A skiff so frail and rudderless 
 As this poor heart ! nor can you guess 
 How soon, and in what subtle way, 
 Love will procure you for his prey, 
 Quite trapped sometime at unawares 
 In dire entanglement and snares 
 Past all your own wit to undo : 
 Yea, but ye know that this is true : 
 And now ye see that noble knight 
 Sir Eliduc, holy and right 
 Before all men, is come to fall, 
 And so without his fault at all, 
 In such a perilous strait indeed, 
 Of love, between two ways that lead 
 Each to some equal ill, — I deem 
 That well before him it must seem 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 207 
 
 A hard and hopeless thing to live 
 
 For any day, now he must strive 
 In seekings or forsakings sore : 
 I pray you pity him therefore. — 
 
 And when he found that Guilliadun 
 Fell in her sorrow nigh to swoon 
 
 At word of parting from him so. — 
 
 And that no joy again could grow 
 In her sad bosom for the sake 
 Of other love, but she would take 
 
 At once some inward death for him, 
 
 To waste her body and quite dim 
 Her sad remainder of life's space — 
 When this he saw upon her face, 
 
 Knowing her trust and truth in love, 
 
 He could not quite forbear ; but strove 
 To soothe her heart with promise fair, 
 That, surely, no toil would he spare 
 
 To win some near day of return, 
 
 Whereto he ne'er should cease to yearn. 
 
 So Guilliadun beheld him go ; 
 
2 o8 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 And stayed her sorrow and her woe ; 
 For she could 'love him all the while 
 Waiting, and think of his last smile ; 
 And trust his tender uttering, 
 And dream of the fair future thing. 
 
 Then in his land he did arrive ; 
 
 And made the joy of all to thrive 
 
 With sight of him, whom all men knew 
 Long time so noble and so true, 
 
 And now again their very strength 
 
 And saviour ; for no foe at length 
 Endured before his armed hand : 
 Right soon he beat them from the land. 
 
 A year he was in field and court ; 
 And now his honour fell not short 
 
 Of anything a king may give ; 
 
 And, save the king, no man did live 
 So royally in all men's eyes. 
 
 But, after all the hard emprise 
 
 And triumph of the war were past, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 209 
 
 He did become as one downcast 
 With some o'er-measured weight of things 
 Sad in some memory that clings 
 
 Speechless about the heart. And slow, 
 
 Against his will he seemed to go 
 To tilt or tournay or fair sport ; 
 So that, for him, in all the court, 
 
 Was truly now great heaviness, 
 
 And many an one would strive to guess 
 What thing so ailed him. Then again 
 He did return — as one most fain 
 
 Of solitude — to his own place. 
 
 There they were right glad of his face ; 
 
 And there, maybe, he stayed awhile 
 
 In such fair peace as would beguile 
 The living sadness that he bore, 
 And thoughts that should not evermore 
 
 Be slain or ended ; there, maybe, 
 
 In his grey castle by the sea, 
 The pleasant holy pasts renewed 
 Awhile their hold on him, and sued 
 
 About his heart not all in vain ; 
 
 p 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Or it seemed precious to regain 
 
 Each old accustomed thing and mode, 
 And find for him there still abode 
 
 Unchanged the honourable love ; 
 
 And many a time he sought to move, 
 With sudden tenderness new felt, 
 Some little memory that dwelt 
 
 Far away in its hidden place 
 
 Among the rest ; or on the face 
 Unchanging sweet of his true wife, 
 Fair with the love of all his life, 
 
 He would find still, and prize it best, 
 
 Some likeness of the tenderest 
 And first love-look. 
 
 — Alas, I say, 
 For afterward he fell away 
 
 From all this ; ah, his bitter fate — 
 
 It could but have him soon or late ! 
 And sadness and the utter strength 
 Of thoughts divided, and, at length, 
 
 The whole real passion of strange love, 
 
 Foregone awhile, rolled back and drove 
 His soul to its sweet sin again. 
 
THE LA Y OF EL1DUC. 
 
 But still he lingered, as though fain 
 He would deny the thing, and deem 
 That some mere false and evil dream 
 
 Were but defrauding him awhile 
 
 With strange delusion ; a sad guile 
 Taught him to do in every way 
 His wont ; nor ceased he any day 
 
 From chace with hounds or falconry ; 
 
 And yet when ther^was none to see 
 He ceased maybe from all, subdued 
 At once with some most bitter mood 
 
 Of thoughts that chimed not with his deed ; 
 
 And, as though inwardly did bleed 
 Some sudden wound, he reined up short, 
 In very middle of the sport, 
 
 In any lonely wood or place 
 
 Of cover, — heeding not his chace 
 Nor yelping of his hounds returned 
 Sadly about him. But he spurned 
 
 Long time such weakness and forbore ; 
 
 Yet more the weakness gre*w and more ; 
 Until he could not bear the day, 
 
fr HE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 So irksome seemed to him his way, 
 So bitter was this inward strife. 
 The very sweetness of his wife 
 And every tender silent look 
 Became a thing he dared not brook 
 And harder than the hardest taunt 
 Against his falseness. — In no haunt 
 Familiar with the fair times past 
 And lost, for him now could there last 
 Repose. or peace; J>ut he would flee 
 Long dreary miles beside the sea 
 In rough paths of the rocks, and dare 
 Some solitude no man knew where, 
 And battle all day with that foe, 
 His fate of passionate sin and woe. 
 
 But, one night, in a ship well manned 
 With speedy oarsmen, to the land 
 
 Of Guilliadun once more he sped. 
 
 Darkness and storm were overhead ; 
 And there, apprised some secret way 
 He took her — glad through her dismay 
 
 At any sight of him at last 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 213 
 
 And end of bitter waiting past. 
 
 And through the night upon his breast 
 
 Love made indeed her terror rest ; 
 Till on the morrow the pure sun 
 Seemed mindful of no wild deed done. 
 
 And now that all the sky above 
 
 Was blue and their hearts full of love J 
 And all about them fell a sound 
 Of golden waves like laughs around 
 
 Their rapid keel ; the while, afar, 
 
 To the fair coloured distant bar 
 
 Of the bright ocean, gleamed the hue 
 Of halcyon hours, — ah, now they two 
 
 Joyed in great silent overflow 
 
 Of loves : for them, the very glow, 
 And myriad-woven sounds of wind, 
 And mingling sounds of waves combined 
 
 In many a mystery of sweet ; 
 
 And, in accomplishment complete 
 Of some ineffable thing dreamed, 
 With secret inmost soul they seemed 
 
 To touch now wholly ; and a thrill 
 
2 1 4 THE LA Y OF EL1D UC. 
 
 Of inward rapture did fulfil 
 The long desire of every look, 
 So that their thoughts now "scarcely took 
 The weary and imperfect ways 
 Of words, as in those fainter days 
 
 When they were sadly bound to speak 
 Their hearts in repetition weak, 
 Or in an agonised embrace 
 To kill some doubt or to efface 
 The constant marring bitterness. 
 Now, in the mute and pure caress 
 Of liquid looks and secret thought, 
 As though at length all love had wrought 
 Some miracle of peace, they lay, 
 Voyaging in their bark made gay 
 With many a coloured pennon bright 
 And canopy beneath the light 
 
 Floating in silken folds ; and near, 
 Time after time, they loved to hear 
 The silver sound of oars, and oft 
 The music of the lutes, played soft 
 About the prow, and like a song 
 Fallen from some seolian tongue 
 
THE LA Y OF ELJD UC. 2 1 5 
 
 Of zephyr. All about them came 
 A strange sweet pleasure above name 
 
 Or word or thought : and things around, 
 
 In living sight or living sound, 
 Grew in mysterious sort akin 
 To every feeling sense within 
 
 Their hearts ; and many an unseen kiss 
 
 Seemed to be covering them with bliss ; 
 For the most trivial noise, that thrilled 
 From the sail fluttering or filled 
 
 With breath from some rich unseen lip, 
 
 Or the least murmur of the ship 
 Came to them changed some way, and fraught 
 With strange enchantment or strange thought 
 
 — Fell into accents at their heart 
 
 With tenderness enough to start 
 Their pleasant tears. And, as they went, 
 Sometimes a little wonderment 
 
 Would move them, or they thought, perchance, 
 
 That they were fallen in some trance 
 Of joy too perfect to endure : 
 For, now, the world seemed all so pure 
 
 Down through the waves or far above 
 
2 1 6 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Through heavenly blue, and, for their love, 
 Breaking in colours fair and oft 
 Like smiles ineffable and soft 
 
 Out on the calm, and all for them, 
 
 Breaking in many a flower and stem 
 Of wonders beautiful with light, 
 Revealing liquid depths of sight 
 
 Under each amber-coloured wave. 
 
 — So joyed they. Ladies so I crave, 
 Yea, so I pray Love keep for me 
 Some halcyon hour upon the sea 
 
 With one most loved, — some hour all brief 
 
 Between the sins and all the grief 
 Of love, — between the day and night 
 Of bitter life, one hour's delight ! 
 
 Alas ! for they had come perchance 
 
 Now even to the land of France ; 
 But ere they touched it, and with feet 
 Quite saved from all the sea, — the sweet 
 
 False wand of their enchantment fell ; 
 
 And sudden broken was the spell 
 Which love had laid on all their fate 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 217 
 
 To blind them : and the treacherous state 
 And smiles of the dissembling sea 
 Changed fearfully to many a free 
 
 And foamy utterance of wrath. 
 
