Accolon of Gaul, with Other Poems

by Madison Julius Cawein

IV.

HATE, born of Wrath and mother red of Crime,

In Hell was whelped ere the hot hands of time,

Artificer of God, had coined one world

From formless forms of void and 'round it furled

Its lordly raiment of the day and night,

And germed its womb for seasons throed with might:

And Hell sent Hate to man to hate or use,

To serve itself by serving and amuse....

For her half brother Morgane had conceived

A morbid hatred; in that much she grieved,

Envious and jealous, for that high renown

And majesty the King for his fast crown

Thro' worship had acquired. And once he said,

"The closest kin to state are those to dread:

No honor such to crush: envenoming

All those kind tongues of blood that try to sing

Petition to the soul, while conscience quakes

Huddled, but stern to hearts whose cold pride takes."

And well she knew that Arthur: mightier

Than Accolon, without Excalibur

Were as a stingless hornet in the joust

With all his foreign weapons. So her trust

Smiled certain of conclusion; eloquent

Gave lofty heart bold hope that at large eyes

Piled up imperial dreams of power and prize.

And in her carven chamber, oaken dark,

Traceried and arrased, o'er the barren park

That dripped with Autumn,—for November lay

Swathed frostily in fog on every spray,—

Thought at her tri-arched casement lone, one night,

Ere yet came knowledge of that test of might.

Her lord in slumber and the castle dull

With silence or with sad wind-music full.

"And he removed?—fond fool! he is removed!

Death-dull from feet to hair and graveward shoved

From royalty to that degraded state

But purpler pomp! But, see! regenerate

Another monarch rises—Accolon!—

Love! Love! with state more ermined; balmy son

Of gods not men, and nobler hence to rule.

Sweet Love almighty, terrible to school

Harsh hearts to gentleness!—Then all this realm's

Iron-huskéd flower of war, which overwhelms

With rust and havoc, shall explode and bloom

An asphodel of peace with joy's perfume.

And then, sweet Launcelots and sweet Tristrams proud,

Sweet Gueneveres, sweet Isouds, now allowed

No pleasures but what wary, stolen hours

In golden places have their flaming flowers,

Shall have curled feasts of passion evermore.

Poor out-thrust Love, now shivering at the door,

No longer, sweet neglected, thou thrust off,

Insulted and derided: nor the scoff

Of bully Power, whose heart of insult flings

Off for the roar of arms the appeal that clings

And lifts a tearful, prayerful pitiful face

Up from his brutal feet: this shrine where grace

Lays woman's life for every sacrifice—

To him so little, yet of what pure price,

Her all, being all her all for love!—her soul

Life, honor, earth and firmamental whole

Of God's glad universe; stars, moon and sun;

Creation, death; life ended, life begun.

And if by fleshly love all Heaven's debarred,

Its sinuous revolving spheres instarred,

Then Hell were Heaven with love to those who knew

Love which God's Heaven encouraged—love that drew

Hips, head and hair in fiends' devouring claws

Down, down its pit's hurled sucking, as down draws,—

Yet lip to narrow lip with whom we love,—

A whirlwind some weak, crippled, fallen dove.

"Then this lank Urience? He who is lord.—

Where is thy worry? for, hath he no sword?

No dangerous dagger I, hid softly here

Sharp as an adder's fang? or for that ear

No instant poison which insinuates,

Tightens quick pulses, while one breathing waits,

With ice and death? For often men who sleep

On eider-down wake not, but closely keep

Such secrets in their graves to rot and rot

To dust and maggots;—of these—which his lot?"

Thus she conspired with her that rainy night

Lone in her chamber; when no haggard, white,

Wan, watery moon dreamed on the streaming pane,

But on the leads beat an incessant rain,

And sighed and moaned a weary wind along

The turrets and torn poplars stirred to song.

So grew her face severe as skies that take

Dark forces of full storm, sound-shod, that shake

With murmurous feet black hills, and stab with fire

A pine some moaning forest mourns as sire.

