The Last Tournament | Page 2

have sworn the counter to it--and say
My tower
is full of harlots, like his court,
But mine are worthier, seeing they
profess
To be none other than themselves--and say
My knights are
all adulterers like his own,
But mine are truer, seeing they profess

To be none other; and say his hour is come,
The heathen are upon
him, his long lance
Broken, and his Excalibur a straw.'"
Then Arthur turn'd to Kay the seneschal,
"Take thou my churl, and
tend him curiously
Like a king's heir, till all his hurts be whole.
The
heathen--but that ever-climbing wave,
Hurl'd back again so often in
empty foam,
Hath lain for years at rest--and renegades,
Thieves,
bandits, leavings of confusion, whom
The wholesome realm is
purged of otherwhere,--
Friends, thro' your manhood and your
fealty,--now
Make their last head like Satan in the North.
My
younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower
Waits to be solid
fruit of golden deeds,
Move with me toward their quelling, which
achieved,
The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore.
But thou,
Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place

Enchair'd to-morrow, arbitrate the
field;
For wherefore shouldst thou care to mingle with it,
Only to

yield my Queen her own again?
Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it
well?"

Thereto Sir Lancelot answer'd, "It is well:
Yet better if the King abide,
and leave
The leading of his younger knights to me.
Else, for the
King has will'd it, it is well."

Then Arthur rose and Lancelot follow'd him,
And while they stood
without the doors, the King
Turn'd to him saying, "Is it then so well?

Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he
Of whom was written, 'a
sound is in his ears'--
The foot that loiters, bidden go,--the glance

That only seems half-loyal to command,--
A manner somewhat fall'n
from reverence--
Or have I dream'd the bearing of our knights
Tells
of a manhood ever less and lower?
Or whence the fear lest this my
realm, uprear'd,
By noble deeds at one with noble vows,
From flat
confusion and brute violences,
Reel back into the beast, and be no
more?"

He spoke, and taking all his younger knights,
Down the slope city
rode, and sharply turn'd
North by the gate. In her high bower the
Queen,
Working a tapestry, lifted up her head,
Watch'd her lord
pass, and knew not that she sigh'd.
Then ran across her memory the
strange rhyme
Of bygone Merlin, "Where is he who knows?
From
the great deep to the great deep he goes."

But when the morning of a tournament,
By these in earnest those in
mockery call'd
The Tournament of the Dead Innocence,
Brake with
a wet wind blowing, Lancelot,
Round whose sick head all night, like
birds of prey,
The words of Arthur flying shriek'd, arose,
And down

a streetway hung with folds of pure
White samite, and by fountains
running wine,
Where children sat in white with cups of gold,

Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps
Ascending, fill'd his
double-dragon'd chair.

He glanced and saw the stately galleries,
Dame, damsel, each thro'
worship of their Queen
White-robed in honor of the stainless child,

And some with scatter'd jewels, like a bank
Of maiden snow mingled
with sparks of fire.
He lookt but once, and veil'd his eyes again.

The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream
To ears but half-awaked,
then one low roll
Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began:
And
ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf
And gloom and gleam, and
shower and shorn plume
Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one

Who sits and gazes on a faded fire,
When all the goodlier guests are
past away,
Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists.
He saw the
laws that ruled the tournament
Broken, but spake not; once, a knight
cast down
Before his throne of arbitration cursed
The dead babe
and the follies of the King;
And once the laces of a helmet crack'd,

And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole,
Modred, a narrow face:
anon he heard
The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar
An
ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,
But newly-enter'd, taller than
the rest,
And armor'd all in forest green, whereon
There tript a
hundred tiny silver deer,
And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,

With ever-scattering berries, and on shield
A spear, a harp, a
bugle--Tristram--late
From overseas in Brittany return'd,
And
marriage with a princess of that realm,
Isolt the White--Sir Tristram
of the Woods--
Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain

His own against him, and now yearn'd to shake
The burthen off his
heart in one full shock

With Tristram ev'n to death: his strong hands
gript
And dinted the gilt dragons right and left,
Until he groan'd for

wrath--so many of those,
That ware their ladies' colors on the casque,

Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds,
And there with gibes
and nickering mockeries
Stood, while he mutter'd, "Craven chests! O
shame!
What faith have these in whom they sware to love?
The
glory of our Round Table is no more."

So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems,
Not speaking other
word than "Hast thou won?
Art thou the purest, brother? See, the
hand
Wherewith thou takest this is red!" to whom
Tristram, half
plagued by Lancelot's languorous mood,
Made answer,