 Sudden before them all their path 
 Showed horrible with writhing sight 
 Of restless billows without light 
 
 Athwart the feeble ruling tides, 
 
 With bounding backs and seething sides, 
 Urging their wild tumultuous way, 
 Lolling out forked tongues of spray : 
 . Then, with a quick and rushing blast, 
 
 The dismal tempest clouds were cast 
 All ruin-filled across the face 
 Of heaven, marring each sweet space, 
 
 And rending all the false fair blue. 
 
 Quickly each sudden peril grew. 
 And soon the wind and stormy noise 
 Broke forth above them — a great voice 
 
 In torrent menaces of death ; 
 
 And soon, from greatest depths beneath, 
 The monstrous multitude of waves 
 Came up from all the darksome caves 
 
2 1 8 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Ploughed over by their goading keel, 
 And stood around them, harsh as steel, 
 Brandishing many a fearful point 
 And whitening crest, above dark glint 
 Of cloven seas that opened wide 
 Vast mouths of waters on each side. 
 
 And when there was no sort of peace, 
 
 But dread did utterly release 
 
 The trembling ribald tongues of men 
 — Thinking that surely they were then 
 
 To deal at once with death, — there grew. 
 
 A fearful thought among that crew 
 Of fated men, and through the ship 
 A murmur went from lip to lip. 
 
 And, at last, one man from the crowd 
 
 Came forth, and bitterly and loud 
 He cried that hard upon the head 
 Of each of them was punished 
 
 The grievous sin of one alone ; 
 
 And that the wrath of heaven was shown 
 Now clearly for Sir Eliduc, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 219 
 
 And all they had this evil luck 
 Because that, foully, in despite 
 Of every law and holy right, 
 
 He bore that maiden to the land 
 
 Where yet one, wedded with his hand, 
 Lady and wife, dwelt sweet and good : 
 And surely none could change the mood 
 
 Of heaven ; and, till their souls were seen 
 
 Quite purged from all such guilt and clean, 
 This hand of punishment so sore 
 Would not depart ; but the dear shore 
 
 Of that their native land would quake 
 
 Beneath them and reject to take 
 Them so polluted anywhere. 
 
 So cried he loudly, coming there 
 
 To Eliduc, heeding no threat, 
 
 And, ere indeed he yielded yet, 
 One word had wrought its bitter sting 
 — One word that told an evil thing; 
 
 Launched fatal, like some winged dart, 
 
 It struck unerringly the heart 
 Of Guilliadun, pale where she lay, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Half fainting in the mere dismay 
 
 At thought of death in midst of bliss ; 
 The sense thereof she could not miss. 
 
 The sense of all the treacherous woe 
 
 That fate and love had made her know. 
 Then, with a wound, upon her smote 
 The pang of all her life remote, 
 
 To distant days made full of grief, 
 
 And to all days beyond relief, 
 
 Yea, while she yet lived Guilliadun. 
 And so at once as in a swoon 
 
 Or death she fell. O all in vain 
 
 Was any leech to bring again 
 
 The precious throbbings of her heart, 
 Or any kiss to melt apart 
 
 Her sealed lips and from beneath 
 
 Draw forth the spirit of her breath. 
 But Eliduc, half mad was he, 
 And would not have that this could be 
 
 Her death ; and now, in all men's sight, 
 
 He strove with the full passionate might 
 Of kisses and entreaties hot, 
 Wrought breathlessly upon each spot 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 2 2 1 
 
 Where lingered yet the tender hue 
 
 Of her scarce life : so burning too 
 With Tage and vengeance was each word 
 He said, no man of them that heard 
 
 Durst come before him now for dread, 
 
 No man durst say that she was dead. 
 
 — But lo, such sudden way appeased 
 Was all the wrath of heaven, and ceased 
 
 From any troubling of them more ; 
 
 And very soon they came to shore. — 
 
 Then wholly taken up with grief 
 —With all the growing thought of grief — 
 Sir Eliduc he did not stay 
 For help or vengeance on that day ; 
 But himself from the bitter shore 
 That tender Guilliadun he bore. 
 And quickly to a hidden place, 
 Hidden and hard for steps to trace, 
 Athwart the pathless forest dim 
 He brought her. There all known to him 
 A little sanctuary stood 
 
THE LAY Of ELIDUC. 
 
 Hallowed in middle of the wood, 
 A silent place deserted quite ; 
 And there upon the altar white 
 
 He placed her, beauteous with closed eyes, 
 
 A perfect lover's sacrifice. 
 
 It seemed as though the forest made 
 For that white place a deeper shade ; 
 
 And there the trees all vast and old 
 
 Stood with their secrets manifold 
 All shrouded up in shadowy thought, 
 Between broad leaves together brought, 
 
 Like vast hands folded in repose. 
 
 It was the place some hermit chose 
 To solemnise with all his tears ; 
 And of his strivings through long years, 
 
 And all the penitence he did, 
 
 And all the holy life he hid, 
 — The leaves and flowers, of all these things, 
 Cherished maybe rememberings, 
 
 — Kept tender secrets of the ways 
 
 He lived and hallowed all his days, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 223 
 
 The tears he shed, the sighs he sighed, 
 And the sweet spot on which he died. 
 
 There was a holy sort of gloom 
 As though most certainly a tomb 
 
 Were hidden thereabout somewhere, 
 
 With scarce a sign, but very dear 
 To all the flowers and to God : 
 And certainly the perfumed sod 
 
 Seemed consecrated all around. 
 
 So Eliduc a place had found, 
 A place quite sweet and lone enough 
 To make an end of such a love 
 
 — Not ineffectual at the last, 
 
 But, out of all its short sweet past, 
 Furnishing some great fund of tears 
 And memories to enrich long years 
 
 With many a secret rhapsody : 
 
 So the real flower of love should be, 
 — O flower unearthly, over-rife, 
 Too frail for any soil of life ! — 
 
 Henceforth some immaterial bloom 
 
224 THE LAY OF EL1DUC. 
 
 Of ever-lingering perfume ; 
 So-he should keep that precious sin 
 A thing henceforth all hid within 
 The heart, not judged of any man : 
 Let Him judge Eliduc who can ! 
 
 But, while he had her there alone, 
 
 A little season, to atone, 
 
 With many an utterance agonised 
 Of tears and utmost grief unprized, 
 
 — Before the bitter silences 
 
 Of fates, that hearkened pitiless, 
 
 Weighing nought of the words and sighs, 
 Gazing from cold futurities 
 
 Immutable with doomful gaze, 
 
 — And more than all before her face 
 Silent more fearfully indeed, — 
 Truly she did not fail to plead 
 
 Fairly with him for all her wrong ; 
 
 Yea, piteously indeed and long, 
 
 Her whole face, with no smile beneath, 
 Made seeming sad for aye with death, 
 
 Reproached him with an endless look ; 
 
THE LA Y OF CLID UC. 2 2 5 
 
 The very mouth from which he took 
 Its kiss, seemed now, in some clear way 
 Its own, to form what it would say, 
 
 And in a wordless whispering 
 
 Absolve itself from everything 
 That left him solace after all : 
 Seeming with pressed lips to recall 
 
 The spirit from each little kiss 
 
 Denying all the past of bliss. 
 
 And this was more than to have heard 
 The vengeance of some poisoned word 
 
 Or seen one look of sad adieu 
 
 And disavowal, — this, to sue 
 For ever, with remorseful cares 
 And penitential pain and prayers, 
 
 Her face, that seemed still to retain 
 
 A sad account of every stain 
 
 His sinful passionate touch had wrought, — 
 Her face that seemed in holy thought, 
 
 Beyond relenting the least while 
 
 Into the faintest, purest smile. 
 
 In truth he had her fallen there, 
 
: 2 6 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 As though she were some flower fair, 
 Ruined with eager wanton hand, 
 So that no man should understand 
 The mystery of its sweetness — now 
 Dissolved in the sad overthrow 
 Of petals yielding to each breath 
 Their passionless unfruitful death : 
 
 So a mere bitter fruitless thing 
 
 At length, after all sufFering 
 
 Of love and long desire and sin, 
 It was in such a sort to win 
 
 That shadow of possessing her, 
 
 That joyless liberty to stir 
 
 The fallen blossom of her face, 
 To put her hand in "any place, 
 
 And weary of each wondrous touch 
 
 His heart had coveted so much : 
 
 Now indeed there was none to care 
 What he should do with her sweet hair ; 
 But he could wind it as of old 
 Around her head, or loose its gold 
 
THE. LA Y OF EL1DUC. 
 
 In lavish waste upon her neck ; 
 And all the gems that used to deck 
 
 The fair white place above her breast, 
 
 The jewelries upon her vest, 
 And starry rings that made her hands 
 Like flowers on which a fair dew stands, 
 
 Piercing the light with sudden hues, 
 
 — All these were his to touch and use ; 
 Sad playthings now were they, alas, 
 Pastimes for grief that could not pass. 
 
 How false a solace was it, so 
 
 To smooth her hair aside, and show, 
 Pale as a pearl shed on some flake 
 Of snow, her ear ; to touch and take 
 
 Its ornament of filigree, 
 
 And never win therewith to see 
 One kindled change in any place 
 Of tender feeling on her face ! 
 
 How sorely earned a right was this 
 
 To know the tender mysteries 
 Of her apparel, intricate 
 In all its fragrant mazes, late 
 
THE LAY OF ELID UC. 
 
 So pure a marvel of sweet guile 
 
 Enamouring long his heart ; the while 
 Around him, dwindling less and less 
 The faint blown fragrance of her dress, 
 
 Seemed like some thinnest part of all 
 
 Her spirit fading past recall ! 
 
