The Tale of Balen

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

And down a dim deep woodland way
They rode between the boughs asway
With flickering winds whose flash and play
Made sunlight sunnier where the day
Laughed, leapt, and fluttered like a bird
Caught in a light loose leafy net
That earth for amorous heaven had set
To hold and see the sundawn yet
And hear what morning heard.

There in the sweet soft shifting light
Across their passage rode a knight
Flushed hot from hunting as from fight,
And seeing the sorrow-stricken sight
Made question of them why they rode
As mourners sick at heart and sad,
When all alive about them bade
Sweet earth for heaven’s sweet sake be glad
As heaven for earth’s love glowed.

“Me lists not tell you,” Balen said.
The strange knight’s face grew keen and red
“Now, might my hand but keep my head,
Even here should one of twain lie dead
Were he no better armed than I.”
And Balen spake with smiling speed,
Where scorn and courtesy kept heed
Of either: “That should little need:
Not here shall either die.”

And all the cause he told him through
As one that feared not though he knew
All: and the strange knight spake anew,
Saying: “I will part no more from you
While life shall last me.” So they went
Where he might arm himself to ride,
And rode across wild ways and wide
To where against a churchyard side
A hermit’s harbour leant.

And there against them riding came
Fleet as the lightning’s laugh and flame
The invisible evil, even the same
They sought and might not curse by name
As hell’s foul child on earth set free,
And smote the strange knight through, and fled,
And left the mourners by the dead.
“Alas, again,” Sir Balen said,
“This wrong he hath done to me.”

And there they laid their dead to sleep
Royally, lying where wild winds keep
Keen watch and wail more soft and deep
Than where men’s choirs bid music weep
And song like incense heave and swell.
And forth again they rode, and found
Before them, dire in sight and sound,
A castle girt about and bound
With sorrow like a spell.

Above it seemed the sun at noon
Sad as a wintry withering moon
That shudders while the waste wind’s tune
Craves ever none may guess what boon,
But all may know the boon for dire.
And evening on its darkness fell
More dark than very death’s farewell,
And night about it hung like hell,
Whose fume the dawn made fire.

And Balen lighted down and passed
Within the gateway, whence no blast
Rang as the sheer portcullis, cast
Suddenly down, fell, and made fast
The gate behind him, whence he spied
A sudden rage of men without
And ravin of a murderous rout
That girt the maiden hard about
With death on either side.

And seeing that shame and peril, fear
Bade wrath and grief awake and hear
What shame should say in fame’s wide ear
If she, by sorrow sealed more dear
Than joy might make her, so should die:
And up the tower’s curled stair he sprang
As one that flies death’s deadliest fang,
And leapt right out amid their gang
As fire from heaven on high.

And they thereunder seeing the knight
Unhurt among their press alight
And bare his sword for chance of fight
Stood from him, loth to strive or smite,
And bade him hear their woful word,
That not the maiden’s death they sought;
But there through years too dire for thought
Had lain their lady stricken, and nought
Might heal her: and he heard.