So touched her countenance that dark intent;

And to still eyes stern thoughts a passion sent,

As midnight waters luminous glass deep

Suggestive worlds of austere stars in sleep,

Vague ghostly gray locked in their hollow gloom.

Then as if some vast wind had swept the room,

Silent, intense, had raised her from her seat,

Of dim, great arms had made her a retreat,

Secret as love to move in, like some ghost,

Noiseless as death and subtle as sharp frost,

Poised like a light and borne as carefully,

Trod she the gusty hall where shadowy

The stirring hangings rolled a Pagan war.

And there the mail of Urience shone. A star,

Glimmering above, a dying cresset dropped

From the stone vault and flared. And here she stopped

And took the sword bright, burnished by his page,

And ruddy as a flame with restless rage.

Grasping this death unto the chamber where

Slept innocent her spouse she moved—an air

Twined in soft, glossy sendal; or a fit

Of faery song a wicked charm in it,

A spell that sings seductive on to death.

Then paused she at one chamber; for a breath

Listened: and here her son Sir Ewain slept,

He who of ravens a black army kept,

In war than fiercest men more terrible,

That tore forth eyes of kings who blinded fell.

Sure that he slept, to Urience stole and stood

Dim by his couch. About her heart hot blood

Caught strangling, then throbbed thudding fever up

To her broad eyes, like wine whirled in a cup.

Then came rare Recollection, with a mouth

Sweet as the honeyed sunbeams of the South

Trickling thro' perplexed ripples of low leaves;

To whose faint form a veil of starshine cleaves

Intricate gauze from memoried eyes to feet;—

Feet sandaled with crushed, sifted snows and fleet

To come and go and airy anxiously.

She, trembling to her, like a flower a bee

Nests in and makes an audible mouth of musk

Dripping a downy language in the dusk,

Laid lips to ears and luted memories of

Now hateful Urience:—Her maiden love,

That willing went from Caerlleon to Gore

One dazzling day of Autumn. How a boar,

Wild as the wonder of the blazing wood,

Raged at her from a cavernous solitude,

Which, crimson-creepered, yawned the bristling curse

Murderous upon her; how her steed waxed worse

And, snorting terror, fled unmanageable,

Pursued with fear, and flung her from the selle,

Soft slipping on a bank of springy moss

That couched her swooning. In an utter loss

Of mind and limbs she only knew twas thus—

As one who pants beneath an incubus:—

The boar thrust toward her a tusked snout and fanged

Of hideous bristles, and the whole wood clanged

And buzzed and boomed a thousand sounds and lights

Lawless about her brain, like leaves fierce nights

Of hurricane harvest shouting: then she knew

A fury thunder twixt it—and fleet flew

Rich-rooted moss and sandy loam that held

Dark-buried shadows of the wild, and swelled

Continual echoes with the thud of strife,

And breath of man and brute that warred for life;

And all the air, made mad with foam and forms,

Spun froth and wrestled twixt her hair and arms,

While trampled caked the stricken leaves or shred

Hummed whirling, and snapped brittle branches dead.

And when she rose and leaned her throbbing head,

Which burst its uncoifed rays of raven hair

Down swelling shoulders pure and faultless fair,

On one milk, marvelous arm of fluid grace,

Beheld the brute thing throttled and the face

Of angry Urience over, browed like Might,

One red, swoln arm, that pinned the hairy fright,

Strong as a god's, iron at the gullet's brawn;

Dug in his midriff, the close knees updrawn

Wedged deep the glutton sides that quaked and strove

A shaggy bulk, whose sharp hoofs horny drove.

Thus man and brute burned bent; when Urience slipped

One arm, the horror's tearing tusks had ripped

And ribboned redly, to the dagger's hilt,

Which at his hip hung long a haft gold-gilt;

Its rapid splinter drew; beamed twice and thrice

High in the sun its ghastliness of ice

Plunged—and the great boar, stretched in sullen death,

Weakened thro' wild veins, groaned laborious breath.