 O for some long and bitter space, 
 Weeping beside her in that place, 
 
 I ween, not otherwise he sought 
 
 To fill his heart, but with sad thought 
 And fantasy of grief like this, 
 Feeding the fountainous abyss 
 
 Of tears. 
 
 — And like some watery blast, 
 
 Brought from the whole warm west and cast 
 Upon the rotting summer woods, 
 That sweeps with constant rage of floods 
 
 Down all the wild and rainy way 
 
 The undergrowth of many a day, 
 And mighty wounded limbs of trees 
 Torn from them writhing, and, with ease, 
 
 The timid multitude of leaves 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 229 
 
 Falling with every sigh that heaves 
 The trembling forest ; and, at length, 
 Sated in all its tyrant strength 
 
 With ruin of the beauteous year, 
 
 Leaves the whole forest still and drear 
 With tall trees leafless letting through 
 The skies of winter calm and blue : 
 
 — So was that torrent of his tears 
 
 From all the heaped-up source of years 
 And gushing springs of thought within : 
 It washed away much love and sin, 
 
 Yea, from the deep grounds of his heart, 
 
 And left him like a man apart, 
 Henceforth, from all man's fitful fate 
 Of stormy feelings passionate. 
 
 The grey cold sadness of his eyes 
 
 Was very like the winter skies ; 
 
 And now that all the tears were past 
 He rose ; and felt some peace at last, 
 
 To think that love had surely done 
 
 His worst there, and would even shun 
 That heart of his for evermore, 
 
230 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Leaving the precious dust it bore 
 In every tortured place of thought, 
 Leaving the tarnished treasure brought 
 
 Through bitter paths of memory ; 
 
 And that no future could deny, 
 Through any new uncertain fate, 
 These things he held in such sweet state 
 
 Of memory — eternal so, 
 
 This passionate past of joy and woe. 
 
 There, as he found her day by day, 
 Her beauty did not pass away; 
 
 But Death seemed tenderly to touch 
 Her cheek, quite slow to wither much 
 Her tender hue ; quite fain to spare 
 The semblance of her spirit fair 
 In her face fading flowerwise. 
 
 And, when, from looking on her eyes 
 He could not stay sometimes his love, 
 But in some tremulous way did move 
 One of the fringed and perfect rims, 
 There seemed not such a death as dims 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 23 1 
 
 Even the innermost frailest hue 
 
 Of living ; but still, looking through 
 Pale glistening waters warm and deep, 
 Seemed all her soul there, as in sleep, 
 
 Or smiling through some fond deceit, 
 
 And seeing truly fair and sweet 
 
 The great blue heaven above her spread, 
 And the bright branches overhead, 
 
 And all the place indeed and him : 
 
 Yea, as though all were some fair whim ! 
 
 And, often through the long golden noon 
 When the day's summer seemed to swoon, 
 . And the rich sunlight far and wide 
 
 Transfigured and so glorified 
 The forest, passing to and fro 
 Like a blonde angel ; and the glow 
 
 Grew wondrous and the place was thrilled, 
 
 And fervid purple flowers filled 
 More mightily the place with bloom, 
 — O then it seemed some blessed doom 
 
 Of peace was still pronounced there ; 
 
 Or some past mystery of prayer 
 
23 2 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Was hallowing the silence yet ; 
 
 Yea, so that death might there forget, 
 
 Or- be in wonder, tarrying long, 
 
 Or come quite changed there from the throng 
 Of flowers, in some perfumed way, 
 And with no envy of decay : 
 
 O it was good to be there then 
 With her, and all so far from men ! 
 
 And sometimes, after he had wept, 
 With strange and holy feeling crept 
 
 A greater peace into his heart 
 
 Than came of any dream or art 
 Of thought, — a part of some long calm 
 Quite after death — a. mystic balm 
 
 Of saving shed from some fair vase 
 
 In heaven, in such pure way as awes 
 Through the full sunshine everywhere : 
 O it was blessed to be there ! 
 
 Or sometimes all the heart fell faint 
 With inward thinking of the Saint ; 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 233 
 
 And, dying some pure death of trance, 
 
 Or purified past all hindrance 
 Of each participating dross 
 Of sense, beheld His spirit cross 
 
 One of the gleaming ways and melt 
 
 Into the light ; beheld or felt 
 And knew Him walking through the place, 
 And all his presence like a grace 
 
 Working that miracle of peace. 
 
 — So Eliduc came to great ease 
 At length in all his soul within, 
 Like one whom all his mortal sin 
 
 God hath forgiven. Who can tell 
 
 How great a holiness and spell 
 Shall be and evermore abide 
 In the place where a saint hath died ! 
 
 Then one day, through God's grace above, 
 
 — While he was looking on his love, 
 And thinking how it had been sweet 
 If before death they two could meet, 
 
 And for some little space so live 
 
234 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Without sin, God should quite forgive — 
 
 This miracle was wrought for him : 
 
 A little ermine swift and slim 
 And purely white with spirit eyes, 
 Out of the forest came ; and thrice, 
 
 In a strange fearful way like light, 
 
 It ran across the bosom white, 
 Yea, and the upturned face as well 
 Of Guilliadun ; and then it fell 
 
 Straight to the ground and would have fled ; 
 
 But as it fell it lay there dead. 
 And while he wondered much thereat, 
 Another ermine, white as that, 
 
 Came from the wood seeking its mate ; 
 
 Then, in a way disconsolate, 
 Finding it stark and with cold eye 
 Dazzled with death, a sharp sad cry 
 
 He gave, and ran back as he came, 
 
 And brought a strange bright flower like flame 
 Or redder than the hue of blood, 
 Gathered in some place in the wood, 
 
 And set this with an unknown care 
 
 In the mouth of the other there, 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 235 
 
 Upon the loosened languid tongue : 
 And, after this, it was not long 
 
 Before that great and simple charm 
 
 Worked potently against all harm, 
 And, by its virtue, did renew 
 In all the body the quick hue 
 
 And litheness of the life again ; 
 
 And then those ermines were so fain 
 Of their fair life sportive and sweet, 
 That with the swiftness of their feet 
 
 Straightway they fled and entered quick 
 
 The forest mazes cumbered thick 
 With flowers. 
 
 — Eager at this sight 
 Was Eliduc, to try what might 
 
 There yet were in that wondrous spell : 
 
 Nor was he doubtful, feeling well 
 Some holy purpose in the thing, 
 Above his fond imagining ; 
 
 And so he found without delay 
 
 The fallen flower, where it lay 
 Redder indeed than any flame ; 
 And, praying well in Jesu's name, 
 
236 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 He wrought the charm as he had seen. 
 
 And as that flower touched between 
 The deathless lips of Guilliadun, 
 It broke the mystery of her swoon, 
 
 And let her open blithe and wide 
 
 Her eyes from which no thought had died, 
 And gave her mastery of her breast 
 To wake out of their fit of rest 
 
 The fitful happy tides of breath ; 
 
 All through her body, which no death 
 Had sullied nor availed to chill 
 Went many times the blush and thrill 
 
 Of pleasant living ; and, at length, 
 
 Her spirit, summoned by the strength 
 Of all the charmed and yearning gaze 
 Of her real love, through many a maze 
 
 Of half-sighs faltering, was brought, 
 
 From bodiless abodes of thought, 
 Back to the perfect summer light, 
 To flush her whole face with delight, 
 
 Finding each kiss of love there still. 
 
 O what like love can cure the ill 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 237 
 
 Of love ? That moment overthrew 
 All timorous thinking ; and they knew 
 
 Henceforth for ill no sort of name 
 
 But Death ; for all the world became 
 Their own ; and trivial seemed all fear, 
 And light all other things to bear, 
 
 While they could each the other find 
 
 In any place of life, and bind 
 Their souls together in such wise. 
 
 And so, beneath those summer skies, 
 
 Full of their hearts, that did begin 
 
 Most overflowingly within 
 A fresh fertility of bliss ; 
 — Delayed I think by many a kiss, 
 
 And ofttimes by such fervid tide 
 
 Within their hearts as would abide 
 No long restraint indeed or loss 
 Of perfect interchange, — across 
 
 The flowering forest paths they came, 
 
 In all this rapture without name ; 
 And tenderly their steps would cling 
 To each delicious wandering ; 
 
238 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 And many a soft delay they found, 
 
 Where with new smiles the forest ground 
 Lured them to press its printless soils 
 Of yielding mosses ; or where coils 
 
 Of festal flowers held their feet, 
 
 Or rose up fairly to entreat 
 And half compel them to abide, 
 Would not be alway thrust aside. 
 
 And they — scarce in a haste were they : 
 Lo, now I leave them on the way. 
 
 Alas, for here I have to tell 
 Of all the sickness that befell 
 Unto a lady worth all love : 
 Surely there was none fair above 
 That lady Eliduc called wife, 
 None fitter for one's love in life ; 
 And now that she is gone, I say, 
 Even from all this life away, 
 And with her love and holiness 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 239 
 
 Saved from that time of her distress 
 For ever, — as it came to pass — 
 Who shall be like her now alas ? 
 
 O in the early day when she 
 Was left, but first not utterly, 
 
 But with a false fair thought of joy 
 
 And hope, bright seeming, to destroy 
 The burning canker of despair, — 
 Her heart made promise to forbear, 
 
 Indeed, from any bitter grief 
 
 Or doubt of fate, and took relief 
 In golden seeming of the sweet 
 Fair days that brought the future fleet. 
 
