Idylls of the King | Page 8

die! and if thou diest,
The King is King, and
ever wills the highest.
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King
reign.

'Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May!
Blow, for our Sun is
mightier day by day!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King
reign.
'The King will follow Christ, and we the King
In whom high God
hath breathed a secret thing.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the
King reign.'
So sang the knighthood, moving to their hall.
There at the banquet
those great Lords from Rome,
The slowly-fading mistress of the
world,
Strode in, and claimed their tribute as of yore.
But Arthur
spake, 'Behold, for these have sworn
To wage my wars, and worship
me their King;
The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And
we that fight for our fair father Christ,
Seeing that ye be grown too
weak and old
To drive the heathen from your Roman wall,
No
tribute will we pay:' so those great lords
Drew back in wrath, and
Arthur strove with Rome.
And Arthur and his knighthood for a space
Were all one will, and
through that strength the King
Drew in the petty princedoms under
him,
Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame
The heathen
hordes, and made a realm and reigned.
Gareth and Lynette
The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent,
And tallest, Gareth, in a
showerful spring
Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted Pine
Lost
footing, fell, and so was whirled away.
'How he went down,' said
Gareth, 'as a false knight
Or evil king before my lance if lance
Were
mine to use--O senseless cataract,
Bearing all down in thy
precipitancy--
And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows
And
mine is living blood: thou dost His will,
The Maker's, and not
knowest, and I that know,
Have strength and wit, in my good
mother's hall
Linger with vacillating obedience,
Prisoned, and kept

and coaxed and whistled to--
Since the good mother holds me still a
child!
Good mother is bad mother unto me!
A worse were better;
yet no worse would I.
Heaven yield her for it, but in me put force

To weary her ears with one continuous prayer,
Until she let me fly
discaged to sweep
In ever-highering eagle-circles up
To the great
Sun of Glory, and thence swoop
Down upon all things base, and dash
them dead,
A knight of Arthur, working out his will,
To cleanse the
world. Why, Gawain, when he came
With Modred hither in the
summertime,
Asked me to tilt with him, the proven knight.
Modred
for want of worthier was the judge.
Then I so shook him in the saddle,
he said,
"Thou hast half prevailed against me," said so--he--

Though Modred biting his thin lips was mute,
For he is alway sullen:
what care I?'
And Gareth went, and hovering round her chair
Asked, 'Mother,
though ye count me still the child,
Sweet mother, do ye love the
child?' She laughed,
'Thou art but a wild-goose to question it.'
'Then,
mother, an ye love the child,' he said,
'Being a goose and rather tame
than wild,
Hear the child's story.' 'Yea, my well-beloved,
An 'twere
but of the goose and golden eggs.'
And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes,
'Nay, nay, good mother,
but this egg of mine
Was finer gold than any goose can lay;
For this
an Eagle, a royal Eagle, laid
Almost beyond eye-reach, on such a
palm
As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours.
And there was ever
haunting round the palm
A lusty youth, but poor, who often saw

The splendour sparkling from aloft, and thought
"An I could climb
and lay my hand upon it,
Then were I wealthier than a leash of
kings."
But ever when he reached a hand to climb,
One, that had
loved him from his childhood, caught
And stayed him, "Climb not
lest thou break thy neck,
I charge thee by my love," and so the boy,

Sweet mother, neither clomb, nor brake his neck,
But brake his very
heart in pining for it,
And past away.'

To whom the mother said,
'True love, sweet son, had risked himself
and climbed,
And handed down the golden treasure to him.'
And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes,
'Gold?' said I gold?--ay
then, why he, or she,
Or whosoe'er it was, or half the world
Had
ventured--had the thing I spake of been
Mere gold--but this was all of
that true steel,
Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,
And
lightnings played about it in the storm,
And all the little fowl were
flurried at it,
And there were cries and clashings in the nest,
That
sent him from his senses: let me go.'
Then Bellicent bemoaned herself and said,
'Hast thou no pity upon
my loneliness?
Lo, where thy father Lot beside the hearth
Lies like
a log, and all but smouldered out!
For ever since when traitor to the
King
He fought against him in the Barons' war,
And Arthur gave
him back his territory,
His age hath slowly droopt, and now lies there

A yet-warm corpse, and yet unburiable,
No more; nor sees, nor
hears, nor speaks, nor knows.
And both thy brethren are in Arthur's
hall,
Albeit neither loved with that full love
I feel for thee, nor
worthy such a love:
Stay therefore thou; red berries charm