Who laid his bleeding head against her knee
And loosed the bitter breast-plate and unbound
His casque and brought him strangely o'er the sea,
And how she reigns beside him on that shore
For ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me)
And they twain have no sorrow any more.
III
They have forgotten all that vanished away
When life's dark night died into death's bright day
They have forgotten all except the gleam
Of light when once he kissed her in a dream
Once on the lips and once upon the brow
In the white orb of God's transcendent Now;
And even then he knew that, long before,
Their eyes had met upon some distant shore;
Yea; that most lonely and immortal face
Which dwells beyond the dreams of time and space
Bowed down to him from out the happy place And whispered to him, low and sweet and low
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
And then he knew his love could never die
Because his queen was throned beyond the sky
And called him to his own immortal sphere
Forgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.
So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they know
They loved on earth a million years ago;
And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;
And heard a voice whispering in their flow,
And calling through the silent sunset-glow,
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
IV
It was about the dawn of day
I heard Etain and Anwyl say
The waving ferns are a fairy forest,
It is time, it is time to wander away;
For the dew is bright on the heather bells,
And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,
As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,
Over and under the braes and dells.
She was eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;
Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—
Two young lovers were they.
Two young lovers were they,
Born in the City of Pain;
There was never a song in the world so gay
As the song of the child, Etain;