 And in that chamber, where she dwelt 
 Most with the thought of him, she felt 
 
 — O many a tender ecstasy, 
 
 In lonely noontime when the sea 
 Glowed and made music from afar, 
 Or in the twilight when the star 
 
 Of Venus sweet came out to rule 
 
 The dreams and fancies beautiful 
 
2 4 o THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Of lovers ; and if any sight 
 Or time or thing gave her delight, 
 Yea, if the golden time or dim 
 She loved, it was because of him. 
 And when, — amid the changeful round 
 Of deeds wherein her fancy found 
 Some consolation or pastime, 
 Through precious toil or chanted rhyme 
 Of song, that many an hour made full 
 Of solace, — in delicious lull 
 
 His voice would reach her, and the tide 
 Of the soft parting words would glide 
 Through the calm space of thoughts and sighs 
 Her heart was, — she would dearly prize 
 That moment : 
 
 And she had no fear 
 That he — the only one she loved — 
 Could be of any other moved 
 To real forgetting. Many a way 
 She found to keep her heart half gay, 
 And pleased with every wanton thought 
 The hope or memory of him brought. 
 Then there was ever and again 
 
THE LAY OF ELID UC. 241 
 
 Upon her lips the happy stain 
 His kiss had left there like a touch 
 Of flowers, — a little thing, not much 
 
 In telling, but indeed a charm 
 
 Quite potent to keep off the harm 
 Of many a doubt and bitter fret 
 Of sorrow, yea, to soothe her yet. 
 
 But in some little while, despite 
 
 Her joyous will and the thoughts bright, 
 
 That ever like a little rill 
 
 Of tender laughter sought to fill 
 Serenely all the quiet day, — 
 But in some little while, I say, 
 
 Her inward love failed not to start 
 
 Oft in such trouble at her heart, 
 Suffusing with such purple glow 
 Her bosom emulous of the snow 
 
 For peace and whiteness, that she learned 
 
 Almost with trembling how she yearned 
 To have him back, e'en but to speak 
 Some mightier word than all words weak 
 
 Her tenderness had found before. 
 
 R 
 
242 THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 
 
 Then when, a day long waited for, 
 She held him in her arms, and gazed 
 Upon the face her heart so praised, 
 
 And saw a strange new shadow there ; 
 
 And when she felt his voice forbear 
 From touching many a wonted tone 
 Whose meaning was best loved and known ; 
 
 And, wondering, she must confess 
 
 Now wholly foiled and powerless 
 Each tender magic she could make, 
 That, all about her, used to take 
 
 His looks, in many a guiltless snare 
 
 Her fond inventing would prepare, 
 — That day, when such a thing she found, 
 Her heart took a great bitter wound 
 
 Of doubt and poisoned thought within. 
 
 Yea, after that, she did begin 
 — O through the dreary ways untold 
 Of sorrow, secret, unconsoled^- 
 To fall away from all her place 
 In that fair heaven of love and grace 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Which she had so long held her own, 
 Whose precious state had even grown 
 The very custom of her life ; 
 Yea, spite of all the hidden strife 
 Her heart in all its meekness made, 
 She must behold now change and fade 
 Away from her that gilded light 
 Of the known love that made so bright 
 Her life around her ; she must miss 
 That air which seemed to hold a kiss 
 Dwelling about her evermore, 
 That mute look seeming to adore 
 Her very presence everywhere. 
 
 Maybe, she could not quite despair 
 At first, and with some clinging hope, 
 Maybe, her fondness sought to cope 
 
 Against this hidden woe and strange 
 
 That did so desolate and change 
 Her husband's all beloved look : 
 For very hard it was to brook 
 
 The sight of him, whom all men's eyes 
 
 Saw bearing secret miseries 
 
244 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Of thought, and heavy all the day 
 
 And weary of his former way, 
 — For her with whom had ever been 
 His heart, it was right hard, I ween, 
 
 To see this, and, in no hour dim, 
 
 Draw more than others nigh to him. 
 — Ah bitterly she learned the truth 
 That he could no more turn to her 
 And leave it to her hand to stir 
 
 The sadness from about his thought. 
 
 Then she found how for her he wrought 
 
 A very sad and cruel guile, 
 
 A piteous semblance of a smile, 
 
 As though he deemed she should not know 
 How she was served with feigning now. 
 
 Alas, he marked not her sweet ways, 
 
 And grieved that charmer of his days ! 
 
 But when she quite believed, at last, 
 She was from all sweet love outcast, 
 A quick disease and mortal sort 
 Of sorrow took her, to make short 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 245 
 
 _The bitter time she could not bear. 
 
 Her golden chamber grew most drear ; 
 
 And now, about her so forlorn, 
 
 The sweetest things there seemed to mourn, 
 And all the spells of pleasantness 
 Were changed to working her distress ; 
 
 Her precious playthings seemed to reach 
 
 For her a plaintive kind of speech, 
 Holding a language all day long 
 Together, like a funeral song ; 
 
 And from her lute there broke a sigh, 
 
 Or like a sob when none was nigh, 
 Appalling her, as though she heard 
 Her own voice uttering some great word 
 
 That broke her life's sharp chord of ill : 
 
 There, more and more, she felt the chill 
 Of fate's mysterious encroach ; 
 And shuddered now from all approach 
 
 Of the rough outward stir of life ; 
 
 Her eyes made tremulous weak strife 
 With the once fair familiar light 
 
246 THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 
 
 Of day, that now seemed over-bright, 
 With never any tempered gleam 
 Fit for the sadness of her dream ; 
 At length, when twilight made that room 
 Most dim, there seemed no place of gloom 
 So dim as the dim place she sought 
 To hide the shadow of her thought. 
 
 And Eliduc was far away, 
 No man knew where or till what day 
 He tarried, but alas, all vain 
 For her was now his face again : 
 Since she was nothing at his side, 
 What mattered it how soon she died ? 
 
 For, now that all within her felt 
 So sure of change, and well nigh dwelt 
 With death already in her dreams, 
 To the most tender summer gleams, 
 The blue skies, and the sunniest sights 
 Of life — to these her heart held rights 
 No longer ; but, without complaint, 
 Her dreams would bear her spirit faint 
 
THE LA Y OF ELIDUC. 247 
 
 To sunless places, far away 
 
 In some wild forest, where the gray 
 
 And ancient leaves, each like a whole 
 
 Dead shrivelled remnant of a soul 
 Withered and shrunk away at last 
 From every part of a life past, 
 
 Their nameless sort of burial found, 
 
 In shifting graves upon the ground, 
 Or frittered the long hours of death 
 Away with every changeful breath 
 
 That swept them from their shallow tomb. 
 
 So did her soul forefeel some doom 
 Grey cold and unremembering, 
 And more and more seemed hovering 
 
 On borders where the dim mists dwell, 
 
 Nigh within feeling of the spell. 
 And ever weaker grew the thread 
 That held her from among the dead, 
 
 And could recall her painfully 
 
 To any bleeding memory 
 Of the defrauded life she left. 
 
2 4 8 THE LAY OF ELID UC. 
 
 Truly, with her, sorrow had reft 
 Quicker than any ailment can, 
 1 he right of that short summer span 
 
 Her life from her ; and, in quick space, . 
 
 The conscious fading of her face 
 
 Foreswore its emulous coloured sign : 
 Yea, quickly, as the flower most fine 
 
 Sudden disheartened may forsake 
 
 And shed its purple flake by flake 
 In one short day, till with pale head 
 It stands disrobed as do the dead. 
 
 At length, one day, some seeking her 
 Entered, and found her not astir ; 
 
 And knew death's touches everywhere 
 
 And, at once, all that chamber fair 
 Deflowered and quite transformed with death ; 
 For gone was the most magic breath, 
 
 And all the eloquent sights were mute : 
 
 Only, as though upon her lute 
 A hand smote passing, was there ftill 
 In all the silence some sad thrill 
 
THE LA Y OF ELID UC. 249 
 
 Of the last sobbing musical 
 
 Of broken chords. There, after all, 
 
 They felt fulfilled the inward thought 
 
 Which daily in their hearts had taught 
 Such shadowy fear ; and, where they now 
 Beheld her sitting, need — I trow — 
 
 Was small for one to touch her hand, 
 
 Or e'en her lips, to understand 
 
 The truth of the pale change they kept. 
 
 Then surely each one of them wept 
 That Eliduc was still away : 
 And, now, — alas, for him I say j 
 
 For, surely, when he doth return 
 
 Sir Eliduc shall have to mourn. 
 
Has summer come without the rose, 
 
 Or left the bird behind ? 
 Is the blue changed above thee, 
 
 O world ? or am I blind ! 
 Will you change every flower that grows, 
 
 Or only change this spot — 
 Where she who said, I love thee, 
 
 Now says I love thee not ? 
 
 The skies seemed true above thee ; 
 
 The rose true on the tree ; 
 The bird seemed true the summer through ; 
 
 But all proved false to me : 
 World, is there one good thing in you — 
 
 Life, love, or death — or what? 
 Since lips that sang I love thee 
 
 Have said I love thee not ? 
 
 I think the sun's kiss will scarce fall 
 
 Into one flower's gold cup ; 
 I think the bird will miss me, 
 
 And give the summer up : 
 O sweet place, desolate in tall 
 
 Wild grass, have you forgot 
 How her lips loved to kiss me, 
 
 Now that they kiss me not ? 
 