And how he brought her water from a well

That rustled freshness near them, as it fell

From its full-mantled urn, in his deep casque,

And prayed her quaff; then bathed her brow, a task

That had accompaning tears of joy and vows

Of love, sweet intercourse of eyes and brows,

And many clinging kisses eloquent.

And how, when dressed his arm, behind him bent

She clasped him on the same steed and they went

On thro' the gold wood toward the golden West,

Till on one low hill's forest-covered crest

Up in the gold his castle's battlements pressed.

And then she felt she'd loved him till had come

Fame of the love of Isoud, whom from home

Brought knightly Tristram o'er the Irish foam,

And Guenevere's for Launcelot of the Lake.

And then how passion from these seemed to wake

Longing for some great gallant who would slake—

And such found Accolon.

And then she thought

How far she'd fallen and how darkly fraught

With consequence was this. Then what distress

Were hers and his—her lover's; and success

How doubly difficult if Arthur slain,

King Urience lived to assert his right to reign.

So paused she pondering on the blade; her lips

Breathless and close as close cold finger tips

Hugged the huge weapon's hilt. And so she sighed,

"Nay! long, too long hast lived who shouldst have died

Even in the womb abortive! who these years

Hast leashed sweet life to care with stinging tears,

A knot thus harshly severed!—As thou art

Into the elements naked!"

O'er his heart

The long sword hesitated, lean as crime,

Descended redly once. And like a rhyme

Of nice words fairly fitted forming on,—

A sudden ceasing and the harmony gone,

So ran to death the life of Urience,

A strong song incomplete of broken sense.

There glowered the crimeful Queen. The glistening sword

Unfleshed, flung by her wronged and murdered lord;

And the dark blood spread broader thro' the sheet

To drip a horror at impassive feet

And blur the polished oak. But lofty she

Stood proud, relentless; in her ecstacy

A lovely devil; a crowned lust that cried

On Accolon; that harlot which defied

Heaven with a voice of pulses clamorous as

Steep storm that down a cavernous mountain pass

Blasphemes an hundred echoes; with like power

The inner harlot called its paramour:

Him whom King Arthur had commanded, when

Borne from the lists, be granted her again

As his blithe gift and welcome from that joust,

For treacherous love and her adulterous lust.

And while she stood revolving how her deed's

Concealment were secured,—a grind of steeds,

Arms, jingling stirrups, voices loud that cursed

Fierce in the northern court. To her athirst

For him her lover, war and power it spoke,

Him victor and so King; and then awoke

A yearning to behold, to quit the dead.

So a wild specter down wide stairs she fled,

Burst on a glare of links and glittering mail,

That shrunk her eyes and made her senses quail.

To her a bulk of iron, bearded fierce,

Down from a steaming steed into her ears,

"This from the King, a boon!" laughed harsh and hoarse;

Two henchmen beckoned, who pitched sheer with force,

Loud clanging at her feet, hacked, hewn and red,

Crusted with blood a knight in armor—dead;

Even Accolon, tossed with the mocking scoff

"This from the King!"—phantoms in fog rode off.

And what remains? From Camelot to Gore

That right she weeping fled; then to the shore,—

As that romancer tells,—Avilion,

Where she hath Majesty gold-crowned yet wan;

In darkest cypress a frail pitious face

Queenly and lovely; 'round sad eyes the trace

Of immemorial tears as for some crime:

They future fixed, expectant of the time

When the forgiving Arthur cometh and

Shall have to rule all that lost golden land

That drifts vague amber in forgotten seas

Of surgeless turquoise dim with mysteries.

And so was seen Morgana nevermore,

Save once when from the Cornwall coast she bore

The wounded Arthur from that last fought fight

Of Camlan in a black barge into night.

But oft some see her with a palfried band

Of serge-stoled maidens thro' the drowsy land

Of Autumn glimmer; when are sharply strewn

The red leaves, while broad in the east a moon

Swings full of frost a lustrous globe of gleams,

Faint on the mooning hills as shapes in dreams.