 Be false or fair above me ; 
 
 Come back with any face 
 Summer; do I care what you do? 
 
 You cannot change one place — 
 The grass, the leaves, the earth, the dew — 
 
 The grave I make the spot, 
 Here where she used to love me, 
 
 Here where she loves me not. 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
' Maleit seient tut mi parent, 
 E li autre communalment, 
 Ki a cest jalus me donerent, 
 E de sun cors me marierent. 
 A forte corde trait e tir, 
 II ne porra james murir. 
 Quant il deust estre baptiziez, 
 Si fu al flum d'enfern plungiez. 
 Dur sunt li nerf, dures les veines, 
 Qui de vif sane sunt tutes pleines. 
 
 Mut ai sovent oi cunter 
 Que urn suleit jadis trover 
 Aventures en cest pais 
 Qui rechatouent les pensis. 
 Chevaliers truvoent puceles, 
 A lor talent, gentes e beles ; 
 E dames truvoent amans, 
 Beaus e curteis e vaillans : 
 Si que blamez n'en estoient, 
 Ne nul fors eus nes veeient : 
 Si ceo peot estre e ceo fu, 
 Si one a nul est avenu, 
 Deu ki de tut ad poeste, 
 II en face ma volente. ' 
 
 Marie: Lai a" Yvenec. 
 
 MS. Bibl. Harl. No. 97S. 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Since I have e'en begun to sing 
 Full many a tender and sweet thing 
 
 Of love and lovers ; half to ease 
 My heart's great woe of yearning thought, 
 That many a love indeed hath brought 
 
 Against me, yea, that shall not cease 
 
 This side of death ; and half to please 
 Your gentle ears, if so I may ; 
 Shall I end adding lay to lay, 
 
 Having yet in my heart unsung, 
 
 Strangest and loveliest among 
 The treasured tales that Marie sang 
 This tale of the fair love that sprang 
 
 Wondrous, and like a flower unsown 
 
 In the sad desert of a lone 
 
2 54 THE LA Y OF YVEJSiEC. 
 
 And hopeless life? Ah, miracle ! 
 
 — That visitest so secretly 
 The straight, the joyless inward cell 
 Of many a soul that hath to dwell 
 
 Chained to some unknown misery 
 Of thought and unattainable dream 
 Of heavens : unearthly do they seem 
 
 Unreal and distant as a star 
 Until thou, soft and sudden — light 
 And glory filling day and night 
 
 With splendid rapture — dost unbar 
 Some unimagined golden gate 
 
 Of love! How excellent they are — 
 The clear transfigurements that wait 
 
 Throughout the world for thee, O Love, 
 As for the lifting of a veil 
 That shows blithe souls that feigned of late 
 
 Most funeral faces ! how above 
 The sky of any former pale 
 
 And faultless dream becomes the earth 
 That thou hast touched, the blessed air 
 That thou hast breathed in and made fair 
 
 With smiles ! The cruel stones give birth 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 255 
 
 To rich unheard-of blooms ; and worth 
 The great blue side of heaven seems now 
 The white wall of a prison, if thou 
 
 Hast let the sunlight in. And, lo, 
 
 Henceforth, there is no kind of woe 
 To reach the hidden heart and stay 
 The ecstasy thac night and day 
 
 Makes lone immense sweet singing there. 
 — For some, indeed, may love, and lay 
 
 Their great resplendent joys quite bare 
 Before the world, — unshamed and glad 
 
 And glorious as they walk from birth 
 To death, proclaiming they have had 
 Such fair wealth all their way, such mirth 
 
 Of very passionate delight — 
 Love himself coming to them clad 
 
 In some new saffron day and night — 
 That, truly, all hath been most sweet, 
 And nothing goodlier need they meet 
 
 In heaven : but some, indeed, must keep 
 A tyranny on lip and look ; 
 
 And eyes that fain would smile must weep, 
 
 And voice, that fain would ofttimes leap 
 
256 THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 
 
 Into great singing, must all brook 
 To speak the set words of some book, 
 
 Lest it should sing the secret out 
 That gilds each thought and glorifies 
 The infinite innermost that lies 
 
 Dissembled ; and no man shall doubt 
 The pained white of the patient face, 
 That long it hath been painless, — nay, 
 
 Nor dream the long detested way 
 Of servitude hath got the grace 
 Of some invisible flower set 
 Sweetening it wondrously all through. 
 
 — Ah, live and bear a little yet 
 The grey days of your life, — O you — 
 Grieving in some unlovely gloom 
 A captive, in some martyrdom 
 Of most intolerable fate, 
 
 Wed for the heartless outer part 
 Where yet love never wed you ; — late, 
 
 Perchance, it shall be, and your heart 
 Shall have closed every outer gate 
 
 That let love enter from the world : 
 O bear a little yet and wait : 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 257 
 
 Ere God hath ceased from you and furled 
 Away from you the great fair blue, 
 That paints eternity, — your true, 
 Your dreamed-of love shall come to you. 
 
 His face shall never have lost light 
 For all the dismal years : his smile 
 
 Shall dawn insuperably bright 
 
 Upon some long and lonely eve, 
 When, maybe, you have ceased some while 
 
 To weep and almost to believe. 
 
 And the night shall not come ; but, then, 
 The endless undivided day 
 Of the long heaven, and mile on mile 
 Of a vast and delicious way 
 
 Shall gleam out from the ways of men 
 That hour before you : O to see 
 His great immortal look, shall be 
 A perfect end' to the long years 
 
 Of waiting : O to fill your ears 
 With the world of each wondrous word, 
 
 Shall more than put away your tears ; 
 For you shall know he never erred 
 That he came not to you : perchance, 
 
 s 
 
258 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Somewhat unearthly shall enhance 
 His head with glory, and unknown 
 So long a while, he shall have grown 
 Almost an angel, in the length 
 Of coming to you, heaping strength 
 To win you with ! Ah, do you think 
 
 That, merely your immaculate 
 
 Lone excellence, should never link 
 
 Your soul to his, above all fate 
 
 Of days that hold you separate ? 
 
 What is the fastness he shall shrink 
 
 From overcoming with some burst 
 
 That frees and makes you his, for whole 
 Requital of his soul athirst 
 
 In the dry distance for your soul ? 
 — Though one hath chained up all the ways 
 In the fair world ; though, nights and days 
 Fall down hard-fettered in some blank 
 Forgotten dungeon, where a clank 
 Follows each footstir and subdues 
 Each daunted word ; — did Love ne'er use 
 His irresistible might and spell 
 In such-like way as I would tell 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 259 
 
 In this same story? — Yea, full oft ; 
 And many a cruel fate is soft 
 
 With his rich secret, unbetrayed 
 
 In the deep dwelling he hath made 
 Within ; and few have told or writ 
 
 The splendid simple prodigy 
 They knew ; and none, believing it, 
 
 Have doubted love so secretly 
 Was foiling the hard world their strong 
 
 Oppression had kept hard so long. 
 
 No dame was fairer in the land 
 
 Than Bertha, loved of knight and bard ; 
 And great was he who held her hand 
 
 But loved her not, — he was so hard 
 So churlish unto love, — and made 
 Xo softness for her, but betrayed 
 
 Her sweet bride's faith. He, of his pride 
 Presumptuous, lusted that the might 
 
 And wealth and territory wide, 
 Which he had gotten through unright 
 
2 6o THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 
 
 And stealthy dealing, or by strength 
 Tyrannously, were made sure plight 
 
 Unto some heir of his at length 
 — To be left full and unaccused 
 
 For ever ; and no other dread, 
 Of trampled worth or right refused 
 Vexed the man now ; but only this 
 
 Had power frustrating all his bliss, — 
 That men should come when he was dead 
 
 And curse him, for a late redress 
 Of ancient wrong. Therefore he wed ; 
 
 And thought most surely to possess 
 His utmost hope ; but heaven foreshowed 
 
 Its meaning sternly to upbraid 
 
 His memory for rich costs unpaid, 
 And the whole life-long debt he owed 
 
 To vengeance. So the thing he prayed 
 Withholden was, and that he vowed 
 
 Unvisited. And, sorely gnawing 
 His patience inwardly, two years 
 
 He bore ; at length, the third year drawing 
 Fast to its close, no better wears 
 His straining hope ; and now with fears 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 261 
 
 Grown bitter, he complained and e'en 
 Condemned that gentle dame, and hid 
 
 No longer his ungenerous mien, 
 But daily taunted her and chid 
 Her gentleness. — 
 
 His crabbed age, 
 
 Fallen past reasonable hope 
 Of all renewal, would assuage 
 
 Its envy chiding her, and grope, 
 Unshamed, amid foul jealousies, 
 
 Gathering new resentments still. 
 
 He had a sister of like will, 
 Who with foul infamies and lies 
 
 Prompted his ready thoughts to ill : 
 She was a mean and heartless crone, 
 
 Whose life had never flowered in truth 
 
 With love or any balm of youth, 
 But preyed on envyings alone 
 And cankered to the very bone ; 
 
 Yea, she quite hated the heart's tint 
 And the rose flush of lips and health 
 Of love's own life, accounting wealth 
 In these things as some dismal stain, 
 
262 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 For souls to starve out by sheer stint 
 Of joy, accounting all men vain 
 And born for penances and pain. 
 
 Therefore, with every harsh endeavour 
 She did promote her brother's mood 
 
 To tyranny, devising ever 
 
 Cruel coercions, and such rude 
 
 Restraint as made poor Marie hate 
 Her youth, which constantly renewed 
 ■ Sick sources to her bitter fate. 
 
 And one day, in all love's despite, 
 
 —For jealousy, and for great fear, 
 Lest the all-pitiable sight 
 
 Of her more perfect for each tear 
 Should sometime, with a sudden might 
 Moving men's hearts to learn the blame, 
 
 Plead of their villany ; and then 
 The hideous thing begetting fame, 
 No honour should be theirs, but shame 
 
 And hate in all the hearts of men : 
 They made some most deceitful tale, — 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 263 
 
 How, For soul-penance sorely done, 
 Bertha was fallen sick and pale, 
 And ailed to be a space alone 
 And for a space be seen of none. 
 
 And, through their wiles, it did not fail 
 But she was moved to their deceiving, 
 
 And that herself performed the thing 
 
 With scarce a thought or murmuring^ 
 Full of her early inward grieving. 
 
 And lo, they lured her from her bower, 
 And e'en from all the sick sweet ways 
 Her tears had worn, and weary days 
 
 Found full of soothings, faint and mute, 
 
 But fit as lullings of a lute ; 
 
 And in a lone and distant tower 
 
 They left her wounded life to swoon 
 
 And wither, like a sapless flower, 
 Seen only of the midnight moon 
 Or of the sun at noon. 
 
 The chamber was most chill and drear 
 
264 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 A place where you might die of fear ; 
 
 And, from the casement's irksome height, 
 
 You scarce could snatch a mistful sight 
 Of the far lands of Brittany : 
 And other solace none was near, 
 
 Saving to moan and make complaint 
 All day and night, or else to hear 
 
 Some dolorous deed of monk or saint, 
 Some dull and hideous litany. 
 
 So did this lady live forlorn 
 A weary space of weary years ; 
 
 And day to night and night to morn 
 No solace brought, save fruitless tears, 
 
 And a new fever of desire 
 Like to a famine at the heart 
 
 For death, or with some deadly fire 
 To burn the fair and youthful part 
 
 From the sick life : yea, there was given 
 No liberty in any wise, 
 Saving to pasture her faint eyes 
 
 Upon a blue sweet space in heaven. 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 265 
 
 Now all the tender things create 
 
 In earth and heaven did surely ache 
 
 Unceasingly for her sweet sake, 
 And pined for pity of her fate ; 
 Yea, for the sun wept tears of amber ; 
 
 And, stealing silently about 
 
 The shrouded lands, the stars did stain 
 
 Pure silver tears upon the plain ; 
 And every night the moon did clamber 
 Up the steep dark, and o'er her chamber 
 
 Hung, like a great breast lolling out. 
 
 Heavy with pity of her pain. 
 
 Sometimes, in the long solitude, 
 
 Her thoughts would weary out their wings, 
 Despairing of the thing pursued, 
 
 And turn their fruitless flutterings 
 Back to her bosom void : aghast 
 
 With dreaming, sometimes, they traversed 
 
 Strange wastes where, touching mystic springs, 
 They gathered timorous forecast 
 
266 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Of futures ; sometimes they rehearsed 
 Sad echoes of the vain sweet past. 
 
 Most when the sun was nigh its setting 
 
 And all the distant lands lay bright, 
 She would beguile her soul, forgetting 
 
 Its irremediable plight 
 With sorrow, hour after hour 
 
 Striving to reach some distant strain 
 Of horns, or see some goodly sight 
 
 Of hounds and men, or fill again 
 Her life with perfume of some flower. 
 
 Until one day — one summer day, 
 When birds were singing blithe and loud 
 In all the world, and not a cloud 
 
 Was anywhere in heaven : O day 
 
 Most sweet — most sorrowful ! she lay- 
 Half swooned upon her bed, and heard 
 
 The music under distant trees, 
 
 And the close pants of life that stirred 
 
 Around her prison, and the breeze 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 267 
 
 Making a long sweet sigh for pleasure, 
 
 And such a low and tender measure 
 In all the pulses of the air, 
 
 That she most bitterly at heart 
 Strove to be choked with her despair — 
 To be quite broken with some sigh — 
 
 And lay quite still and would not part 
 Her eyes dull lids, but longed to die, 
 Beseeching God the time were nigh. 
 
 And when the cold and withered maid 
 
 Came to her couch, and, in harsh tone, 
 Bade her to rise and be arrayed, 
 She feigned great weariness and prayed 
 
 She might be left all day alone ; 
 Then lay and kept her eyes quite closed, 
 And spake not, feigning she reposed ; 
 Till, with no tender uttering 
 
 Or pity for her ill, the crone 
 Departing, fell to muttering 
 
 Her crabbed litanies alone. 
 Then to her thoughts free way she gave 
 
 And did devote herself to die. 
 
:68 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 And with full yearning did apply 
 Her prayers to God; who — all to save 
 Her heart —for pity that not yet 
 
 Her time was come to die, — instead, 
 Gave her in deep sleep to forget 
 
 Her sorrow, dreaming she was dead 
 And lying happy in her grave, — 
 Feeling that little sighs did crave 
 
 To have her spirit back again, 
 
 And all as though a hand were fain, 
 Parting leaves here and there, to stir 
 With tremulous fingers seeking her : 
 
 Yea, feeling still the constant wane 
 
 Of all her sickness and life-pain, 
 And how the angels, while she slept, 
 For her continual healing, wept 
 
 Such tears as touched her night and day, 
 
 Washing her body all away. 
 
 But, while she lay and was at rest, 
 
 Dreaming this dream that she was dead, 
 The sweet contagion of her spread 
 Sweet fever in the airs at play 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 269 
 
 And pasture on her brow and breast ; 
 
 Yearning through all that summer day 
 
 Soft summer longings to allay 
 In little ineffectual sips ; 
 Till, chafing for perpetual thirst 
 
 The coverlet, they made a way, 
 To ravish with their sudden lips 
 Her luscious limbs, and with the burst 
 
 Half waking her, she did behold 
 
 What luxury and gracious mould 
 Of breast she had ; what pure expanse 
 And most serene exuberance 
 
 Of limb, which languor of her mood 
 In all its fairness did enhance ; 
 
 And how the slowly blushing blood 
 Lay in a sweet voluptuous waste 
 Throughout her body wan and chaste, 
 
 Or, wayward, with inconstant flow 
 Made blue tracks wantonly, to ooze 
 Adown each perfect limb, and lose 
 
 In such delicious wastes of snow 
 Its purple life. 
 
 Yea, she did gaze, 
 
270 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Still steeped in trance, and with half haze 
 
 About her, till a weary tide 
 
 — With slow recurrence brought again 
 Her conscious life, and sad amaze 
 
 Flooded her heart to see belied 
 
 The dream of death : O she was fain 
 To dream it back ; but with her eyes 
 
 She read how little word of Death 
 Was written in her, and grew wise 
 — She thought — of some hard bitter will 
 Of God to her, that, not until 
 
 Some true embrace, some fruitful breath 
 Of love were come upon her breast, 
 
 Would he take ransom for her death, 
 To let her die and be at rest. 
 
 Then — while her memory confest 
 How she had heard the minstrels tell 
 
 That many a lady, so opprest 
 
 As she was, had been holpen well, 
 
 By miracle of God or man, 
 
 To solve her fate ; and she began 
 To commune how, if she were pure 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 271 
 
 And altogether good in thought, 
 Such saving wonder might be wrought 
 
 For her, — that hour it did befall 
 That a vast rush of wing was heard, 
 And the great shadow of a bird 
 
 Came darkly over couch and wall. 
 
 And all before her heart, for fear 
 What sudden omen might be near, 
 
 Quicker beat thrice, there came, with noise 
 
 Of clashed plumes entering on poise 
 Of pinions sure, a falcon ; fine 
 
 His mien and cresting ; wholly keen 
 His gaze ; all noble in the line 
 
 Of the straight sunbeams he was seen, 
 Fierce and without constraint or fault 
 Of wing, to enter straight, nor halt 
 
 Till forward pouncing, with a sound 
 His talons clashed like clang of steel 
 Sudden flung down, or spurred heel 
 
 From stirrup lighting on the ground. 
 
 Then, seeking, breathless at her heart, 
 
272 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Some imminent future, she apart 
 Held her white lips ; and, all aghast, 
 Beheld at length how, from the cast 
 Constraint of plume and talon, rose 
 The spirit of a noble knight, 
 Perfect in bearing and bedight 
 With goodly armature and close 
 
 Raiment of mail. And soon the light 
 Fell from his eyes and with a flame 
 Touched her heart's snow : pleading he came, 
 
 And showed with what surpassing power 
 Of saintly labours he had earned 
 Of God this thing for which he yearned ; 
 That he might come to her, what hour 
 Her own heart, so betrayed, should crave 
 
 And cry out for its sweet redress 
 Of fate, and that she too might have 
 Love for her love. Then, with a vow, 
 His faith in God he did confess 
 With all religion ; and, to ease 
 In all things to the uttermost 
 Her soul, he prayed that God would show 
 Some perfect token of His peace : 
 
THE LAY OF Yl'EXEC. 273 
 
 So, at his prayer, the blessed Host 
 Was presently made manifest 
 Miraculously, to attest 
 
 Him pure, and that he had God's peace. 
 
 But, when this holy thing was done, 
 She made no further doubt, nor strove 
 Longer to stay her heart from love ; 
 
 But vowed that she would cleave alone 
 To this God gave her to redress 
 Her long restraint and barrenness, 
 
 And all the purpose of her years 
 
 And faith so long betrayed to tears. 
 
 Thereat her heart was wholly freed ; 
 And, quickened straight in all its seed 
 
 With love's full tender lavishment, 
 Most rapturous fulfilment bore ; 
 Yea, from recesses at its core, 
 
 Gushed forth, and sudden ravishment 
 In all her body showering, 
 
 Made sweet amends for the long drouth : 
 
 As doth some tardy luscious growth 
 
 T 
 
274 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Forced sudden into flowering 
 By late relenting of the South. 
 
 So, for a while, those lovers lay 
 
 Revelling in a sweet excess 
 Of restless rapture — lovers' way 
 
 Limb over limb ; content to press 
 
 Each other's speechless lips, or twine 
 Each other's arms in listless play, 
 
 Or feed to a soft weariness 
 
 Each other's look, — then to combine 
 The fainting breath in a low sigh, 
 And swoon asleep and think to die 
 
 At once so blessedly ; but pine 
 Full soon to ravish with new strength 
 Each other's lips and looks, — at length 
 Insatiate. It was a pain 
 
 To lose each moment, though there grew 
 Some further bliss ; it was a pain 
 
 — Though perfectly her lover knew 
 His mistress' every tint and mood 
 
 Or flush that in her face could linger, 
 
 — Knew well, oft tenderly retraced 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 275 
 
 With rapturous and erring finger, 
 All fair ways fretted by the blood 
 
 And every dimple of her waist — 
 It was a pain one bliss to lose 
 
 Changing it for another bliss ; 
 It was a pain one kiss to lose, 
 
 Yea, one kiss for another kiss. 
 
 So they prolonged their sweet enlacement 
 
 Till there was nothing left of day ; 
 And the faint glimmer of the room, 
 
 Or a most scarce uncertain ray 
 From distant stars over the casement 
 Lit them each other's looks ; and gloom 
 Was shed on them ; but all their pleasure 
 
 Sufficed them still, with soft delay, 
 To stay their hearts, and, at love's leisure, 
 To heap them up great store and treasure 
 
 Out of each other's look and way, 
 Savour of lips, and voice, and aught 
 Of fair remainder for support 
 
 And solace in long hours of blight, 
 Long seedless fruitless hours unfraught 
 
276 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 With any comfortable sight 
 Or touch of love : and when, compelled 
 At length, O miserably they quelled 
 
 Their rich souls, sundering them un quenched, 
 Most cruel each from other wrenched 
 Some uncompleted bliss. 
 
 Alas, poor Bertha could not keep 
 
 Dissembled quite her change at heart, 
 
 And that she did not pine or weep 
 Or languish more ; she could not part 
 At sudden will from all the bliss 
 
 That lingered in her ; nor efface 
 The dimple that full many a kiss 
 Left on her features or her brow 
 
 Too plainly, and in many a place 
 Upon her breast conceived of snow. 
 
 She could not quite disarm or tame 
 Her lips great fervour to deliver 
 
 Their burden of her lover's name, 
 
 Nor with whole patience sit and sever 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 277 
 
 Her thoughts from him, whene'er the dame 
 Plied her with long constraint or task 
 
 Of prayer : but she was fain for ever 
 In one of his known looks to bask 
 Silent ; and with no perfect mask 
 Of meekness could perform her task, 
 
 Keeping at fast her utmost soul 
 And longing. And, whene'er an hour 
 
 Laxed that most rigorous control, 
 She would array the passionate power 
 
 Of all her heart, beseeching him, 
 Through the long silence with his name 
 
 Grown to a murmur reaching him 
 Perpetual : anon he came 
 
 Prone to her summons. 
 
 Long, with pain 
 Her tyrants, jealous, sought to guess 
 What sort of ravishment could bless 
 
 Her life so secretly ; but vain 
 Was all their striving ; and, with vile 
 
 Mistrust and most unquiet wonder 
 
 They marked her ; ceasing not to ponder 
 Divers deceits. But, all the while, 
 
27S THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 The woman set herself with guile 
 
 To reach and ravel out the thing. 
 And this way : On one morn, deceived, 
 Bertha too easily believed 
 
 Her feigned departure, hastening 
 Her heart, scarce patient to abide 
 
 The door's pretended fastening, 
 And the safe sound of steps outside 
 
 Descending ; then with rapturous start 
 Let loose her longing, flinging wide 
 
 The casement ; and from all her heart 
 In mad foretaste precipitate 
 
 Summoned her Love. 
 
 And when they knew, 
 Embraced again, no thought of hate 
 
 And guile so near, but did renew 
 The long drained sources of their bliss 
 The woman lurked ; and, not to miss 
 
 Her treacherous purposes, kept still, 
 
 Yea, saw and listened and kept still, 
 
 Stemming her vengeance, more to fill 
 The craving after, and make wise 
 
 Her way thereto ; so she discerned ( 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 279 
 
 The mystic stratagem and guise 
 
 With aid of which that lover earned 
 His entry arduous ; and perceived 
 
 Completely all ; then, vowing harm 
 
 With cold and grave intent, she gave 
 Her brother tidings ; and conceived 
 
 With him how best, and with what arm 
 
 Or ambush they should work to have 
 Their vengeance. 
 
 So, at length, they made 
 
 A weapon many-bladed, fell 
 
 And harsh with clustered points, most keen 
 And deadly : this — for trap, was laid 
 
 Most deftly, and its purpose well 
 
 Assured, with some sufficient screen, 
 Upon the window's ledge, — that none 
 
 Entering could escape or foil 
 Death manifold. 
 
 The thing was done 
 
 At night ; and, long ere dawn, the toil 
 
 Was perfect. Then, without recoil 
 Of conscience, they arose and spared 
 
 No moment ; but, with great turmoil, 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 
 
 And marshalling sounds of men and mail 
 
 Rife for some service, and such tale 
 Fitly conceived, they quite ensnared 
 
 Their captive — saying her lord was prest 
 
 To absence on a distant guest 
 Of warfare. So the thing prepared 
 
 Fell out ; that when the distant arms 
 
 And clarions of the troop departing 
 
 Sent no more sound, and all alarms 
 Were far away a space, so spared 
 
 Favoring of heaven it seemed,— upstarting, 
 No further tolerant of the load 
 
 Of longing, she straightway unbound 
 Her heart, most urgently to goad 
 The lagging silence to create 
 
 Some presence or fulfilling sound, 
 For the known bliss importunate. 
 
 Then came the dawn with soft delays 
 Of light, and rapturous restraint 
 
 Reluctant ; with flushed feet in ways 
 
 Voluptuous ; full .of rich reserve 
 
 For passionate noons, the golden taint 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 281 
 
 Revealing gradual : then elate, 
 Unerring, on surpassing curve 
 Of faultless ^"ing, with furious aim 
 And constant zest, the falcon came 
 
 Impetuous ; and all his fate, 
 Wretched and sweet of life and heart, 
 Wretched and sweet, delicious part 
 
 Of love and penalty most dread 
 Relentless drew him on. 
 
 And she 
 
 Instant her passionate purpose sped, 
 Redoubling urgent the decree 
 ' With all her heart's might ; feeling too 
 
 Him all inevitable through 
 The distance reach her with a keen 
 
 Response of coming ; feeling too 
 In all the harassed air between 
 
 The close beats of his wings'; and still 
 The latest moment of reprieve 
 
 Bearing most niggardly ; until, 
 With harsh plunge and uncertain heave 
 
 Of weak wings faltering to compel 
 
 His faint course, seeking her, he fell 
 
282 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Wounded of life ; and sank and shed 
 His gentle blood upon the bed. 
 
 A little while he baffled Death ; 
 
 And with incessant fluttering 
 
 Contended for some sweet delay, 
 That he might hold enough of breath 
 
 For one last passionate uttering ; 
 
 But life fell fast within him, yea, 
 So that he made a piteous plead 
 Of looks all silently instead, 
 
 And panted all his heart away. 
 
 But she, in uttermost amaze 
 
 Painfully held, was still intent 
 To see her lover's image raise 
 Its stained and dabbled mask ; and couched 
 
 Expectant, with whole tortures pent 
 At heart a moment's respite, touched 
 
 Her full woe tenderly ; — nay bent 
 Against it her full will and strength 
 Of soul resisting : but at length 
 
 It broke her quite ; and she confessed 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 283 
 
 The silence and the grey cold hue, 
 And gathering death all wan and blue 
 
 That filmed the eye ; anon, she pressed 
 Her bosom to that spoil of love, 
 That bitter wreck of all her love. 
 
 But lo, once more she was aware 
 
 Of something pleading sick and faint 
 
 About her heart, — a speechless plaint 
 Broken like sighs upon the air 
 Stirring her sorely ; then a hand 
 
 Was laid upon her heart and wielded 
 Mysteriously her will ; she planned 
 
 Nor purposed any course, but yielded 
 Meekly as in a dream. And so 
 
 She rose, all inwardly impressed, 
 
 And, from the cell with little toil 
 Released, she lingered not to go ; 
 
 Soon the cold corridors confessed, 
 Whispering with a frozen wind, 
 
 Her steps : but her swift footsteps foil 
 
 Their echoes ; and the conscious floors 
 Betray not, stricken dumb behind 
 
 Her feet ; anon, the dismal doors, 
 
;3 4 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 Touched with her passionate touch, recoil, 
 Melted in all their irksome mail 
 
 Of bolts and iron frowns — recoil 
 
 Setting her free ; and as they part 
 There cometh in a long low wail 
 
 — Half of the wind, and at her heart 
 The hand more heavy doth prevail. 
 
 And when before the moat she came, 
 The bridge stood ready in her way, 
 As though some traveller that day 
 
 Had passed quite recent ; and the same 
 She thought, where on the fields she found 
 
 A narrow footway, like a stain 
 Of steps all recent on the ground. 
 
 Then through lands many, green and fair, 
 Woodlands and many a weary plain 
 And rugged mountain land, a league 
 
 Full hardily she fled ; despair 
 Great in her heart against fatigue. 
 And ere the day yet threatened night, 
 
 She found a city silent and wide, 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 285 
 
 Silent and wide and full of light. 
 
 None stirred in all the street beside 
 Herself. She entered by the gate 
 A palace. There with barren state 
 
 The voiceless walls were tapestried 
 
 Damask and purple ; sullen pride 
 Of pillar frowned ; and shapes of stone 
 
 Stood ponderous, and all hard-eyed 
 Beheld her ; and a long low moan 
 The waste winds made in this great dwelling 
 Desolate. Yet, her soul compelling, 
 
 No fear turned back her feet ; but loud 
 The hollow place with harsh repeat 
 Bore witness of her ardent feet, — 
 
 Until she found a chamber proud 
 With pomp of funeral array : 
 A gilded gloom stupendous lay 
 
 Upon the walls ; and a great shroud 
 In midst upon a regal bier, 
 
 With a vast pall upon the ground 
 
 Wide trailed : but on that bier she found 
 Her lover. 
 
 Still he seemed but near 
 
286 THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 
 
 His death ; and told her how his soul 
 
 Choked with the slaughtered life, too weak 
 Had straggled for a voice to speak 
 
 Farewell, in words that should console 
 
 Her sorrow ; and at length, bound back 
 To fill its twofold death, had yearned 
 
 And waited, praying God to slack 
 His extreme hand, and sorely earned 
 
 Prolonging death this sweet reprieve. 
 
 Anon, he bade her to believe 
 
 A piteous thing ; praying thereby 
 
 That she would heal her heart, to grieve 
 
 Not too devotedly ; and saying, 
 That surely he should never die 
 
 Quite to his inmost heart ; but, staying 
 Deep in his grave her sorrow too 
 Would most torment him, throbbing through 
 
 His sleep and evermore delaying 
 
 His peace and keeping wide the wounds ; 
 Yea, with sick longing to regain 
 
 Sweet pasts unfinished, full of sounds 
 
 Fallen and broken, would reproach 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 287 
 
 Pure present peace ; bringing again 
 
 The faded endings of old pain 
 And crushed world-sweetness to encroach 
 
 In the old hollows of the heart ; 
 So still some bitterness should burn 
 And bum, and he should never earn 
 
 His rest of God ; ay, never part 
 Wholly from this great slough of life 
 
 And love turned to this dust, this death 
 Charred and yet chafing. 
 
 Never life 
 Shall light again this dust he said ; 
 
 Nor can love ever with a breath 
 Touch me down there where I am laid : 
 O there shall be a load for this 
 
 Upon the very heart of fate ; 
 And something too shall be to miss 
 From God's full purposes of bliss 
 
 And God Himself be all too late 
 To mend or mourn ; for mine shall be 
 
 In earth a place most desolate, 
 Where never flower shall grow nor tree 
 
 Hang with sweet shadow, — desolate, 
 
283 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 But very peaceful for a grave, 
 And very fitting so for me. 
 ■ — Ah, who can say if love may have 
 Some heaven yet,— some second earth, 
 
 Some long revenge for this ill life, 
 Some sort of death redeeming birth ? 
 
 — Ah, who can say ? — I feel a strife 
 Of hands about my heart ; I thrill 
 
 Beneath the shadows of new fates 
 That cover me ; I have a chill 
 
 Like death ; and yet some touch creates 
 A warmth like life too ; I have sights 
 Most hard, of lights mingling with lights ; 
 
 And yet, methinks, I feel but sleep, — 
 Smell a faint fragrance of dead leaves, 
 
 Or of the dust that I shall heap 
 About my heart : my heart believes 
 No more — no more than this, and cleaves 
 
 O dying, on thy hands my Love ! 
 
 It was the midnight. His last look 
 Was fading in the fervid gloom ; 
 And many an aching echo shook 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 289 
 
 The pauses, moving like a moan ; 
 And dying words' sad monotone 
 
 Lasted about the silent room. 
 
 She was alone with all her doom ; 
 But knew not yet she was alone ; 
 
 For all these things, the looks, the words, 
 
 Thronged at her heart, foiling dim swords 
 That stood inevitable, keeping 
 A short space charmed with the slow heaping 
 
 Of thought, rich with each lingering sound, — 
 Ere all fell sickened into weeping 
 
 And the whole bitterness were found. 
 
 But soon, out of the distant street 
 
 Came murmurs ; and the growing hiss 
 
 Of half-hushed voices ; and a beat 
 
 Of steps and steps of other men ; 
 
 And fate fell on her heart ; and then 
 With all her load of broken bliss, 
 
 She fled to seek out some retreat 
 In all-abiding night. 
 
 The moon 
 
 Began all wearily to wane : 
 
 u 
 
290 THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 
 
 And she — she lay upon the plain 
 Weary, and fell into a swoon ; 
 
 Then heard most dismally the toll 
 
 Of death-bells, heavy with the soul 
 Of him her lover ; and his doom 
 Throbbing across the muffling gloom 
 
 Attained her to the very heart ; 
 
 And gradual there, in every part, 
 Grew forth the desolating root 
 Of sorrow, piercing shoot by shoot 
 
 The soft soil where a rose's stain 
 Lay recent ; and, where any bliss 
 
 Had been, wherever love had lain, 
 
 Grew now some seed and fruit of pain 
 Rich with the rotting memories. 
 
 Then a new wonder, like a thought 
 Strove with the death in her, and wrought 
 With inward accent promising 
 Half-sweet, an unimagined thing. 
 
 And at last from the bitter ground 
 
THE LAY OF YVENEC. 291 
 
 She rose, and forward through the night 
 Her feet miraculously found 
 
 A constant guidance, and a might 
 
 To go and meet that future fate, 
 Which yet in such strange manner bound 
 
 Her soul to live indeed and wait. 
 
 If any saw her in her way, 
 
 Passing along the meadows gray 
 With deep unlifted shrouding still, 
 
 Surely they knew not ; but beheld 
 Amazed and with a doubtful thrill : 
 
 And, by her shining robe that trailed 
 Through the dank night ; and by the sheen 
 Of all her raiment, and hair seen 
 
 Wondrous, unsoiled, as though availed 
 No longer spell of day or night 
 On her ; and by the rustlings light 
 
 That startled the deep earthly sleep 
 Along the meadows in her path ; 
 
 — Surely she seemed to them some wraith 
 Walking the world on straight intent 
 
 Of unaccomplished doom, or sent 
 
292 THE LAY OF YVENEC. 
 
 To work the purposes of God, 
 Whereof no man the knowledge hath. 
 
 So was there none in all her way 
 
 To shame her steps ; and ere the day 
 
 Betrayed, her feet returning trode 
 The marble floor of her own hall 
 And silent passage ancestral 
 
 Of that cold place where she abode. 
 
 She might not speak at all nor weep ; 
 
 But such great mystery did cling 
 Upon her face, that seemed to keep 
 
 Knowledge of some most holy thing, 
 No man found ways to try her more 
 
 With base reproof or questioning. 
 
 And lo, in due time, and before 
 Her grief of secret thought was done, 
 
 With many an inward holy thrill 
 And wondrous sign of grace begun 
 Already plain, God did fulfil 
 His miracle of love ere long ; 
 
THE LA Y OF YVENEC. 293 
 
 So that she bore a goodly Son ; 
 And lying showed each evil tongue 
 That spoke her barren of His grace. 
 
 Her child — he had a wondrous face, 
 
 In which was written many a dear 
 
 And lovely word with God's hand clear, 
 In lineament that she could trace 
 
 More and more through the smiling grace, 
 To many a noble thing foretold 
 Of help and blessedness to her : 
 
 So she would read, for days and days, 
 His holy smiling that consoled 
 Her heart, and bade her thoughts to err 
 
 Free in all sweet and hopeful ways : 
 
 And afterward there grew much praise 
 Of him, for he is named in lays 
 Yvenec, the Deliverer. 
 
Dame, dist-il, jeo n'aime pas, 
 D'amurs tenir n'est mie gas ; 
 Cil deit estre de mut grant pris 
 Qui s'entremet qu'il seit amis : 
 Tel cine cent parolent d'amur 
 N'en sevent pas le pior tur, 
 Ne que est loiax druerie. 
 Ains lor rage e lor folie, 
 Perece, wiseuse e faintise 
 Enpire amor en mainte guise. 
 Amors demande caaste, 
 En fais, en dis e en pense : 
 Se l'uns des amans est loiax, 
 E li autre est jalox e faus, 
 Si est amors entr'ex fausee, 
 Ne puet avoir lunge duree. 
 Amors n'a soing de compagnun, 
 Boin amors n'est se de Dex nun, 
 De cors en cors, de cuer en cuer, 
 Autrement n'est prex a mil fuer. 
 
 Marie : Lai de Gradent. 
 
LONDON: 
 
 Strangeways and Walden, Printers, 
 Castle St. Leicester Sq. 
 
[December, 18871 
 
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CHATTO &■ WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 31 
 
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 E. Lynn Linton, continued — 
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 The Rebel of the Family. 
 "My Love." | lone. 
 
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32 
 
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